What does /lit/ think of Neuromancer by William Gibson?
>>23808951It's very good.
>>23808951The scene that always stuck with me the most was the description of the rich guys room, where he needs to find escape with IV drugs.
>>23808951Terrible, but objectively important birth of a genre, even if other authors had covered the area first.His later books are so much better.
>>23808951it's comfy
For me it's Mona Lisa Overdrive
>>23808951Spawned a whole movement, ergo genius
>>23808951I read it this year. I think Gibson is a master talent.Look at the scene where Linda Lee gets smoked.Probably my favorite moment in the entire book.Most of the story is this fast paced, explicitly told prose styling and he fearlessly slips into this deep third, fuck holding your hand, let the confusion wash over you moment, allowing you to experience this event with case.Only after the situation has played out and you re-read the section in hindsight can you really break down the exactness of what happened, like re-living a traumatic moment.IDK though. bready good book.
>>23808951Turkish sequence is incoherent because the narrator is high.Fokker vs SPaD is a better text.Burning Chrome is a better text.
>>23808951Terribly written and his lack of understanding of technology meant it felt like fantasy more than sci fi. Virtual Light he actually had editors and a more realistic understanding of technoligical development, but it was mid.
maybe im just dumb. but i found the sections where he goes into cyberspace to be completely incoherent. i am simply unable to picture what is actually happening
>>23808951this shit is extremely cinematic, reads like a movie script. shame it's too outdated to be adapted, hell it was already outdated back when blade runner released.
>>23809558Gibson is an interesting writer because his style takes after people like Burroughs, Ballard and Pynchon but his plots and themes are firmly within the sci-fi milieu. Gibson likes to force the reader to parse what is actually going on when his narrators 'neutrally' describe the gizmos characters come across as a scientist would, for instance.
I like it
>>23809305>his lack of understanding of technology meant it felt like fantasy more than sci fihard agree. even Snow Crash was far more prescient than anything Gibson did, with Neuromancer being the most fanciful. I hesitate to call it sci fi at all.
>>23808951The heist portions of the book are some of the best in pulp literature, and the scenes in cyberspace are inaccurate to actual computing but predicted the feeling of the modern Internet.>>23809305>>23809781Snow Crash is more accurate, but the satirical humor is outdated (though parody suffers a lot from this). I liked Seveneves much more, even with the annoying heroic Musk stand in,the autistic descriptions of tech, and the half finished epilogue.
>>23808951Gibsons abridged reading of the book gives you an idea of how he wanted it to be read. I generally like the book and prefer the fast paced sections. I think the prose can be a tad clumsy sometimes. When you look back on it after consuming the media that it generated it feels slightly outdated or "cliche." But that's what happens when you're a trail blazer.
>>23808951It's still the best in it's genre, imo. (If we're looking at the trilogy as a whole.)
>>23808951I liked it, somehow easier and worse to read than clockwork orange. I felt the ending wasn't executed properly but the rest was interesting. Nice sex scenes.
>near future>USA has fallen>Soviet Union still stands every time. why are writers like this?
>>23809038Can it be read as a standalone?
>>23811099Because le west is le decadent!!!!
>>23808951It's like watching an old movie that has been lifted from and adapted a million times so it appears to be mundane when in fact it is the original and the rest are derivative. Still a good read.>>23808992indeedUnrelated: I want to murder the fuckers that created the webp format and remove their bloodlines from society.
>>23811709NTA but it would be better if you read Neuromancer and Count Zero first.
>>23811884>Unrelated: I want to murder the fuckers that created the webp format and remove their bloodlines from society.Same bro, same. I would help you.
>>23811099Because with the failure in Vietnam, it reinforced the idea among """"intellectuals"""" that communist revolution was inevitably, and unstoppable, despite having been repelled mere 20 years earlier in South Korea, successfully. I think Heinlein actually had a few future scenarios where the USSR was collapsed.
>>23812142>repelledThey got btfo in Korea and only held on to South Korea after threatening to nuke China. Retard.
>>23808951It's cool. The prose is fucked and tech descriptions are agressively nonsensical, but it's all part of the charm. Anons above talking about Mona Lisa Overdrive and Burning Chrome and the like being "better texts" are technicallyt not wrong, but Neuromancer stands out massively for being one of those masterpieces that actualy benefit from their flaws.
>>23808951pulp slop that gets bodied by literally anything PKD put out. and PKD is not even that good a writer. neuromancer is peak reddit
>>23808992>>His later books are so much better.I have the exact opposite opinion.Neuromancer feels authentic and effortless. Afterwards it feels like Gibson is doing an impression of himself, it's stilted and forced somehow.
>>23811099>Soviet Union still standsneed a cite for this afaik the limited nuclear war brought down both
>>23813798>Afterwards it feels like Gibson is doing an impression of himself, it's stilted and forced somehow.This tbph. Also the Turing police did nothing wrong and Case and his pals should have been thrown out an airlock. Except Riviera who was a pretty cool guy
>>23811099Jewish power fantasies, integrated.
>>23813798That is interesting. The reason I think the sequels are better is that I think Gibson is great at building tension, but shit at payoffs. I felt Neuromancer was looking for a place do die in the last 80 pages. Whereas he fixed that issue in the sequels simply by not having a third act altogether. They just end in the first lull of excitement after the finale. Niven has similar issue in Ringworld.His writing was definitely a lot more punky in Neuromancer, which I didn't appreciate, but I can't complaint considering the genre. Authentic might actually be the word.
>>23808951i like it, Nick Land got a career out of milking it
>>23808951took me years to realize neuromancer was the AI, not the incel with the computer in his head
its good except the parts with the jamaicans doing spaceship maintenance and predicting the future
>>23808951I think Gibson admitting he knew little about technology when writing adds a certain level of creativity and freedom only someone utterly unaware of how hardware/software work could employ in a story heavily featuring both elements.
>>23814443
is gibson better than neal stephenson?i bought snowcrash and made it about halfway through the first chapter before i bailed.
>>23814948he was right
>>23815108Was he? We don't have anywhere near the cybernetics, general ai, or mundane vr use.
>>23808951I found it quite hard to follow in places, the dialogue in particular felt jumpy. But all in all it's pretty neat and I'm glad to have read it.
>>23808951I can't tell if there's something wrong with me but I couldn't follow half of the descriptions in this book, and they come so frequently and so haphazardly that after a while I pretty much just glossed over everything that seemed weird and assumed something Blade Runner-y was happening The broad strokes were fine but every time Gibson tried to describe a cybernetic device or a new location, I felt like I was losing it
>>23815803Not OP but I agree with this. His descriptions could be better.
it rules.
>>23808951The worst part is the space jamacians
the first several dozen pages of this book are amazing. just insanely good worldbuilding and atmosphere. gibson is more talented as a worldbuilder than a story writer
>>23808951Very pretty writing and S tier atmosphere. But heavily flawed, maybe charmingly so.
>>23814991God damn you answer this
>>23808951I learned the other day that Neal Stephenson uses Emacs, it made me want to read him. If only for the indication of research effort, and a love for technology>“I use emacs, which might be thought of as a thermonuclear word processor.”>― Neal Stephenson, In the Beginning...Was the Command Line
I read one page of a book and I can't recall if it was Gibson or Stevenson.. I seem to recall it was like, dudes in a military Jeep speeding towards somewhere.. or something
>>23809283>the scene where Linda Lee gets smokedDamn right. I think I last read the book like 15 years ago and that scene still comes back to me.Genuinely inspired, especially in the context of how everything else is written.
>>23815152sitting on a screen quietly for 8 hours doesn't make for good action, just like you don't write detective novels about scavenging trash and waiting in a car for 10 hours
>>23813763Sorry to say so my man but unironically kinda filtered desu senpai
>>23814402Moreso milking the terminator
>>23816282That could be Stephenson's Cryptonomicon.
>>23815152>We don't have anywhere near the cybernetics, general ai, or mundane vr useThe book is set roughly 2040s-2060s
>>23808951Love some Billy G. He's the only guy to ever make the English Lit undergrad tactic of "get high and walk around the city and then write down what you see" work. Also recommend Idoru.
>>23816470Not sure what you mean, Gibson himself he didn't know what bandwidth was. And we don't have enough for the digital things in the book.But yeah, it is a weird thing to get hung up on in a sci fi novel. Like saying light speed is impossible in a star wars novel.
>>23817183True, but I'd still question that timeline. Sci Fi is ultimately a hopeful genre, we expect things sooner than possible. But it is a trivial thing to get upset over.
>>23817222i mean that the mechanics of hacking are boring, unless you have the sufficient technical knowledge to do the hacking and follow along with the technical challenges to estimulate your mind, but at that point you'll just be reading technical books, not books about hacking
>>23816777midwit
>>23815803You were only losing it because Gibson can't write and his bad writing obscured his almost tenuous grasp of the concepts he was attempting to illustrate.
his guitars are better than his books
>>23817259Ah I get what you mean... and, I wouldn't hate that. Or maybe I would. Ready Player One's exposition was tortuous.
imagine being a /lit/ard lmaogetting filtered by the bible of the 21st century
>>23809305>Does understand technology that doesn't exist yetSci-FI is essentially fantasy but instead of it just works it's based on "They found out a way of this working and here is the possibilities"
>>23809106Spawning a movement doesn't make you a genius.
>>23818698lol nah. ur the exact kind of pseud who would think gibson was "prophetic" kek
>>23816254Stephenson is reddit incarnate. Gibson, at least in his early work, is miles better.
