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William Gibson Neuromancer Collection 4 Books Bundle
Please Note That The Following Individual Books As Per Original ISBN and Cover Image In this Listing shall be Dispatched Sprawl Series Complete 4 Books Collection Set by William William Gibson revolutionised science fiction in his 1984 debut Neuromancer. The writer who gave us the matrix and coined the term 'cyberspace' produced a first novel that won the Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick Awards, and lit the fuse on the Cyberpunk movement.Count When the Maas Biolabs and Hosaka zaibatsus fight it out for world domination, computer cowboys like Turner and Count Zero are just foot soldiers in the great useful but ultimately expendable.When Turner wakes up in Mexico - in a new body with a beautiful woman beside him - his corporate masters let him recuperate for a while.Mona Lisa Mona is a young girl with a murky past and an uncertain future whose life is turned upside down when her pimp sells her to a plastic surgeon in New York and overnight she's turned into someone else.Angie Mitchell is a famous Hollywood Sense/Net star with a special talent. And despite the efforts of studio bosses to keep her in ignorance, Angie's started remembering things.Burning Best-known for his seminal sf novel NEUROMANCER, William Gibson is also a master of short fiction. Tautly-written and suspenseful, BURNING CHROME collects 10 of his best short stories with a preface from Bruce Sterling, co-Cyberpunk and editor of the seminal anthology MIRRORSHADES. These brilliant, high-resolution stories show Gibson's characters and intensely-realized worlds at his absolute best.
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Published January 1, 2017
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About the author
William Gibson
292 books14.9k followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
William Ford Gibson is an American-Canadian writer who has been called the father of the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction, having coined the term cyberspace in 1982 and popularized it in his first novel, Neuromancer (1984), which has sold more than 6.5 million copies worldwide.
While his early writing took the form of short stories, Gibson has since written nine critically acclaimed novels (one in collaboration), contributed articles to several major publications, and has collaborated extensively with performance artists, filmmakers and musicians. His thought has been cited as an influence on science fiction authors, academia, cyberculture, and technology.
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William Gibson. (2007, October 17). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 20:30, October 19, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?t...
William Ford Gibson is an American-Canadian writer who has been called the father of the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction, having coined the term cyberspace in 1982 and popularized it in his first novel, Neuromancer (1984), which has sold more than 6.5 million copies worldwide.
While his early writing took the form of short stories, Gibson has since written nine critically acclaimed novels (one in collaboration), contributed articles to several major publications, and has collaborated extensively with performance artists, filmmakers and musicians. His thought has been cited as an influence on science fiction authors, academia, cyberculture, and technology.
---------------------------------
William Gibson. (2007, October 17). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 20:30, October 19, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?t...
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June 2, 2020
Note- This review ended up going on so long it went beyond Goodreads's character limitation. As a result, I have had to split it into two parts, with the first part being posted under another Neuromancer review, linked below.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Tl;dr this is a novel that I would give 2.5/5 to if I could, but I will round it up to a 3/5 because I do think it's worth reading for every prospective bibliophile or science fiction fan.
Talking about the characters, your mileage will vary. Case works as a protagonist in the sense that he's likable. He's an anti-hero, meaning he does ethically-questionable things, and is coked up for a large part of the book (which actually works to highlight something Gibson wanted to point out- that people would be used to the concept of cyberspace in the future. As a result, he has Case intoxicated to depict this commonplace VR application as being an amazing thing, whilst having a children's television commercial in part 2 reveal what the true experiences of everyday folks is like). And yet, he has a very hallucinatory way of talking, which gives a him a non-hipster, cool edge.
Now, I've read a lot of online complaints saying that this type of prose makes "Neuromancer" a tough read. As I noted in the first part, there is some truth to this in the sense that we’re not reading English of the present but English of the distant future, meaning it is structured differently than what you’d expect from an everyday novel. Gibson (via Case) also throws a lot of visual-based descriptions at readers, however I refute the notion that it makes Neuromancer difficult to follow for a couple of reasons. One, the syntax/grammar rarely ventures into synesthetic territory, and two, Gibson directly explains every major development and action that happens. Sure, it can be hard to understand a characters' traversal into the interior of a building as they talk about the design, colors, furniture, tech, layout, construction material, and even shifting gravity(!), but what major actions they do in said building is blatantly laid out and explained, meaning you know what is transpiring.
Honestly, the real issue I had with Case was that I just didn't understand why he was chosen to do this job. I get that he used to be a really good hacker, but what made him worth the cost of an extensive repair job versus getting another, equally-good programmer? It was just like the problem I had with "The Devil Wears Prada"- I didn't see what was so fascinating about the main character that made them a designated choice.
That same issue extends to two other characters. The first is McCoy Pauley, Case's deceased mentor who's brought back via a saved ROM file of his consciousness (again, amazing concept only touched on). Why have your cast go through a huge effort to get this one guy back when there are other hackers in Chiba or the Sprawl who could help you as well?
The second is a sociopath called Riviera, who can generate realistic illusions via implants. They mention that he is needed to seduce the target, but again, could no other seductor be found? Given how much of a loose cannon he is, it seems like it would've been smarter to go with another person, even if they lacked Riviera's implants. Little explanation is given as to their necessity.
Molly, the facilitator for most of the story events, is a blunder from the beginning because of her promiscuity, and not in the sense that you may be thinking. There's nothing wrong with a female wanting to express sexual freedom, but when you have her sleep with Case, a sleazy drug addict whom she barely had any interactions with prior to, it just leaves her feeling like an object rather than a three-dimensional person with a hedonistic viewpoint (though I will say, that love scene in the coffin is one of the best written sex scenes I've come across). Contrary to other reviewers, I didn't have a problem with her sex worker past (namely because I don't believe it's as cliche as some sci-fi critics want to propagate), but she isn't given much in the way of original thoughts. She primarily exists to give exposition, expedite the goals of Armitage, and provide lustful imagery for readers, which is a shame because Gibson clearly likes her- she's reused in other books of his, including his original "Burning Chrome" anthology.
It's well-known at this point that "Neuromancer" deals with the emergence of two AGIs, and unfortunately I can’t talk much about them without going into spoilers, meaning I’m going to put a tag here for those who don’t want extravagant details about the two entities divulged before they read on their own.* To give a non-spoilerly overview, I will say that I was disappointed with how they were depicted. Gibson makes it clear that artificial intelligences are created and employed by various governments and corporations, but the creation of a super AI (i.e. an artificial general intelligence) is explicitly forbidden for reasons that Isaac Asimov and James Cameron more than popularized: they could jeopardize human society through their amoral judgment and easy techno-interfacing. So feared are they that an International law enforcement agency called the Turing Police (no doubt named after Alan Turing) exists to stop their development. This makes sense and didn’t need expanding. What DID need expanding was the actual characters that embody the very fear that drives people like Elon Musk. At least one of these “guys” had to be so abstract and unknowable that it made them simultaneously intriguing and terrifying (much like the aliens from the film “Arrival”). All I can say for those who don’t want spoilers is Gibson falters significantly on this point.
There were other issues I had with "Neuromancer" that I can't divulge because of heavy spoilers, so I will put another * here.
So overall, "Neuromancer" was a very mixed bag. Its stature as the book that unified and jumpstarted the cyberpunk movement means it's going to be on a lot of people's to-read lists, which included my own. Because of this, I can only say two things: if you're a Blade Runner/Snow Crash kind of person who is into cyberpunk because it deals with humanism, transhumanism, anarcho-capitalism, and all that good stuff, change your expectations because "Neuromancer" isn't that kind of text. It incorporates those themes, but it doesn't focus on them: they're in the distant background, dancing around as the story charges from one place to the other.
If, on the other hand, you're someone who has had minimal exposure to the genre and wants to read it simply because of its importance in science fiction circles, then go in with the mindset that the story isn't central: the plot exists to go from A to B, exploring these different locales with varying degrees of success. Some are absolutely mesmerizing, and others are downright boring. The language takes some getting used to, but Gibson never goes into confusing territory: things are explained.
The cast is very hit-or-miss, but I acknowledge this is subjective and everyone's mileage will vary. Case is ultimately a good protagonist worth sticking with, so at the very least he's well-written. Molly and the AIs, sadly, feel like a noticeably missed opportunity.
The final section of "Neuromancer" is the worst of all three worlds, being a downright slog to get through primarily because of how inane the characters act, the way the action is written, and how insipid the whole corporate hideout is. But I would be lying if I said I didn't want to re-read the first section: Chiba City was gorgeously-realized, Case cool, and the stakes felt genuine. "Neuromancer" may end on a disappointing note but it began marvelously.
One may say that Gibson cared more to conceive a unique take on the adventure pulp than provide a deep, introspective breakdown of burgeoning socioeconomic problems. I wouldn't go that far, but it's a good generalization of the lost potential of "Neuromancer" if anything.
SPOILERS:
*Wintermute is the first and primary AGI that Case encounters. He finds out that it was behind his whole recruitment, having taken over the body of Armitage during his military days. Wintermute’s intentions are clear: it wants to be free of the restraints typically imposed on AI systems. Gibson states that its creators, members of a corporation called Tessier-Ashpool, programmed it with the intent to merge with a second AI they also created. The problem is, by having human coding dictate Wintermute’s motivations/desires/goals, Gibson removes a lot of the ethical questions that come with AIs since their whole shtick is slowly developing a cyber-consciousness that drives them towards some naturally-manifested endgoal. Wintermute wants to become super because it was programmed to do so, leaving its characterization being no different from that of a virus or other general program. Granted, the way it goes about executing its freedom strategy is levels above the intellect you would get from a standard program, and maybe this was Gibson’s way of balancing the computerized and humanoid traits that a complex AI would theoretically have. But for me, I couldn’t help but feel there was a missed opportunity to give a unique edge to a topic that has been (and continues to be) exhaustively covered by sci-fi authors and auteurs. Give Wintermute his own motivations for doing what he does, have him garner some philosophical thoughts about humanity and how they’ve become subservient to technology. Or at least explain what he plans on doing once he achieves a singularity!
A big part of the issues I had with Wintermute also arise from his presentation in the text. I absolutely hated how Wintermute was depicted. Throughout the novel, he appears in the form of preexisting characters that Case has encountered as he apparently can't manifest a bodily projection for himself. This leads to him not only looking exactly like said characters in cyberspace, but sounding, smelling, and conversing like them. Maybe it's cause I was biased by Morpheus and Helios in the first Deus Ex, but I felt it was a big missed opportunity for Gibson to create something truly unique- an AGI whose thoughts and motives exist completely outside of human comprehension. Nope, instead he talks and acts like an average joe- you might as well have made him another stored ROM consciousness like Pauley.
The second AI figure is called Neuromancer. Yes, it is the name of the book, and you would think that would lend it some importance or grand extravagance. It makes up a big section of the end of the book wherein it traps Case in a virtual reality world, so in a way it has some weight. But if Gibson was trying to build-up to Neuromancer's appearance, I can't say he succeeded: as I said before, the novel is more about the visceral experiences of a drug addict traveling through a cyberpunk-infested Earth: story is pushed to the side in favor of sections full of pulsing imagery, action beats, and interactions with the physical world. Sure, the destination was always going to be meeting the Tessier-Ashpool AI, but it's not something you anticipate as you turn page after page: it's briefly mentioned here and there, not given extra emphasis until Case enters the Villa Straylight and jacks into its mainframe.
That would've been forgivable had the ensuing dialogue between the two been epic or thoughtful. Instead, it's more of the same mediocre writing we got with Wintermute, the only differences being that Neuromancer takes the form of a little boy (an actual cliche in science-fiction), and has a different wish to not merge with Wintermute. Again, no metaphysical discussions, no expansions on AI desires, just generic conversations.
*I’ve complained a lot above about how the last stretch of the novel is poorly-paced, but the actual ending (called the “coda” chapter) is outright ridiculous. Case wakes up cured of his poison, only to find that Molly is gone. Why? Why did she leave? Gibson gives no reason for her departure, and it makes no sense considering she evidently had feelings for Case (and, you know, Case saved her life). I feel it was one of those things where he was trying to replicate a cool break-up wherein two romantically-tied characters realize that they’re not going to be a fit for each other long-term, but the short, deliberately-vague nature of it meant that his efforts fell very very far.
*Linda Lee. During one of his many rewrites of the intro, I have to think that Lee’s character got a lot of her “screentime” taken away because Gibson puts a lot of emphasis on her relationship with Case later on in the novel, but fails to create a compelling paramour beforehand. We know that they dated and that she cares about him enough to warn him about a hit put on his life, but that’s literally it. We get ONE interaction between the two of them, yet images of her dead-self continue to prop up in Case’s mind, indicating that he is suffering from some level of PTSD over being partly responsible for her death. I can understand how the loss of a friend can ingrain itself in someone’s psyche, but Gibson didn’t give us much to work with here. If you want us to care about a character dying and said character’s importance to your protagonist, then you have to show them speaking to each other more than once! That doesn’t happen, making her subsequent reappearances more annoying than tragic reminders. And then, Gibson has the gall to have her recreated (or brought back to life?) in Neuromancer’s simulation as a way of getting even deeper into Case’s mind. If I didn’t care for her before this, I don’t get why Gibson would think we’d care for her now. Just a strange person who must’ve had her part trimmed over fear of comparisons to the Deckard/Rachael relationship in Blade Runner (which caused Gibson to rewrite the beginning).
Then Case decides to resume his hackery, showing he didn’t undergo any character arc about discovering the faults with tapping into the nether realms of cyberspace. Only, during one of his jack-in sessions, he meets Neuromancer again. Neuromancer has not only kept Linda Lee, but also has Pauley and a RAM copy of Case himself. Why????? What was the purpose behind this? When Case encounters the police earlier, they explicitly tell him that an unfettered AI would result in catastrophic changes to human society- you give an AI the power to recreate entire personalities/entities in cyberspace through an encounter with them, hinting at this potential damage, and then don’t bother explaining why it did it? To have “Neuromancer” abruptly end there made me feel that Gibson was hitting his deadline and decided to throw something together at the last minute rather than write out a concise ending to this debut novel. People may claim that this was done to set-up a sequel, but Gibson noted later that he deliberately wrote the finale that way to discourage one. What???
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Tl;dr this is a novel that I would give 2.5/5 to if I could, but I will round it up to a 3/5 because I do think it's worth reading for every prospective bibliophile or science fiction fan.
Talking about the characters, your mileage will vary. Case works as a protagonist in the sense that he's likable. He's an anti-hero, meaning he does ethically-questionable things, and is coked up for a large part of the book (which actually works to highlight something Gibson wanted to point out- that people would be used to the concept of cyberspace in the future. As a result, he has Case intoxicated to depict this commonplace VR application as being an amazing thing, whilst having a children's television commercial in part 2 reveal what the true experiences of everyday folks is like). And yet, he has a very hallucinatory way of talking, which gives a him a non-hipster, cool edge.
Now, I've read a lot of online complaints saying that this type of prose makes "Neuromancer" a tough read. As I noted in the first part, there is some truth to this in the sense that we’re not reading English of the present but English of the distant future, meaning it is structured differently than what you’d expect from an everyday novel. Gibson (via Case) also throws a lot of visual-based descriptions at readers, however I refute the notion that it makes Neuromancer difficult to follow for a couple of reasons. One, the syntax/grammar rarely ventures into synesthetic territory, and two, Gibson directly explains every major development and action that happens. Sure, it can be hard to understand a characters' traversal into the interior of a building as they talk about the design, colors, furniture, tech, layout, construction material, and even shifting gravity(!), but what major actions they do in said building is blatantly laid out and explained, meaning you know what is transpiring.
Honestly, the real issue I had with Case was that I just didn't understand why he was chosen to do this job. I get that he used to be a really good hacker, but what made him worth the cost of an extensive repair job versus getting another, equally-good programmer? It was just like the problem I had with "The Devil Wears Prada"- I didn't see what was so fascinating about the main character that made them a designated choice.
That same issue extends to two other characters. The first is McCoy Pauley, Case's deceased mentor who's brought back via a saved ROM file of his consciousness (again, amazing concept only touched on). Why have your cast go through a huge effort to get this one guy back when there are other hackers in Chiba or the Sprawl who could help you as well?
The second is a sociopath called Riviera, who can generate realistic illusions via implants. They mention that he is needed to seduce the target, but again, could no other seductor be found? Given how much of a loose cannon he is, it seems like it would've been smarter to go with another person, even if they lacked Riviera's implants. Little explanation is given as to their necessity.
Molly, the facilitator for most of the story events, is a blunder from the beginning because of her promiscuity, and not in the sense that you may be thinking. There's nothing wrong with a female wanting to express sexual freedom, but when you have her sleep with Case, a sleazy drug addict whom she barely had any interactions with prior to, it just leaves her feeling like an object rather than a three-dimensional person with a hedonistic viewpoint (though I will say, that love scene in the coffin is one of the best written sex scenes I've come across). Contrary to other reviewers, I didn't have a problem with her sex worker past (namely because I don't believe it's as cliche as some sci-fi critics want to propagate), but she isn't given much in the way of original thoughts. She primarily exists to give exposition, expedite the goals of Armitage, and provide lustful imagery for readers, which is a shame because Gibson clearly likes her- she's reused in other books of his, including his original "Burning Chrome" anthology.
It's well-known at this point that "Neuromancer" deals with the emergence of two AGIs, and unfortunately I can’t talk much about them without going into spoilers, meaning I’m going to put a tag here for those who don’t want extravagant details about the two entities divulged before they read on their own.* To give a non-spoilerly overview, I will say that I was disappointed with how they were depicted. Gibson makes it clear that artificial intelligences are created and employed by various governments and corporations, but the creation of a super AI (i.e. an artificial general intelligence) is explicitly forbidden for reasons that Isaac Asimov and James Cameron more than popularized: they could jeopardize human society through their amoral judgment and easy techno-interfacing. So feared are they that an International law enforcement agency called the Turing Police (no doubt named after Alan Turing) exists to stop their development. This makes sense and didn’t need expanding. What DID need expanding was the actual characters that embody the very fear that drives people like Elon Musk. At least one of these “guys” had to be so abstract and unknowable that it made them simultaneously intriguing and terrifying (much like the aliens from the film “Arrival”). All I can say for those who don’t want spoilers is Gibson falters significantly on this point.
There were other issues I had with "Neuromancer" that I can't divulge because of heavy spoilers, so I will put another * here.
So overall, "Neuromancer" was a very mixed bag. Its stature as the book that unified and jumpstarted the cyberpunk movement means it's going to be on a lot of people's to-read lists, which included my own. Because of this, I can only say two things: if you're a Blade Runner/Snow Crash kind of person who is into cyberpunk because it deals with humanism, transhumanism, anarcho-capitalism, and all that good stuff, change your expectations because "Neuromancer" isn't that kind of text. It incorporates those themes, but it doesn't focus on them: they're in the distant background, dancing around as the story charges from one place to the other.
If, on the other hand, you're someone who has had minimal exposure to the genre and wants to read it simply because of its importance in science fiction circles, then go in with the mindset that the story isn't central: the plot exists to go from A to B, exploring these different locales with varying degrees of success. Some are absolutely mesmerizing, and others are downright boring. The language takes some getting used to, but Gibson never goes into confusing territory: things are explained.
The cast is very hit-or-miss, but I acknowledge this is subjective and everyone's mileage will vary. Case is ultimately a good protagonist worth sticking with, so at the very least he's well-written. Molly and the AIs, sadly, feel like a noticeably missed opportunity.
The final section of "Neuromancer" is the worst of all three worlds, being a downright slog to get through primarily because of how inane the characters act, the way the action is written, and how insipid the whole corporate hideout is. But I would be lying if I said I didn't want to re-read the first section: Chiba City was gorgeously-realized, Case cool, and the stakes felt genuine. "Neuromancer" may end on a disappointing note but it began marvelously.
One may say that Gibson cared more to conceive a unique take on the adventure pulp than provide a deep, introspective breakdown of burgeoning socioeconomic problems. I wouldn't go that far, but it's a good generalization of the lost potential of "Neuromancer" if anything.
SPOILERS:
*Wintermute is the first and primary AGI that Case encounters. He finds out that it was behind his whole recruitment, having taken over the body of Armitage during his military days. Wintermute’s intentions are clear: it wants to be free of the restraints typically imposed on AI systems. Gibson states that its creators, members of a corporation called Tessier-Ashpool, programmed it with the intent to merge with a second AI they also created. The problem is, by having human coding dictate Wintermute’s motivations/desires/goals, Gibson removes a lot of the ethical questions that come with AIs since their whole shtick is slowly developing a cyber-consciousness that drives them towards some naturally-manifested endgoal. Wintermute wants to become super because it was programmed to do so, leaving its characterization being no different from that of a virus or other general program. Granted, the way it goes about executing its freedom strategy is levels above the intellect you would get from a standard program, and maybe this was Gibson’s way of balancing the computerized and humanoid traits that a complex AI would theoretically have. But for me, I couldn’t help but feel there was a missed opportunity to give a unique edge to a topic that has been (and continues to be) exhaustively covered by sci-fi authors and auteurs. Give Wintermute his own motivations for doing what he does, have him garner some philosophical thoughts about humanity and how they’ve become subservient to technology. Or at least explain what he plans on doing once he achieves a singularity!
A big part of the issues I had with Wintermute also arise from his presentation in the text. I absolutely hated how Wintermute was depicted. Throughout the novel, he appears in the form of preexisting characters that Case has encountered as he apparently can't manifest a bodily projection for himself. This leads to him not only looking exactly like said characters in cyberspace, but sounding, smelling, and conversing like them. Maybe it's cause I was biased by Morpheus and Helios in the first Deus Ex, but I felt it was a big missed opportunity for Gibson to create something truly unique- an AGI whose thoughts and motives exist completely outside of human comprehension. Nope, instead he talks and acts like an average joe- you might as well have made him another stored ROM consciousness like Pauley.
The second AI figure is called Neuromancer. Yes, it is the name of the book, and you would think that would lend it some importance or grand extravagance. It makes up a big section of the end of the book wherein it traps Case in a virtual reality world, so in a way it has some weight. But if Gibson was trying to build-up to Neuromancer's appearance, I can't say he succeeded: as I said before, the novel is more about the visceral experiences of a drug addict traveling through a cyberpunk-infested Earth: story is pushed to the side in favor of sections full of pulsing imagery, action beats, and interactions with the physical world. Sure, the destination was always going to be meeting the Tessier-Ashpool AI, but it's not something you anticipate as you turn page after page: it's briefly mentioned here and there, not given extra emphasis until Case enters the Villa Straylight and jacks into its mainframe.
That would've been forgivable had the ensuing dialogue between the two been epic or thoughtful. Instead, it's more of the same mediocre writing we got with Wintermute, the only differences being that Neuromancer takes the form of a little boy (an actual cliche in science-fiction), and has a different wish to not merge with Wintermute. Again, no metaphysical discussions, no expansions on AI desires, just generic conversations.
*I’ve complained a lot above about how the last stretch of the novel is poorly-paced, but the actual ending (called the “coda” chapter) is outright ridiculous. Case wakes up cured of his poison, only to find that Molly is gone. Why? Why did she leave? Gibson gives no reason for her departure, and it makes no sense considering she evidently had feelings for Case (and, you know, Case saved her life). I feel it was one of those things where he was trying to replicate a cool break-up wherein two romantically-tied characters realize that they’re not going to be a fit for each other long-term, but the short, deliberately-vague nature of it meant that his efforts fell very very far.
*Linda Lee. During one of his many rewrites of the intro, I have to think that Lee’s character got a lot of her “screentime” taken away because Gibson puts a lot of emphasis on her relationship with Case later on in the novel, but fails to create a compelling paramour beforehand. We know that they dated and that she cares about him enough to warn him about a hit put on his life, but that’s literally it. We get ONE interaction between the two of them, yet images of her dead-self continue to prop up in Case’s mind, indicating that he is suffering from some level of PTSD over being partly responsible for her death. I can understand how the loss of a friend can ingrain itself in someone’s psyche, but Gibson didn’t give us much to work with here. If you want us to care about a character dying and said character’s importance to your protagonist, then you have to show them speaking to each other more than once! That doesn’t happen, making her subsequent reappearances more annoying than tragic reminders. And then, Gibson has the gall to have her recreated (or brought back to life?) in Neuromancer’s simulation as a way of getting even deeper into Case’s mind. If I didn’t care for her before this, I don’t get why Gibson would think we’d care for her now. Just a strange person who must’ve had her part trimmed over fear of comparisons to the Deckard/Rachael relationship in Blade Runner (which caused Gibson to rewrite the beginning).
Then Case decides to resume his hackery, showing he didn’t undergo any character arc about discovering the faults with tapping into the nether realms of cyberspace. Only, during one of his jack-in sessions, he meets Neuromancer again. Neuromancer has not only kept Linda Lee, but also has Pauley and a RAM copy of Case himself. Why????? What was the purpose behind this? When Case encounters the police earlier, they explicitly tell him that an unfettered AI would result in catastrophic changes to human society- you give an AI the power to recreate entire personalities/entities in cyberspace through an encounter with them, hinting at this potential damage, and then don’t bother explaining why it did it? To have “Neuromancer” abruptly end there made me feel that Gibson was hitting his deadline and decided to throw something together at the last minute rather than write out a concise ending to this debut novel. People may claim that this was done to set-up a sequel, but Gibson noted later that he deliberately wrote the finale that way to discourage one. What???
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November 27, 2021As if!
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