Neuromancer - William Gibson - Please Explain This Book To Me

"...the aching taste of blue"

Yeah, whatever.

This book was loaned to me twelve years ago. I read about twenty pages and didn't get it. Years later, I try again and still didn't get it. Lines like that quoted above, that make no sense, are why. So why is it that I can't get this book?

I've read loads of SciFi over the years, I'm no stranger to wild concepts. I've loaned almost all of those same books to a friend over the years and he didn't get Neuromancer any more than I did. VALIS makes more sense and Philip K. Dick was obviously off his gourd.

What am I missing? This book is supposed to be seminal Cyberpunk and I gotta say I loathe this more than I do the LOTR(it's just a really, REALLY long walk with a ring tossing ceremony at the end. Big whoop). Utter crap is all I got from it.

Please, tell me what I am missing.

Someone "loaned" you a book 12 years ago???

Are you sure it was a "loan"? 12 years...

9/10 of the law by now.

But seriously, I haven't read that book, but I have read books where the author tries too hard to be mysterious, eloquent, intelligent, on another plane, etc. This may be one of those books. And usually people will like these books and rave about them for the same reasons the author tries too hard.

Maybe it's a good book and it just starts of crappy? I guess we will find out because someone here will have surely read it.

a reply to: TheSpanishArcher

After reading a list of quotes from the book, I feel like the author is just kind of a dick who likes himself a lot.

But I haven't read the book and don't know anything about it, so who knows.

a reply to: TheSpanishArcher

Google is your friend...

Complete wiki article with explanation. You're welcome!

a reply to: TheSpanishArcher

You are not missing anything.

IMO it's nowhere nearly as good as many people say. I read it when it first hit paperback, many moons ago. I thought it had nice ideas, but was dull, like another of his books that i read which has subsequently been forgotten.

a reply to: skalla

Same here. I read it because it was rated 'significant' and held high expectations. Instead, it was a forgettable 'meh' experience and the only memory left is that it was unsatisfying.

Having just read the wiki for a refresher, the story sounds great and makes me want to give it another go. This probably means Gibson had great ideas and a dull way of expressing them.

Catcher on the Rye wasn't much of a buzz either so maybe we're just being iconoclastic or obtuse?

a reply to: TheSpanishArcher

The majority of sci-fi/fantasy works published in the past couple of decades are little more than infantile works randomly stringing together free association and random metaphors in an attempt to create something "original".

If the internet is any indicator, we're moving forward into the Age of Gibberish at light speed.

I recently picked up a collection of short stories in a compilation entitled "Engineering Infinity" and I'm on the verge of burning it purely on principle. The allusions are disgusting and littered with sexual undertones for no discernible reason, and while the initial premises are good in and of themselves, the execution of the plot and character development is enough to make most avid book lovers cringe and the authors of old weep for future generations.

As the saying goes:

"This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly....it should be thrown with great force.

a reply to: Kandinsky

I was maybe 13 when i read it and hadn't been hit by terminal cynicism at that point and i was still deeply unimpressed, so much so that i was perturbed and sought another on his books, maybe Count Zero.

It's horses for courses though - Spanish Archer, like many others would rather flay himself alive than read Tolkien who i absolutely adore (well, i may never read LOTR again. 30-ish times is possibly enough, but his other works still entrance me)

I used to say stfu, a lot, when the tele screen started to change to spewing non-stop filth, lies, deceptions, and zionist agenda, until I realized how important it is to monitor them closely, every nuance. Then I began to listen closely. Now I just think 'Gwan'. Or, 'Gnaw'.

This is the first book I've read that contained that line. I felt a sort of consolidation when I saw that.

What more do you need to know?

'A cut-out', Case thought. (special tribute to Marylin Monroe).

Oh, did you get to the part wherein Case gets an erection, a real hard one going, because of a drug, and then says something along the lines of 'just look at this unnatural state'?

The guy is a kid. Why is that an unnatural state? Must have been the aids™ rollout era when everyone was worshipping death.

It's sort of a leap in faith of technology. The protagonist and his friends are able to enter into the web in a virtual reality way.…remember virtual reality? lol. They yanked that one fast in deference to false flag attacks on Liberty and Spirit. Musn't allow the proles to understand why they became brain washed. The more we do, the less you believe we are doing and so on. Either that or Gibson was prophesying wifi. I can't recall a lot of it though. Won't read again. Now we just use the electrical grid, the real grid, and thoughts. They can't trace that. Well, they can trace it, but they're really mad at where it leads them. Because in the future, God is supposed to be dead. But to be fair, that's de rigeur in nearly all publishing circles, not just sci-fi.


a reply to: TheSpanishArcher

# 409

a reply to: skalla

I read the Hobbit at maybe 9 or 10 and loved it. A primary school teacher put me on to it.

Never could get into LOTR and no strong idea why. Books of the Belgariad, Silver Hand series (??) and scores of other super-long books were no problem either so it's always bemused me why such a legend has left me cold. I know I didn't enjoy the speech in there and especially that between the hobbits. Not a great reason for passing by a classic.

Incidentally, I really envy my younger self and that ability to be truly lost within great fiction. It's still there, but it's so toned down from the colourful brilliance of youthful imagination and that profound capacity to believe.

This is one of my favorite books ever. Basically, you have to remember that the narrator is usually tripping balls. The jumping around that the author does (timeline, story, etc) is something that's been done for years. I don't see the problem, past reader unwillingness to cope wwith complex prose

I haven't gotten around to reading it yet, although I think I have it somewhere... Not sure though. I really need a better organization system for my books. Like a bookshelf, for example. We have one in our home but it appears someone has mistaken it for a display case for mickey mouse collectibles and disney plates. Anyway, I read a cyberpunk book once. It was written by a guy named Neal Stephenson, titled Snowcrash. I thought it was pretty good.

originally posted by: 3n19m470
I haven't gotten around to reading it yet, although I think I have it somewhere... Not sure though. I really need a better organization system for my books. Like a bookshelf, for example. We have one in our home but it appears someone has mistaken it for a display case for mickey mouse collectibles and disney plates. Anyway, I read a cyberpunk book once. It was written by a guy named Neal Stephenson, titled Snowcrash. I thought it was pretty good.

Snowcrash was great, I am surprised there aren't more Stephenson fans here.

You would think the whole Enki confusing common language for humanity premise would be eaten up here.

a reply to: TheSpanishArcher

He was no Cormac McCarthy for sure but, I did like Neuromancer.

I played a lot of Shadowrun when I was a kid.

originally posted by: GENERAL EYES
a reply to: TheSpanishArcher

The majority of sci-fi/fantasy works published in the past couple of decades are little more than infantile works randomly stringing together free association and random metaphors in an attempt to create something "original".

If the internet is any indicator, we're moving forward into the Age of Gibberish at light speed.

That's what one of the early great novels Orwell's "1984" was out to predict. The population would be mind-numbed with a tsunami of irrelevant and useless information. More to reassure the rulers than anyone else. Brave New World on the other hand was to out to predict that valuable information was kept strictly to a need-to-know basis.

At the time that Neuromancer was written, the Internet was a much more bare bones world. Almost everything was text based or command line based; Kermit, Crosstalk, Telnet, Ftp, Gopher, Usenet and Trumpet Winsock (TCP/IP implemented on top of dial-up modems allow desktop PC's to run text based USENET readers). That made the Internet much more anonymous - most phone lines weren't even digital let alone support features likes caller-ID that could be read by modems loggers. Web-browsers, Virtual reality and virtual environments viewed through the use of VRML were still the domain of Ivy League research labs and $100,000 SGI workstations. Virtual reality was really hyped up as the user interface of the future, everywhere from offices to entertainment. Lawnmower man was a good example of how this viewpoint affected film-makers.
Even by 1996, SGI Indy workstations could only texture mapping in software and it was a few years later that the Ultra 64 could do perspective-correct texture mapping. Even CD-ROM's were state-of-the-art Billy Idol's CD album cyber-punk featured images that could be viewed using a desktop PC.

In all probably, Neuromancer has really been overtaken by reality. Think of all the keywords today: cyber-warfare, malware, Anonymous, Patriot Act, cyber-surveillance, NSA, ethical hackers, Big-Data, viruses, virus scanners, bot-nets, smartphones, Android, iOS, tablets, wi-fi, smart-TV's, DVD, Blu-Ray, Kinect, online gaming, Oculus Rift, apps, GPU's, targeted advertising, Phorm, deep-packet inspection, blogging, forums, Twitter, Skype, instant messaging and all those other popular apps.

originally posted by: GENERAL EYES
a reply to: TheSpanishArcher

The majority of sci-fi/fantasy works published in the past couple of decades are little more than infantile works randomly stringing together free association and random metaphors in an attempt to create something "original".

If the internet is any indicator, we're moving forward into the Age of Gibberish at light speed.

That's what one of the early great novels Orwell's "1984" was out to predict. The population would be mind-numbed with a tsunami of irrelevant and useless information. More to reassure the rulers than anyone else. Brave New World on the other hand was to out to predict that valuable information was kept strictly to a need-to-know basis.

At the time that Neuromancer was written, the Internet was a much more bare bones world. Almost everything was text based or command line based; Kermit, Crosstalk, Telnet, Ftp, Gopher, Usenet and Trumpet Winsock (TCP/IP implemented on top of dial-up modems allow desktop PC's to run text based USENET readers). That made the Internet much more anonymous - most phone lines weren't even digital let alone support features likes caller-ID that could be read by modems loggers. Web-browsers, Virtual reality and virtual environments viewed through the use of VRML were still the domain of Ivy League research labs and $100,000 SGI workstations. Virtual reality was really hyped up as the user interface of the future, everywhere from offices to entertainment. Lawnmower man was a good example of how this viewpoint affected film-makers.
Even by 1996, SGI Indy workstations could only texture mapping in software and it was a few years later that the Ultra 64 could do perspective-correct texture mapping. Even CD-ROM's were state-of-the-art Billy Idol's CD album cyber-punk featured images that could be viewed using a desktop PC.

In all probably, Neuromancer has really been overtaken by reality. Think of all the keywords today: cyber-warfare, malware, Anonymous, Patriot Act, cyber-surveillance, NSA, ethical hackers, Big-Data, viruses, virus scanners, bot-nets, smartphones, Android, iOS, tablets, wi-fi, smart-TV's, DVD, Blu-Ray, Kinect, online gaming, Oculus Rift, apps, GPU's, targeted advertising, Phorm, deep-packet inspection, blogging, forums, Twitter, Skype, instant messaging and all those other popular apps.

Right, ok. Sorry about the hit and run thread. I did try and post the night I put this up but I think ATS was down for a while. Then I had to switch computers(and what the hell was I using to kill pop-ups on the last one? Crikey, haven't had that problem in years.) Then I had to make time to read this thread so I could respond.

In other words, blah blah blah.

Firstly, I do know about the Wiki page but I didn't want that. I wanted real peoples opinions. I'm not stupid.

Second, the book was loaned to me years ago but I gave that one back. I haven't been holding on to it that long. It was something I kept reading about, coming across people mention it, so I figured I'd try it again. Didn't go much better the second time around.

OK, now, on to the thread. Thanks for the replies. I see some have had similar reactions to the book that I have had. Nice to see I'm not the only one. If my buddy comes back and says the rest of the trilogy is as bad I may not even try and read it. I do have two other books, outside of the trilogy, from Gibson and I will check them out but it might be more of the same.

Oh well, some books are just not my cuppa and not meant to be understood by me.

a reply to: TheSpanishArcher

Different strokes for different folks... its what makes this world interesting, beautiful, and dangerous all at once.

a reply to: greencmp

Oh hell yes! Shadowrun! I played it on SNES. They have some "sequels" for Android mobile devices available on Google play that I've wanted to check out. But I have a feeling I'll eventually just have to find an old super nintendo console or emulator. There was a game I found on Google play that gave me some Shadowrun nostalgia called... hold on... ok got it- Cyberknights RPG (there is both free and "elite" versions). Cyberlords - Arcology wasnt bad either. I haven't finished it yet. It was put on the back burner when I discovered the superior, in my opinion, Cyberknights. Then I moved on to other things but I still have it on my phone.

I need to give Snowcrash another readthrough cause its been a while and I've learned alot since then. But my favorite scenes involved Raven, and Y.T.

I hereby offer you the digital beverage of your choice, for the enjoyment of your avatar

PS I also read and enjoyed Stephenson's Anaethema (sp?).

a reply to: 3n19m470

I never played the super nintendo game though I heard it was good.

The RPG was a pretty well developed universe with tech, magic, etc. mostly consistent with Gibson's.

The other great RPG was "Call of Cthulu" based around Lovecraft's fictional town of Arkham. The 'sanity points' were a source of much entertainment.