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The Technology of Neuromancer After 25 Years
William Gibson's Neuromancer was first published 25 years ago. Dr_Ken writes with an excerpt from an article at MacWorld that delves into the current state of some of the technology that drives the book: "'Neuromancer is important because of its astounding predictive power. Gibson's core idea in the novel is the direct integration of man and computer, with all the possibilities (and horrors) that such a union entails. The book eventually sold more than 160 million copies, but bringing the book to popular attention took a long time and a lot of word-of-mouth. The sci-fi community, however, was acutely aware of the novel's importance when it came out: Neuromancer ran the table on sci-fi's big three awards in 1984, winning the Hugo Award, the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award, and the Nebula Award.'"
Gibson's core idea in the novel is the direct integration of man and computer, with all the possibilities (and horrors) that such a union entails
It's been a few months since I read it but I remember the humans staying human all the way to the end.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Perhaps I should read this again. On the first reading it was incredibly hard to make much sense of the story. It does though drip with atmosphere, but some parts of the story are just so damn bizarre.
Anyone know if the other two related stories are any good (Mono Lisa Overdrive, and Count Zero)?
Sorry, I enjoyed Neuromancer as much as anyone. However, you can't talk about what Gibson got right without talking about what he missed... most interestingly he missed the invention of mobile phones and so pay phones make an appearance in the book.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Terry Pratchett's total career sales track is around 66 million books. Steven King sold somewhere upwards of 100 million, total. J. K. Rowling is around the 70-120 million mark, worldwide. I call bullshit, by at least one (and probably two) orders of magnitude.
Note that any sales figure a major English language publishing house discloses will be inflated by between 50% and 300%. This is standard practice -- everybody does it, so if you don't do it, everybody will assume that you're exaggerating your sales anyway and discount the figure accordingly. Stupid, but that's the way the business works. Even if you assume the 6.5 million worldwide sales figures is exaggerated by a factor of three, that's hugely impressive -- an SF novel that sells 10,000 hardcover and 50,000 paperback in the US is doing really well (and you can triple that figure to get an estimate of the worldwide sales).
This is the man who coined the term "cyberspace"--first in "Johnny Mnemonic" in his 1982 Burning Chrome collection and popularized in Neuromancer--and imagined the representation of information as virtual/geographic landscapes. All of it pounded out using a manual typewriter. This 15-year-old interview may give you some sense of why Gibson's novel will probably matter more than any cultural artifact you or I will ever create.
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You're absolutely right, a particular 1946 short story worth mentioning (and reading!) is Murray Leinster's "A Logic Named Joe" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Logic_Named_Joe
And don't forget Philp K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", where people communed with animal spirits in a virtual world, and the lines between religion, mind, and reality became increasingly blurred. I highly recommend it to people who only ever say "Blade Runner" and have no idea of the very different story that it was connected with. Neuromancer was wonderful, and compelling, and intriguing. But it was nearly "Megabytes and sorcery" in the kind of magical spellcasting by mystical, incomprehensible beings who had to be channeled, rather than having to actually master definable rules about reality that is core to a lot of hard science fiction. I'm afraid that we're seeing a lot of stories on Slashdot lately that are "look, I just got to my sophomore year and read this cool story! I bet it's completely new!" And a bunch of us older, more soldering iron burned geeks are laughing, and hopefully remembering when we were so excited. Let's be nice to the youngsters, and help them see where this stuff really came from.
I read Neuromancer and Pattern Recognition on similar advice. I disliked both, but probably for very different reasons. (I also read his collaboration with Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine, and though I won't say I disliked it, I also wasn't impressed by it; I simply didn't feel strongly about it either way.)
My problem with William Gibson is an impression I get from him: That he is a popular-press reporter, trying desperately to be "hip" and "relevant," and writing about subjects about which he knows rather little. As I read his work, I feel assaulted by cultural references which do nothing to advance the plot or set to mood; it's all just so much 'name-dropping' on Gibson's part.
Basically, they read to me like they're intended neither to enlighten nor to entertain, but only to make a name for William Gibson as a guy who "gets it."
You may be surprised to hear this in the next sentence, but I love a lot of Neal Stephenson's work -- particularly Cryptonomicon and The Diamond Age. Now, that man's ego definitely fills his writing. But he knows what he's talking about, and you get the feeling that he's writing the story that he wants to write and not the story that he thinks will use the right buzzwords to generate attention.
(I cannot stand his Baroque Cycle though. I'm thinking he jumped the shark with Quicksilver.)
I don't know if this has been the most coherent post. I find it hard to articulate the feeling I get when I read Gibson's stuff that turns me off to him. But it's there, and every time I forget that I don't like Gibson's writing and I pick up one of his books on someone's advice, I am annoyed and disappointed.
[[NOTICE: THIS IS NOT FLAMEBAIT--at least it isn't meant to be]]
Actually, about all I remember about this novel other than the space station is that it was incredibly boring all the way to the even more boring space station sequence at the end: Gee, let's describe a trip on a miniature railroad in even more detail than Zelazny's descriptions of hellrides. Yes, it may have been prescient. But could it not have been readable too? Sorry, but I grew up reading Asimov, and enjoyed it, though he wasn't half as prescient. SF is escapist fiction with a little futuristic science thrown in. It's not supposed to be Scientific American Time Travel Edition. Oh well, mod me down if you wish.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
> That he is a popular-press reporter, trying desperately to be "hip" and "relevant," and writing about subjects about which he knows rather little.
> You may be surprised to hear this in the next sentence, but I love a lot of Neal Stephenson's work [...]
Not so much. While they work with similar themes, I think their writing style is quite different.
William Gibson is much more terse and relies on cultural references ('name-dropping') for setting the scene. The story evolves more around such scene descriptions, than a particular sequence of actions.
As you seem to find those scene descriptions rather pretentious, it is hardly surprising, that you dislike his works. But quite frankly, I like sentences with such references like:
In my opinion, Neal Stephenson writes more approachable. I feel more involved. His writing seems to me less constructed and more flowing. But to me it also seems his down-side: The plot seems a bit unplanned, getting out of hand, the ending somewhat hurried.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
Everybody keeps neglecting his use of derms to deliver drugs. Yet, the first "patch" I saw widely in use was the anti-smoking patches in the mid-90's.
Interestingly, I did recently come across it as a delivery mechanism for illegal psychedelic drugs also - definitely the first time I've seen that. The "sales pitch" for it was that it'd give you a longer trip, since it absorbs more slowly in to the system. Basically it's (purported to be) about 4 trips worth of LSD, but given at a rate of approximately 1 per 4 hours, so you'd come up at a pretty slow rate, but eventually reach the intensity of about one and a half trips, and then remain at that state for close to a day and a half before it finally wears off (unlike a traditional trip that might be gone in 6 to 8 hours or so). They physically appear to be based on a nicotine patch as far as I can tell.
Needless to say, I bought 3. They're still sitting in a drawer at home (appropriately protected from moisture of course), since I'm waiting for the right weekend to have it along with a couple of friends, and we haven't yet found a weekend where we're all free (too much work and other social life getting in the way!).
(in case they turn out to be complete duds, I've got some regular tabs as well, so it'll only mean I'm out of pocket 90 euro for the three - no big loss)
I'll probably be posting my experience of it on Erowid or elsewhere at some point within the coming months.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
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