Review: Neuromancer

Neuromancer by William Gibson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"A pair of predatory-looking Christian Scientists were edging toward a trio of young office techs who wore idealized holographic vaginas on their wrists, wet pink glittering under the harsh lighting."

This is one of those stories which I simply must admit is actually quite good even though I personally didn't enjoy it. I didn't like any of the characters at all and the plot was entirely uninteresting to me. However the scifi in this world is just marvellous, especially since this story preceded any global network of digital information, even moreso because this was Gibson's writing debut.

It's not worth me trying to explain what happens herein. I didn't really get it all the time and being an established classic there are plenty of folks who have already written a better review for it than I ever could. Go read those instead.

To illustrate my point, I can honestly tell you that I thought the character "Case" was a woman for at least Part One and probably some of Part Two. Case later turned out to be a man, although given the nature of digital identities I wasn't sure if this change was a feature of the story or of my not reading closely enough. Probably the latter.

I had read 'Burning Chrome', a collection of short stories set in this cyberpunk world which seemed very much more preachy in tone to me, before starting 'Neuromancer' . This story is even more cram packed with sex and drugs, (and heads up for those with fragile sensitivities, the language meter revs all the way up to the c bomb), but the writing seemed to contain less judgement and I found it easier to read as a result.

From a recent scifi book club discussion I had realised before reading 'Neuromancer' that this is a book that seems to do that fabulous audience split. Ya love it or ya hate it, apparently.

Some readers criticise that it didn't accurately predict some details of the cyber-future we currently live in and the prose, which includes a lot of Rasta slang can be clunky and tough to read. While the lovers hold this up as the true cyberpunk herald and can't get enough of this fabulously detailed, gritty future.

Well goddamn if I don't agree with some of all of that. I don't care about details that didn't play out in the real world because I think that it's an amazing thing to have forseen anything at all about the power of digital information networks, let alone to have nailed some portion of it. I did hate the lingo, but it read well enough to follow and I appreciate the effort that went into developing the settings.

So, to conclude this completely inane review... for me this was an excellent conceptual book with a lackluster storyline. To be honest, I don't think I will ever read it again, but some part of my brain knows that I should come back to give it another go one day. Anyway, I'll take a quick break to read something lighter and then I'll continue with this trilogy.

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