Neuromancer (Book Club)
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Tagged: book club, cyberpunk, gibson, Neuromancer, sci-fi, science fiction, william
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Max.
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March 12, 2013 at 5:38 pm #29803
Galdap
ParticipantLove, love, love this book. I’m a huge fan of the cyberpunk genre and this book does an excellent job of still being entertaining despite being slightly dated due to the fact that it was released in 1984. Much of the tech described is still really original and obscure so you don’t really feel like it was trying to be predictive so much as it was just being it’s own world, not necessarily a near future imagining. The level of details in the description of the world in which this takes place is amazingly intricate. I love writers like this that really allow me to visualize the environment not only in a visual sense but also being able to imagine the way it smells and feels almost. It is kind of difficult to get into and on my first read through I lost interest a chapter or two in but once I took the time to restart it and read it again I really dove headlong into it and enjoyed it way more. I’m reading it again to refresh my memory since it’s been a few years but it is a worthy read. Enjoy! Kindle Edition for $7.99
March 13, 2013 at 9:29 pm #29859Maraun
ParticipantI remember reading this book back in college about 8 years ago. It was fantastic. It was part of a research project examining influences for the creation of The Matrix series. Unfortunately I really only remember the seedy bars at the beginning, the chick with the lenses implanted over her eyes, and his massive hacking of the ‘ICE’. I’ve lost my original copy, but should track another one down. I’d suggest this for a review by the Nerdy Show Book Club.
Sailin' about port to port, Smokin' 'em out fort by fort,
Stealin' their loot ton by ton, Takin' their ships one by one.March 13, 2013 at 9:30 pm #29860Maraun
ParticipantThat being said, I need to finish the Dune series first. On ‘Children of Dune’ now. Can’t remember if that’s the 3rd or 4th book in the series, but I’m about 100 pages away from the next.
Sailin' about port to port, Smokin' 'em out fort by fort,
Stealin' their loot ton by ton, Takin' their ships one by one.March 13, 2013 at 11:11 pm #29866Max
ParticipantSpace Jamaicans are the best idea in science fiction.
March 17, 2013 at 8:40 am #29980Max
ParticipantJust got around to listening to the latest book club episode. If anyone wants to play that Neuromancer adventure game, it is available on abandonia.com. I tried it briefly, it was not easy. Also, the closest we ever got to a live action Neuromancer film was not Hackers, it was in fact Johnny Mnemonic, which is based off of the short story about how Molly Millions ends up being a street samurai in the first place. There has been talk of a big budget adaptation since last year or so, with Liam Neesom And Mark Wahlberg attached to it. Here is some alleged concept art: http://io9.com/5932374/first-concept-art-for-the-neuromancer-movie
March 17, 2013 at 10:14 pm #30009Max
ParticipantHere is some Neuromancer fan art I did of Molly Millions the street samurai. It was on the old forum in the drawing thread, but I don’t think it’s been posted over here yet. This was mostly an exercise in vector art, that whole thing is from Illustrator:
March 17, 2013 at 10:17 pm #30010Galdap
ParticipantI really like the style of that, particularly like the circuitry on her neck and chest.
March 20, 2013 at 10:39 am #30061zombiepops
ParticipantI just finished listening to the last book club episode, and I got excited when I heard this was going to be the next book for the book club. I’ve loved Gibson since I first read Neuromancer in high school, in 92 I think. He predicted so much of what the internet would become without ever really understanding the technology behind it. I think Neuromancer was once of the first bits of literature I’d read with an antihero, and with such a strong noir influence, and I fell in love with the whole setting, and cyberpunk as a genre from there.
I’d just reread my trade of Darkminds (a neat cyberpunk crime noir comic put out by Image/Dreamwave in the early 2000s) and that made me want to reread Neuromancer. The book club is going to be the perfect excuse to do so.
I'm brainy for Zombiepops
May 13, 2013 at 8:22 pm #31273MuckRaker
ParticipantIt’s one of those books that drops you in the middle of everything with the bare minimum of explanation or exposition. In that sense, I could see it being quite difficult for a lot of general public readers to get into. If you’re into the genre, the hook will be enough to keep you reading, but if not the crime drama might be enough to keep you following until you can start to understand what’s going on. As I near the end, I am actually also looking forward to reading it again and seeing what I can pick up in the beginning that didn’t seem to make sense at the time.
Courage TFM
May 18, 2013 at 11:02 am #31343Galdap
Participant@muckraker I totally agree. The way that it drops you into the story without any prior knowledge and just expects you to learn the lingo seems like it could be a barrier for a general audience. In a sense I appreciate that he didn’t really cater to that demographic though. Even though I felt lost at first it gave me a sense of exclusivity to an extent, which is kind of cool. I’ve read the book again since finishing it for this book club and I feel like I pick up different things each time. It takes a lot for me to want to watch or read something again and this book is one of the few that I’ve found really rewarding after a second reading.
May 18, 2013 at 11:47 am #31344Trench
KeymasterHave to agree with you two, since this was really the first time I’ve delved into cyberpunk at all I kinda felt like I got dropped off in a strange city with no clue as to where I was. I’ve been meaning to read it a second time, since I powered through it in about 4 1/2 hours, but I’ve been swamped with other things.
Nerdy Show's Nefarious Community Manager & Summoner of Eldritch Horrors from Cyberspace
May 18, 2013 at 2:17 pm #31347Galdap
ParticipantI really enjoyed that aspect of it though. It is a pet peeve of mine when authors do a lot of hand holding and walk you through every little bit of the story without allowing you the freedom to kind of make it your own. I’m sure each person has a different idea of how the whole interface works in their head since the author offers no preconceived notions of how it all works or looks. However, it isn’t nearly as unapproachable as something like the Algebraist which I’ve started reading now and find incredibly difficult to get into as much as I want to like it.
May 20, 2013 at 12:06 am #31396MuckRaker
ParticipantOverall, I have to say I enjoyed the book. Definitely ahead of its time, it often reads like it was written in the mid-90’s for the concepts involved, though there are some notable anachronisms that can disrupt suspension of disbelief if they bother you. Gibson seems oddly prescient for some of the concepts involved, while others seem, today, outright outlandish. I do like when authors, within reason, trust their readers to be smart enough to figure things out without a great deal of exposition, especially at the onset, like this book. Just as a surface read, accepting the story as it goes, it is pretty good. When you take time to ponder on it, though, and think about some of the concepts and their associated implications, you get some good fridge logic/horror moments out of it. Copies of consciousness, for instance, and super-AI issues brings to memory some parallel concepts as “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”
As an aside, the Turing Police drew a lot of fascination from me, and I started wondering what a book about them, from their point of view, would be like.
I’ve started a re-read, just to see what pops that I didn’t understand from being dropped into the middle last time.
Courage TFM
January 3, 2014 at 12:40 am #36185Cat
KeymasterTimothy Leary, David Byrne, William Burroughs, and Grace Jones… the Neuromancer game plot thickens:
http://www.openculture.com/2013/11/timothy-leary-plans-a-neuromancer-video-game.html
January 3, 2014 at 1:07 am #36186 -
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