Neuromancer: 25 Years Later

INteresting, but then the editor's note at the end is fucking depressing.

a film of neuromancer directed by a music video director. With Hayden Christiansen (although actually, since Christiansen can't act, maybe it will fit Chase's blasé attitude just right lol).

cool, will read tomorrow

if it's not steampunk, i don't wanna know.

I think the decision to drop Chris Cunningham as producer for Neuromancer stands out as one of the stupidest hollywood decisions of the last decade.

Chris Cunningham apparantly bowed himself out of the production...

probably had good reasons for it.

Shit I keep hearing about this book and the movie on this forum but haven't checked it out. That article was fascinating though. Thanks for posting.

  On 8/18/2009 at 10:29 PM, BCM said:

if it's not steampunk, i don't wanna know.

Neuromancer is NOT steampunk. I don't get everybody saying it is. It shouldn't be.

Neuromancer==cyberpunk.

neuromancer is a good book that ends poorly

neuromancer has a great ending, fuck you lol

  On 8/19/2009 at 3:10 AM, Philip Glass said:

  On 8/18/2009 at 10:29 PM, BCM said:

if it's not steampunk, i don't wanna know.

 

 

Neuromancer is NOT steampunk. I don't get everybody saying it is. It shouldn't be.

he is probably being funny .. well that's hao i read it ....

+ should you boil it down to a movie ... never bothered reading the book -blocks out audible gasps- but skimmed the wiki spoiler -yeah i just don't care guys- and it seems like this thing needs a little more than a couple of hours to properly flesh out ..

Neuromancer needs to be made right or not at all. ! am disappointed that Chris Cunningham is not involved anymore.

i thought ! remembered talk years ago of Aphex Twin providing some assistance musically.... was that true?

As much as I loved reading Neuromancer, William Gibson is a gimmicky perverted bastard.

neural jacks are already here

you can play pong with your thoughts already without having to plug something in your skin

  On 11/4/2009 at 3:51 PM, Glass Plate said:

As much as I loved reading Neuromancer, William Gibson is a gimmicky perverted bastard.

What's so "gimmicky" and "perverted" about him?

  On 11/3/2009 at 2:22 AM, troon said:

Neuromancer needs to be made right or not at all. ! am disappointed that Chris Cunningham is not involved anymore.

i thought ! remembered talk years ago of Aphex Twin providing some assistance musically.... was that true?

 

 

isn't the main character's name "case"?

this is weird, i literally just finished reading this 2 days ago... can't say i thought it was that great. as i read it it felt so cliche and cheesy, yet of course this was the book that invented everything to be made cliche/cheesy; so i had to keep reminding myself of that. whilst it's still fresh in mind, here's some thoughts;

- the characters weren't fleshed out enough, they seemed too 'stock'. case wasn't an anti-hero for me because i didn't feel that strongly about him either way. he was a pussy, and molly was 2D. it was like he copped out of her backstory with that brief insight into some bleak darkside prostitution past.

- the dialogue was cack, i felt it was pushing too hard to be snappy/zippy/cool (jive-talk yo). i don't mind it being 'street' or full of slang, quite the opposite (as it's fun to learn book-specific lingo), but it detracted the story-telling in places, even with the authoritarian/AI characters (AI taking on the form of Finn, for example). oh, and some of the zionite stuff was plain cringe.

- sex scenes were poorly written; they were grotty, not dirty (the latter being good).

- IMAGERY; often sparse, basic, then jazzed up with flowery superfluous language which didn't do enough to actually conjure a coherant mental image. a lot of the time it was as if just the jist of a scene alongside a load of ambiguous metaphors was thought to suffice. the cyberspace descriptions were also pretty poor, not in depth enough. i think only the general cyberpunk/slum aesthetic was done well.

- not enough intrigue or insight into the universe/world. the Sprawl was written really well, but the general world the book inhabited was ambiguous. i'm not saying he should have explained the socio-political intricacies of a future civilisation, but given more easter eggs or nuggets to draw you in. in the words of the man himself (on escape from new york); "intrigued by the exchange in one of the opening scenes where the Warden says to Snake: 'You flew the Gullfire over Leningrad, didn't you?' It turns out to be just a throwaway line, but for a moment it worked like the best SF, where a casual reference can imply a lot."

was a really fun read though - thoroughly enjoyed. just a bit... disappointing. i think you have to had been from that time when internets/computers were starting to properly kick off - they were exciting and dangerous, maybe a bit badass (hax0r etc). i should probably go read the article.

  On 8/18/2009 at 7:40 PM, T35513R said:

For other Gibson fans out there, especially gamers, an interesting read.

oh, i also now know why you called yourself Tessier Ashpool, and my mate calls himself Wintermute.

  On 11/4/2009 at 7:14 PM, takeshi said:

  On 11/4/2009 at 3:51 PM, Glass Plate said:

As much as I loved reading Neuromancer, William Gibson is a gimmicky perverted bastard.

 

What's so "gimmicky" and "perverted" about him?

Well the gimmicky is the fact that he's been riding off the cyberpunk thing ever since and he DIDN'T invent it, it's just Neuromancer became the prolifierizer. Also, the perverted? I mean just look at the way he inputs women characters in most of his work, I always get a super pervy lonely/old man feel from it, it's really skeevy. Not to mention how he's obsessed with the "empowered" woman thing, yet he's being all lonely sexually frustrated man about it.

  On 11/4/2009 at 9:15 PM, idrn said:

  On 8/18/2009 at 7:40 PM, T35513R said:

For other Gibson fans out there, especially gamers, an interesting read.

 

oh, i also now know why you called yourself Tessier Ashpool, and my mate calls himself Wintermute.

  On 11/4/2009 at 10:39 PM, Glass Plate said:

  On 11/4/2009 at 7:14 PM, takeshi said:

  On 11/4/2009 at 3:51 PM, Glass Plate said:

As much as I loved reading Neuromancer, William Gibson is a gimmicky perverted bastard.

 

What's so "gimmicky" and "perverted" about him?

Well the gimmicky is the fact that he's been riding off the cyberpunk thing ever since and he DIDN'T invent it, it's just Neuromancer became the prolifierizer. Also, the perverted? I mean just look at the way he inputs women characters in most of his work, I always get a super pervy lonely/old man feel from it, it's really skeevy. Not to mention how he's obsessed with the "empowered" woman thing, yet he's being all lonely sexually frustrated man about it.

Hmm...I definitely don't get the "lonely sexually frustrated man" vibe from Gibson. I've read a lot of science fiction with the same superficial female character types recycled (read a little Robert Heinlein) but I can't say any from Gibson's works stood out as false or one-dimensional to me. For a well-rounded female character you should read Gibson's Bridge trilogy, his character "Chevette" is one of my favorites.

Also, the whole cyberpunk thing... He didn't coin the term, doesn't claim to have coined the term or invented the genre (the name of the genre had only been coined like a year before Neuromancer). He just wrote a novel that happened to capture the modern iteration of the genre. Any hyperbole used in conjunction with Gibson and cyberpunk seems like something you could probably attribute to his publishers. It's an easy way to sell books.

  On 11/4/2009 at 10:39 PM, Glass Plate said:

  On 11/4/2009 at 7:14 PM, takeshi said:

  On 11/4/2009 at 3:51 PM, Glass Plate said:

As much as I loved reading Neuromancer, William Gibson is a gimmicky perverted bastard.

 

What's so "gimmicky" and "perverted" about him?

Well the gimmicky is the fact that he's been riding off the cyberpunk thing ever since and he DIDN'T invent it, it's just Neuromancer became the prolifierizer. Also, the perverted? I mean just look at the way he inputs women characters in most of his work, I always get a super pervy lonely/old man feel from it, it's really skeevy. Not to mention how he's obsessed with the "empowered" woman thing, yet he's being all lonely sexually frustrated man about it.

Have you read Pattern Recognition? I gave a copy to my mom and sister, and they both loved it.

lol I was mostly basing this off of Neuromancer + the 2 episodes of xfiles he wrote.

Pattern Machine is excellent near-future SF. And yes his lead character is a very strong female indeed.

YOu can't judge Gibson as a writer off Neuromancer. That was his first full length book (almost a novella really) and it was his ideas that stood out. The Bridge Trilogy is a much more developed effort.

I hope he has something new coming out soon. I also hope that Neil "I like to write giant works that are ponderous but take pleasure in language" Stephenson does something like The Diamond Age again.