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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.
160 million sounds like.... a lot.
BBC tells me Da Vinci code sold 30 million (back in 2006). Wikipedia refers me to this article from 2006 which says Neuromancer sold around 6.5 million copies - which seems a bit more believable.
When stating the specifications of future computers, never, ever use real units such as "megabytes", because whatever number you use, it will be hopelessly wrong within a few years.
The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
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.
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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I read just about all of Gibson's novels the week they came out, and they were super cool... but they have had about zero predictive power.
The word "cyberspace" almost always means that the person using it has no idea what they're talking about. Oh, there are exceptions, but the people who are most taken by Gibson's vision are sorely lacking in insight.
The representation of information as landscapes has been a repeated dead end.
Not believing in the predictive power of Gibson's novels doesn't mean I don't consider them important, it just means I'm aware that they're fiction.
Lord of the Rings is a great cultural artifact without having people yammering on about Ringwraiths being real.
This looks like something I ought to buy.
If you want to follow the spirit of the book, find a copy of the text illegally on-line and download it to your phone!
Also, this is my first first post ever!
Welcome!
First line, oft quoted: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel" When Billy wrote that that would have been grey, but today it's bright blue.
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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.
Great sci-fi is rarely about the technology. Neuromancer was first and foremost a great cyberpunk story. The technology that the main character Case used was secondary to who Case was - a guy from the underbelly of society who lived by his own brand of ethics and was being manipulated by evil-doers. The technoworld in which he lived is simply an interesting setting - like Sam Spade's San Francisco.
It's true that he doesn't have any mobile phones and seems to prefer implants, but he had a lot of those that do similar functions to a phone. E.g., Molly has some sort of implant that gives the time, and radio functions and then Case monitors her position through his cyberspace rig (more than just her position, her whole sensory apparatus), of which a video conferencing phone might be considered a clumsy version. Also, throughout the book, one sees people who insert some sort of chip called a "microsoft" into a jack behind their ear that give them some extra knowledge, or some enhancement. When those Bluetooth headsets became popular and people just started wearing them around like they were an item of clothing, it reminded me precisely of those "microsofts" in Neuromancer, or whatever they were called.
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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"
Try reading it in poor translation. I just finished reading it in Spanish, and at some points I had to translate the Spanish to English, word for word, to work out what it meant.
Some slashdotter, in some previous thread about Stephenson uttered the excellent words "Neal Stephenson doesn't do endings. At some point, he just declares victory and stops writing." (admittedly, I'm not sure I got the quote entirely right - it's been several years). It was so spot on that the words "declare victory and stop..." has become a catch phrase at my work for whenever we think a task won't benefit much from having more hours assigned to it. I think it describes most of his books quite well.
That said, his books are (apart from lack of endings) generally very good, and he might very well be my favorite author...
May we live long and die out
But then, has there been anything in science lately that warrants any kind of gee-whiz fiction based on it?
I might suggest you have a look at pretty much anything written by Greg Bear (Blood Music, Darwin's Radio, Eon et.al - see Wikipedia on Greg Bear). I'm not sure if 10 or so year old stuff fits your criteria for "new", but there is no question that this is real science fiction, based on extrapolations of scientific discoveries - not D&D with ray guns (not that there's anything wrong with that). From your post I think you might like him.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
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.
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