Neuromancer by William Gibson Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.09 You Save: $3.90 (49%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Neuromancer
Book Review: A classic - but a dated classic
Summary: 4 Stars
Plot development is strong, descriptions are excellent, and the fictional development of place is so gritty, real, and believable that... well, that it started an entire genre.
The story is dark, though. The characters are murderers, thieves, drug-pushers, drug-users, prostitutes, or extortionists. Or they're mentally wacked. Or they're all of the above. Nobody is walking around with the lame-o natural body they were born with--they're all surgically enhanced, re-wired, and doped up. Life is cheap. Drugs are cheaper. Society is nasty. Reading the book gets you into that frame of mind, so it's kind of a dark ride.
But it's an exciting ride. The blend of pulp fiction / crime / sci-fi is spang on. The action is good, the technology is great, and the story line is intriguing. There is no doubt it's a masterpiece within its limits.
The technology aspect is interesting. Where the technology is vague and imaginative it still works great. Where the technology is detailed and specified it falls flat. There's a scene where a dial-up modem is desperately needed to hook two computers together. C'mon--this is the far future where computers are self-aware and super intelligent, and they still use POTS/modem connections? The characters have no way of communicating across distances because cell phones (or futuristic analogous devices) didn't exist and didn't get imagined when the story was written. This doesn't ruin the book, though--just makes it a little dated and actually a little interesting and adds texture.
It may not be a perfect novel, but it is the novel that started cyberpunk. As such, it's a classic. It's not everybody's favorite by accident. Enjoyable and recommended.
Book Review: A fictional map of the future currently being created.
Summary: 5 Stars
Gibson's "Neromancer" takes the reader and the protagonist
on a harrowing journey through true cyberspace. This book
has had an obvious influence on companies such as Apple,
Microsoft and Netscape. Let's hope that all of Gibson's
visions do not become reality. Also, if you like this one,
check out Marge Piercy's "He, She and It," another cyberspace -
cyborg adventure that questions corporate business ethics.Book Review: A gripping, edgy and tight narrative
Summary: 5 Stars
Gibson's tight prose reads like a surgical knife: clean and deliberate. Being completely immersive lends the text a believability completely lacking in other science fiction.We feel, not see, Gibson's characters. In his constructed world of mega-corporations, ultra-high tech, megalopolises, and shadowy subcultures, human frailty, and strength, spring forth. The portrayal of the future here is both one to be feared and hoped for, one which may ultimately come to pass; a future populated with people whose reality is almost tangible.
Neuromancer wasn't written for the meek, the impatient, or the lazy. Gibson actively refuses to mollycoddle the reader, dropping him into a future which is at once bewildering, seductive, and contorted: both for reader and inhabitant.
Neuromancer is unquestionably one of the 5 finest science fiction novels of all time. It's vision is as appealing as it is frightening. The quality of Gibson's writing is unparalleled by any in his generation, possessing the vivacity of experience, in the clean prose that all modern authors strive towards.
Book Review: A gritty and vivid debut that created a genre.
Summary: 5 Stars
Neuromancer is William Gibson's seminal work that made mainstream the ideas of cyberspace, sprawl, cyberpunk, ICE and a host of other concepts and predictions that are close to becoming reality today. These terms encompass a future heavily influenced by technology where the gaps between the haves and have nots have only increased. The other potent aspect of Neuromancer is the mingling of man with machine. This combination is more intertwined than anything we have ever encountered in reality, but at this point not so far off as to be unimaginable.
Neuromancer is the story of Case, a cyperspace cowboy who once rode the electronic plains of the matrix. Case though is damaged goods and is unable to jack into the matrix because of permanent nerve damage done to him as payback for a deal gone sour. His access to cyberspace having been revoked he lives like a junky forever unable to get his fix. Then he is given a second chance.
Neuromancer's plot is futuristic noir as no one else had thought to do it at the time. Case the cyberspace hacker and Molly the cyborg street samurai are archetypes that are used again and again in science fiction today. The overlaying anti-hero archetype is what ties them to their predecessors, but the access to new technology is what divorces them from the past.
Is it wrong to break into and steal from the mega corporations that run the world of Neuromancer? The distinction isn't clear. The world is layered in shades of gray. The megacorps do good, but they also do great evil. There aren't any easy answers and usually the characters are doing a gut check to figure out what they should be doing. This makes the world of Neuromancer a darker and dystopian view of the future, but one that is closer to being possible than most people would believe.
There is also no grand conclusion at the end where these contradictions are wrapped up in a neat little package. Anything like that would have been untrue to the subject.
I would highly recommend this to just about any adult reader. It has subject matter that might not be appropriate for younger readers, though I know many of my high school friends read it during adolescence. I attempted to read it at that time, but found the grim tone and hard edged style not to my liking. I read it recently at the age of thirty and I found it to be much more interesting with the perspective I have gained with age.
It's important to understand that when this book was published in 1984 there was no Internet as we all know it. The Internet was something that university researchers used for information exchange in a bare minimum sense. It contained limited data stored on mainframes across the country and was useful only to a minute subset of the population. To imagine the world that exists in Neuromancer was a great leap at the time and a prophetic vision of the world we inhabit today.
Book Review: A jargon-filled comic book
Summary: 1 Stars
Absolutely unreadable; I couldn't force myself farther than 100 pages into this morass. The "story," such as it is, has all the depth and interest of a video game with pretentious techno-babble commentary. Worse yet, the book takes itself *so* seriously. There's not even the unintentional humor one sometimes finds in spectacular flops like _The Bridges of Madison County_ or _Plan 9 From Outer Space_. _Neuromancer_ is leaden and plodding; an absolute dud. This is the kind of book that leads people to erroneously dismiss science fiction as shallow, nerdy drivel.