Apple Orders 'Neuromancer' Series | Hacker News Reader

Apple Orders 'Neuromancer' Series

variety.com

82 pointsortusdux91 comments

While I want to be really excited about this, I am already terrified they'll give it a 'Foundation' treatment. E.g. take a great book, and then sort of re-write it while re-using some names and elements from the original. Or the Sho-Gun treatment, where you take another great book, and turn it into visually beautiful, but soulless pseudo-reproduction of the book that lacks exactly the depth that made the book great.

So please Apple, give it a Lord of the Rings treatment. Or even Hobbit. Pretty please!

It makes me so so happy to hear someone else complain about what they've done with Foundation. Considering the ratings (both from critics and audiences) I've seen, I was starting to question if I actually read Foundation or something else because the show is NOTHING like the books. It's not all bad per se, but just give it another name because they have nothing in common.

I’ve read 5 of the books, I’m fine with the adaptation. The books all but make it impossible to have continuity of characters in any real way, which would make for a weird show, IMO. This is fundamentally different than LOTR which does have continuity (and even the hobbit), so I feel like that explains the character smearing (Gaal, Hari, Cletus) and time compression.

The original books are great but honestly the characters aren’t even in the books long enough to really develop them beyond the crises at hand, it’s more like a collection of short stories (and I love short stories, but beyond Black Mirror I can’t think of any other sort of short stories series I like much).

> The original books are great but honestly the characters aren’t even in the books long enough to really develop them beyond the crises at hand, it’s more like a collection of short stories

The original three Foundation books are collections of short stories that Asimov originally wrote for magazines.

I can’t think of any other sort of short stories series I like much

Not even the original The Twilight Zone (which Black Mirror basically is a copy of except with cell phones and social media)?

Ah yeah, I did love twilight zone. I was thinking more contemporary though. I tried to watch a few, like this PKD series on amazon, Oats studios things, some others.

I'm with you here. I read the books so long ago I barely remember them, and I'm not that fond of Asimov as writer. But I've enjoyed the series so far.

Oh man, I would've loved an anthology version of Foundation. Each episode covering one of Asimov's airtight Foundation vignettes. Or, maybe, just don't try to adapt things that don't work for TV? There's plenty of other incredible stuff waiting to be written. Someone needs to hurry up and film Hyperion, it would be hard but more doable than Foundation.

Bradley Cooper is behind Hyperion, which he is supposedly an avid fan of and has been seeking to adapt since the 2010s. Hopefully with the success of Dune: Part Two and him wrapping up work with Maestro he can buckle down and finally make it.

Yes, Hyperion could be an amazing adaptation. So many of these execs making strange decisions when good shows are already written for them to be adapted.

Roald Dahl short stories are very fun, purposefully dark humor in several.

The books are a full of interesting ideas but as written would be terrible for television. You should just think of the TV show as an unrelated science fiction show which happens to share a name and a few plot elements.

Yeah, sometimes you can just accept the differences and enjoy both. Like "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" vs. "Blade Runner".

Honestly I'm not sure it would be terrible for television; I'm just not sure they tried. I think it would be possible to convey the grand arc of history, retain the pre-recorded nature of the Vault, show the different approaches and cultural styles in each era. The dumbest approach would just be to have one mini-series per crisis, and I think even that could work. They don't need to have the same characters throughout the whole thing.

Sometimes the adaptations are better, or more approachable. Blade Runner, Game of Thrones, Man in the High Castle, I Am Legend spring to mind.

I tried reading Foundation when I was younger and could not get into it. I think they've done a pretty good job with the Apple Series.

I like the show but it is not like the books at all.

I was pretty bitterly disappointed until I realized I could just see the show as inspired by the books. The same way I’ve written stories. I just had the respect to file the serial numbers off in editing.

> So please Apple, give it a Lord of the Rings treatment. Or even Hobbit. Pretty please!

The hobbit, imo, was the harbinger of high budget films rewritten for modern audiences into unrecognizable disasters.

I would be okay if they gave it the Peripheral treatment, which is to say it doesn't need to be 100% like the book. It would be better if Case's ono-sendai rig was something a little more modern than the original vision of essentially an Atari ST. It would be hilarious as hell if Wintermute started hallucinating like a GPT. The vision of Chiba City has been done a million times over; what if, instead of trying to just remake the street scenes of Blade Runner, we got something completely different? I'd be okay with that.

Shōgun just came out and is getting unanimous rave reviews. What don't you like about it?

I read the book three times, saw the original 1980 series twice, and saw the first ep. of the new series last night. I was impressed.

It all depends on the show runners. Looking at production studios is not a great metric for quality. It all depends on who is writing it and why.

Having just finished The Three Body Problem series, I am having similar feelings about Netflix's treatment of it.

Did you watch https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Body ? It’s available on Amazon prime.

It is also available on Youtube on Tencent's channel. I'd assume the resolution may be higher on Amazon, but for watching on a phone screen the Youtube video was certainly good enough for me.

The Netflix series doesn't premiere until next month. The Chinese show produced by Tencent was not made by Netflix.

Had me with LotR, lost me on The Hobbit

Same with Silo. They changed it in unnecessary and outright stupid ways. I‘m on team "book is way better".

I've watched the series, but never read the books. How do they differ?

I love Neuromancer, but I feel like it's much more about the vibes than the plot per se. If you've got a good visual design and don't mess with the main characters and setting, it'll probably be good.

I mean I like the Space Rastafarians, but I'm not sure they're essential.

We monitor many frequencies. We listen always. Came a voice, out of the babel of tongues, speaking to us. It played us a mighty dub.

> I mean I like the Space Rastafarians, but I'm not sure they're essential.

It'd be a shame to lose one of the best stealth puns I've ever seen in literature.

Please elaborate ... As much as I loved the book, I don't really want to read that ending again.

They got so high that they ended up in space.

That's the current playbook. Take incredible IP, throw production values at it, the script is just a map to get from marketing image to marketing image.

>I am already terrified they'll give it a 'Foundation' treatment.

What does your heart tell you?

yea the whole Foundation thing makes me nervous about this!

I didn't love Peripheral (although that was Amazon). I disliked Foundation. I disliked WOT, and Amazon LOTR. I don't think I will watch this.

I would consider all of Gibson's books as must reads, if anyone is interested my reading order is: 1. Pattern Recognition 2. Neuromancer 3. Burning Chrome 4. rest of Nueromancer trilogy 5. rest of Blue ant 6. and then take your pick on the last 2 trilogies (Jackpot #3 is not out yet though)

Neuromancer is one of the coolest depictions of the "metaverse" I've ever read, one that still inspires me to think about today!

Interesting, when I was a teen I read all of his pre-2000 fiction within a period of 6 months maybe?

Neuromancer, Count Zero, Burning Chrome, Mona Lisa Overdrive, The Difference Engine. Virtual Light, Johnny Mnemonic, Idoru.

After that I lost my taste for it almost completely. The novelty factor wore off. I keep meaning to re-read again someday to check if I still feel the same way.

Yeah, I read pretty much the same stuff, then found I really didn't like his newer work anymore.

I actually didn't finish The Peripheral, and I mostly do finish things I start. Maybe I'll have a look at the older stuff again one day too.

I highly recommend Blue Ant trilogy! Its very different though

So you hate most big budget tv lol, like i liked all 4 of those lol

The "if its not like the book it sucks" crowd is literally making TV so difficult to get honest reviews of shows.... as shows and not as "it's not my imagination come to life"

I mean, with the exception of Peripheral, I think my opinion of those shows is common regardless of whether the viewer read the books first.

WOT was insulting.

Apple Originals have been pretty good with the scifi. I found Silo, For All Mankind, Monarch, Severance, Hello Tomorrow and See to be some of the best scifi being produced. So I feel like this might be in good hands.

I also personally enjoy Foundation, but I know that take is a bit more controversial.

I wonder why Apple seems to be having far better luck with consistent quality than Netflix, who just laid another egg with their Avatar: The Last Airbender adaptation. You'd think Netflix would have better connections and much more experience given their longer history and dominant status in the field. What is Apple doing that Netflix isn't?

Apple doesn't as desperately need a big stable of first-party content. They've other revenue streams, they're not losing a bunch of third-party content, and I suspect most of their subs come in via Apple One (Apple Music, iCloud, etc.) package deals rather than direct.

Maybe giving the creators more rein and budget, because they’re a cash-rich underdog. Netflix isn’t that now.

The Avatar creators got so frustrated with Netflix they left a year or two ago.

I think Apple gives a lot more free rein to its creators. For the Dr. Dre biopic they let it be made and then shelved it.

Another notable exception was they allegedly wouldn’t let Jon Stewart talk about China.

Haven't seen all of Silo yet, but it seems pretty good. Monarch needed more kaiju, but I enjoyed it anyway.

Silo was far too predictable and slow for my taste. Ending in full was predicted correctly in episode 2 (which was a bit infuriating that that's all it was culminating towards)...

The acting was good, the cinematography and sets, and costumes too: but not worth the watch, as it says nothing original, new, or interesting. It falls into 'content' for me, something rehashed to make money first and tell a story second. To each their own.

It was based on a book... and that kind of ending (the finickiness of details) works far better in a literary setting, in a film the connections seem arbitrary and ad hoc.

Check out Extrapolations, even if it's talky and at times preachy.

The problem with Extrapolations is that it's really a watch a single time series. Despite how good it was, I don't think I could sit through that twice.

I'm enjoying the hell out of the Foundation series, and the first couple episodes of Shogun have been great. I'll probably love Neuromancer as well. The trick to enjoying film/TV adaptations of books is to never read the books beforehand.

Where's Joe Cornish's Snow Crash adaptation, Paramount?!?

Kind of cautious considering Apple's adaption of Asimov's Foundation.

"Soon to be a major motion picture by Cabana Boy Productions"

Anyone else remember this from the computer magazine ads from the Necromancer C64 game?

Some irony here in Apple (wealthiest corporation in history and also a gigantic tech company) being involved in adapting the quintessential cyberpunk novel considering the themes the cyberpunk genre revolve around.

But I guess you could say the irony is perhaps very fitting. Cyberpunk indeed

The main irony I find is that '80s cyberpunk envisioned net tech to be the province of outlaws and daredevil dreamers, with the antagonist corporate giants often being shadowy faceless monoliths resembling Japanese zaibatsu or IBM or Ma Bell, but the present moment is dominated by very consumer-friendly-presenting, bubbly-UX FAANGs. Instead of outright cold and imposing Tyrell Corporation pyramid dystopia you have cheeky customer service chatbot landing page dystopia. Definitely not the tone that Neuromancer was invoking, though I suppose by the time post-cyberpunk came about with Stephenson's works, the portrayal of the megacorps got more customer-facing.

Your mention of zaibatsu reminded me of another Gibson adaptation, New Rose Hotel. Check it out if you want to hear Christopher Walken say "zaibatsu".

The mega tech corporations are still developing. Gibsons vision can still come true.

Nah, his stories take place on the desperate fringes beyond the reach of middle class consumerism. But in the real world, megacorps have to at least act like OCP from Robocop and appeal to the average Joe watching TV at home.

I had pretty much the same words in mind for a comment (to an almost creepy degree).

At this point I'm expecting a kind of retro vibe. Big chunky decks either beige or gray....

The challenge is to avoid cribbing from Blade Runner, or modern popular works influenced by it (such as Cyberpunk 2077 - whose original tabletop game Cyberpunk 2020 was in the same wave of '80s cyberpunk). Gibson hadn't yet seen the film when he wrote the book!

According to Wikipedia, Gibson did see Blade Runner and even rewrote substantial parts of Neuromancer due to that.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070926221513/http://www.willia...

It'd almost have to be. The Sprawl novels were a product of the 1980s; the fragments of backstory we're given imply that the Cold War continued for decades longer than it actually did (and went "hot" at least once in a nuclear exchange over Germany), and that Japan became the world's dominant superpower rather than the US. It'd be exceptionally difficult to remove these elements from the story and rebase it on the world's actual history without losing a lot of the flavor of the story.

>Japan became the world's dominant superpower rather than the US.

According to Gibson himself, the US itself no longer exists as a country in the Sprawl novels. I never noticed it from reading them, but apparently the only person who mentions the US as a country is Armitage/Corto, who is a generation or two older than the other characters, and even he is just talking about it in the context of "the war" the other characters were too young for.

Huh. I never noticed that before, but you're right. Do you happen to know if Gibson ever explained what happened to the US, or is that left as an intriguing blank spot?

I'm trying to find the interview where he talked about that it that I read a decade or so ago, but as I recall, he said that his idea (which wasn't actually stated in the books) was after the brief WWIII, the US was demilitarized and broken up into smaller states, of which the "Sprawl" (the urbanized US East Coast from Boston down to Atlanta) was one of.

Maybe some TOS style blinkenlights…

Maniac (Netflix) nailed the retro-techno-cool vibe for me.

Previous discussion from 2022, not sure why Variety thinks this is news now. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34018327

it will be over-sexed and dumbed down. flashy, but losing steam every episode, until you start the next one to find the “very important sex scene” just a couple of minutes in. yes yes, monkeys have sex, but don’t pretend the ratios are accurate or even meaningful. it’s wank, simple as.

just like foundation.

monkeys, calm down, not everything is sex or food or both. you’re teaching the models absolute nonsense.

I cant say I will be looking forward to this.

Apple cant make dark and gritty, and this will require that. As well as a lot of independent artistic creativity to bring the book to life.

People are going to complain "This Neuromancer story totally rips off the Matrix!", before realizing the order of operations.

However lavish or detailed or faithful to the Gibson Vibe this adaptation turns out to be, it will live or die on its realisation of Molly Millions, the baddest badass take-no-shit progenitor of Lisbeth Salander, Lara Croft, and The Bride.

If they do a good job with Molly, they need to immediately pick up Mona Lisa Overdrive.

Better to have picked up Peripheral.

The Peripheral is already on Prime.

It got cancelled after season 1 -- we never actually got to the end of the book.

I didn't get to the end of the book when reading it! Loved his earlier work, found his later stuff tedious for some reason.

It’s been cancelled, sadly.

And as enjoyable as the show was, it deviated a lot from the book.

Sadly cancelled

would be a missed opportunity to not somehow tie in the headset.

That would be super lame. There are no VR headsets in Neuromancer. Its headband and electrodes, connected to something that I imagine resembling an Amiga 500 form factor.

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