Neuromancer, 30 years old this month | Hacker News Reader

Neuromancer, 30 years old this month

theguardian.com

95 pointsslurry61 comments

Such a great book with the absolutely iconic characters of cyber-fiction. If you don't have time to read this book, perhaps you can find time to listen to the book on tape, as read by the author: http://www.bearcave.com/bookrev/neuromancer/neuromancer_audi...

There was also a pretty good BBC Radio dramatisation of it. Sadly, from a quick search, they don't seem to be selling it - but there are copies floating about online. Well worth a listen.

I don't read very much paper books, for some reason I always found it uncomfortable, straining on the eyes and tiring. I recently got into audiobooks. Listened to Neuromancer, the first three of the Dune series, The Positronic Man, the first Foundation book, Burning Chrome, and the Steve Jobs Biography. Just started listening to The Last Theorem today.

Audiobooks are amazingly convenient and you can definitely find time to fit them into your life. You can listen to them while walking around, on the bus or subway, while grocery shopping, while cooking, and even in the bathroom.

I also think that audiobooks might be a good way to practice your focus, in the way that mindfulness meditation teaches you to do. You try and pay attention to the audiobook as best as you can, and if you're prone to anxiety and rumination, this will at the very least help provide a useful distraction and quiet down inner chatter.

Thumbs up for audiobooks, helping me get more culture into my life.

In my limited experience, most audiobook readers (as in people, not audio players) are not that great, which makes for a dull experience. One of the exceptions has been the Discworld, (mostly) read by Nigel Planer[1], they're just awesome.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Planer

What are some other must reads from cyberpunk genre (beside Count Zero and Mona Liza Overdrive)?

Stephenson's Snow Crash.

Snowcrash. I love Buring Chrome, which is Gibson's short stories. True Names. Wetware/Freeware. Basically, start with Gibson, then Neal Stephenson, take some drugs and read Rudy Rucker, then have a mint julep and read some Bruce Sterling. Sprinkle lightly with Vernor Vinge, and end with some Dick.

More from Neal Stephenson: Diamond Age is good, Cryptonomicon is fantastic. Bruce Sterling's Holy Fire is interesting as well.

I found Cryptonomicon a bit shallow and absurdly hyperactive, but then I read it more or less back to back with Le Carre's Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy.

I remember having at home Mirrorshades, a cyberpunk antology[1]. It contains short novels by Gibson and others and it was edited by Bruce Sterling. Unfortunately many years have passed so I don't remember if it was good..

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Mirrorshades-Cyberpunk-Anthology-Greg-...

I really liked Mirrorshades, if for no other reason that it showcased a variety of styles. It's been a while since I read it but I recall thinking it pretty good. It might have been what got me to read Rudy Rucker's stuff.

You can read all of Rucker's short stories (which I find to be better than his novels) here:

http://www.rudyrucker.com/transrealbooks/completestories/

Hardwired Water John Williams

Proto /early CP

Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep - Philip K Dick Babel 17 - Delany Fury - Kutner/More Tiger! Tiger! (The stars my destination) - Bester And Arguably Gravity's Rainbow

I'm going to echo Snow Crash. It's a bit silly at times when you stop to think about the pictures being drawn, but it's also quite prescient as more and more of the world starts to actually look like the cyberpunk worlds.

Snow Cradh's silliness is a feature: Stephenson was taking the piss out of Gibson.

When gravity fails, George Alec Effinger

Part 1 of a trilogy. Absolutely fantastic.

I hesitate to say more than "read it." If you don't like it after 30 pages, bail, it's not your cup of tea.

I recently tried to make a list of good virtual reality reads (not all of them cyberpunk, though):

Otherland - Tad Williams

Ready Player One

Daemon - David Suarez

Neuromancer - William Gibson

Shadowrun - ?? there are lots of possibly varying quality, I only read the ones by Nigel Findley which I liked

Snowcrash - Stephenson

Reamde - Stephenson

Der falsche Spiegel - Sergej Lukianenko (not sure about the english name)

Masters of Doom - Story of ID developing the games Doom and Quake - not really a VR story, but it sets the mood.

Pollen - Jeff Noon

Bruce Sterling is great, too, but I don't remember which of his stories are about virtual reality.

I suppose Ian Bank's "The Culture" novels might be a candidate, but I haven't read them yet.

Iain (M) Banks' "Culture" novels are great fun, but they are (IMHO) in no way cyberpunk, nor do they concern VR. His SF is about people running around in meatspace doing things.

well okay there's a decent chunk of VR in 'Feersum Endjiin' but that's very much the exception

I see - didn't know that. I thought they are about artificial life or a society that chose to withdraw into cyberspace. But as I said, I haven't read them.

Lukianenko's book name in English is "Labyrinth of Reflections". I loved Lukianenko and read all his books (in Russian) until I realized that I am strongly opposed to his political views.

I must admit I don't really know his political views. Do you mean what shines through in his books, or do you have some other source (like interviews with him or whatever)? I have only read his books, and only the ones that have been translated to German.

Have you read "Das Schlangenschwert"? I really liked his reflections on society in that one.

No, I would not say his political views shine through his books. But he is pretty vocal about them in his Russian-language blog: http://dr-piliulkin.livejournal.com/

I cannot really figure out what would be the name of the book you mentioned, in Russian or English, but most likely no - I have not read it.

Vernor Vinge's True Names should be on that list as well.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1280983.True_Names

Another vote for Neuromancer, Snowcrash and the relatively little-known but excellent Pollen. I read some Iain Banks recently at the behest of an old friend who I introduced to science fiction over 15 years ago, but didn't find it particularly engrossing. Embassytown by China Miéville was an excellent and pithy meditation on the nature of communication, albeit longer than I would have deemed necessary.

Rudy Rucker's Ware tetralogy[1]. I've actually not read the 4th book, though (yet).

A fantastic tale, with lots of robots. And icecream trucks...

[1] http://amzn.com/1607012111

You forgot to mention the sentient, shape-shifting, dildos. Seriously. The whole series is focused on them as characters.

Rucker made the Ware books available free online under a Creative Commons license: http://www.rudyrucker.com/wares/#waresdownload if anyone wants to check them out.

Nice, I didn't know that!

It's not cyberpunk, but I enjoyed Altered Carbon quite a bit, which does a good job of capturing a similar noir feeling.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_Carbon

Agreed, had a very similar vibe. Still doubtful about reading the sequels, though. Have you checked them?

They are largely more of the same. I enjoyed them.

I didn't enjoy either of the sequels nearly as much as Altered Carbon. I don't think you'd miss out on much if you skipped them.

I think Broken Angels did a good job of carrying the feeling of Altered Carbon forward. I haven't yet read the final trilogy member, Woken Furies.

I could hardly put down Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash. Phenomenal.

Donnerjack (Zelazny and Lindskold) is an interesting point in the space, though doesn't rise to the level of some of the others (IMO).

Does someone really dislike Donnerjack and not want it mentioned, really like Donnerjack and think I should be praising it more highly, think it doesn't fit in the genre at all, or was it just fat-fingered?

It's closer to "proto-cyberpunk" but I can't recommend John Brunner's classic The Shockwave Rider[1] highly enough.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shockwave_Rider

Gibson's Bridge trilogy steps a little further from cyberpunk, but they are still excellent reads that are thematically and stylistically similar.

If you can get any of the Interzone anthologies there are some excellent examples of cyberpunk short fiction, and other sub-genres.

(This is Interzone the magazine, before it went to TTA press. I have no idea what it's like now; this isn't a judgement about what they're doing. But I remember reading some excellent stories way back.)

I also strongly recommend Bruce Sterling - a great author and seems a bit under-appreciated.

Snowcrash is an amazing book. I dislike the way Stephenson does exaggeration but that's just me.

"MirrorShades" was the anthology. I think it was good.

J.G. Ballard wrote excellent stories about people and places who are on their way to a cyberpunk future.

The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner is 10 years older than Neuromancer and considered one of the first cyberpunk novels. Amazingly, it still holds up and feels plausibly futuristic, even to this day.

I enjoyed these books by Charles Stross, Accelerando, Halting State and the follow up, but not sequel, Rule 34, and of course The Rapture of the Nerds, co-written with Cory Doctorow. Also I've enjoyed his non cyberpunkish books especially The Laundry Files series. I also liked William Hertlings Singularity series, Avogadro Corp, A.I. Apocalypse and The Last Firewall, all about how AGI could accidentally arise.

I just read Glasshouse by Stross, that was pretty solid as well. One part I enjoyed was there was a tiny bit of the "unreliable narrator" device thrown in (I won't say in what part of the book).

Dick is the master of this device, but it worked in Glasshouse.

> It sold more than 6m copies and launched an entire aesthetic: cyberpunk.

The cyberpunk aesthetic was already in existence, like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_(manga)

The famous opening line, "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.", has not stood the time. Nowadays that would probably mean a blue sky.

Nowadays that would probably mean a blue sky.

That may have been what Gibson actually intended it to mean.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/05/negative-creativity/#co...

No. Static was the intention: a grey mottled sky, rife with noir-insinuation. Can you possibly envision Chiba City as being anything but grey and filthy at all times? A blue sky completely changes the meaning of the line, and the tone of the setting.

Awesome. Was just reading this earlier today, because I decided to pick it back up again after never finishing years ago. I do really enjoy it, and would like to read the rest of the Sprawl Trilogy.

A friend had a mousepad printed with this depiction of Chiba City (and I presume Case and Molly), which I use at work. :)

http://sourgasm.deviantart.com/art/Neuromancer-CGHub-Illustr...

I have always had this problem with Sprawl Trilogy books: I started, abandoned and then restarted and finished each of them..

I read this for the first time last year. Absolutely fantastic book, apart from half the plot rests on mobile phones not existing. Which just comes across as bizarre now, looking back.

Then again I'm reading the foundation series at the moment, and major plot points rest on how rediculously crap CPU power is and how travel is near instaneous, but somehow communication isn't.

Sci-fi doesn't age well, alas. Though neuromancer is better than a lot and still well worth a read.

Mobile phones as we know them today didn't exist when Gibson was writing Neuromancer. Pub date in 1984 means the MS was handed in in mid-1983 and he was writing it 1981-82 (on a manual typewriter: the royalties from Neuromancer bought him his first computer, an Apple IIc).

While the idea of cellular comms dates to the 1950s (if not earlier), and some limited analog cellular service existed in some parts of the world (notably the Nordic countries from 1981), the UK didn't get analog cell service until roughly 1985; digital (over 2G GSM) didn't come along until roughly 1991. In Canada, cellphone service wouldn't have started until around the time the book was published, if not later. And, uninformed rumor to the contrary, SF isn't actually about prophesying the future.

Charlie, I accept the point entirely.

BUT it is interesting that a lot of people missed the possibility of personal technology in their imagining of the future (2001, Floyd using a video phone to call the kids, Gibson, Asimov et al)

Heinlen's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Friday especially got quite a lot right.

>'BUT it is interesting that a lot of people missed the possibility of personal technology in their imagining of the future (2001, Floyd using a video phone to call the kids, Gibson, Asimov et al)'

Yeah.

Personally, I disagree with the notion that science fiction authors are or should mean to be making predictions with their writing. Basically, it doesn't make sense to say someone 'missed' if they weren't necessarily aiming in the first place.

Though, it's probably even more common to credit an author as prescient when he 'hits' so I guess it's a wash.

I don't think cyberpunk was ever really intended to be proper science fiction. It's more of a fantasy universe extrapolated from 1980s tech. Which is probably why it remains a popular setting today without huge changes - see for example the Netrunner card game.

There was even quite a lot of vocal disappointment from fans when wireless networking got added to the fourth edition of Shadowrun. Cyberpunk works quite well as a self-consistent setting, regardless of modern technology.

Gibson has always been amazingly prescient; so much so that it seems almost churlish to dwell on what he missed, when the breadth of what he observed is so astonishing.

It's like he pulled us into the future, like a strongman pulling a battleship, overcoming the inertia with sheer force of aesthetics, and if we've veered off the precise course, well, yeah, that's human events.

I think it's also important to always remember that Gibson's books are well written; the ideas shine through because of the clarity and precision of the language.

"GIBSON: I was afraid to watch Blade Runner in the theater because I was afraid the movie would be better than what I myself had been able to imagine."

http://io9.com/how-did-william-gibson-really-feel-about-blad...

Have the movie plans moved forward at all? I seem to recall that something was happening relatively recently.

After reading this book a few months ago, I had the idea to make an iOS game based on secretly signaling others in a group while others attempt to catch who signals . The games called "Hand Jive" and its free if you care to check it out.

I ended up reading Neuromancer after playing the C64 game, which at the time I loved, but I'm sure if I saw it today I would laugh pretty hard at.

The Amiga version is definitely awesome. As a child I wondered what crystals had to do with hacking because of this game.

I care what Cory Doctrow has to say about William Gibson in the same way that I care about what Britney Spears thinks of Ella Fitzgerald.

Why? I'm a fan of William Gibson but I'm not familiar with Cory Doctrow although I hear his name often. Is he considered much less skilled than Gibson?

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