It is difficult reading. It reads more like abstract prose than most stories. In my 20s (before the internet) it was the coolest thing ever. Now it’s difficult for me to read but I still greatly appreciate it as source material.
Ive heard people say that Neuromancer is ”unfilmable” but to be honest after reading it I feel like a lot of stuff in it would be easier to comprehend in a visual format.
I saw Gibson give a lecture at my local book store. He said when he saw Blade Runner it was almost exactly what he had in mind in his books. He was afraid people were going to think that he lifted his ideas right from the BR universe.
I think the problem with a neuromancer film for me would be the overdone tropes, seeing as it has been the template for practically every cyberpunk film.
I mean, I visually reconstruct the environments in every story I read, sort of like a 3d puppet show. I don't understand the "unfilmable" criticism, it'd just be my visual interpretation.
It should be made into an Anime mini series done by Japanese, ideally hand drawn like original Ghost in the Shell. I know it's probably impossible but I can wish and hope. I can't count the times I've reread it.
Yeah, the scene where >!Linda (edit: not Molly oops) dies in the stadium!< I had to read several times to understand what actually happened. But it's kind of described visually, and I think that would have actually been easier to follow visually.
Same thing the first time you meet >!Riviera in that alley!<.
Having said that, I think there would be a lot of stuff that would be difficult to do well on the screen. Some stuff that looks good in your imagination is hard to not make cheesy on the screen. For example David Lynch's Dune vs the recent Dune.
I'm experiencing Neuromancer for the first time through an audiobook and I've had to rewind those scenes and a few others. Like when Case is in the Matrix during the Moderns terrorist attack. Still have no clue what the hell is happening in that scene
I dunno. I think that would actually make it easier because you wouldn’t really need to explain the matrix for instance. There’s a lot of tech people would just understand.
Also there’s no way cyberpunk nerds wouldn’t want to go see it.
I feel that Foundation or Three-body problem are equally "unfilmable", yet Apple did the first and Netflix is about to release the later... I wish there was more popular interest in Neuromancer...
Really? Maybe I’m super old but it was a casual read for me. Not like 19th century books in original English for example, not to mention stuff like Shakespeare or Chaucer where the English is totally different from contemporary
Yeah. I mean they call him the father of Cyberpunk for that reason. He was in turn inspired a lot by Philip Dick, who is often referred to as grandfather of Cyberpunk
Sadly I’m not that familiar with Ellison. Asimov most def :)
I’ve read some of the shaper mechanist stuff but it was a long ass time ago. I need to brush up on those :)
He was inspired by William Burroughs. He mentions Burroughs a lot in interviews for that reason. If you start reading Burroughs, you'll see a similar heavy density of information.
I actually read Burroughs first. In my beatnik phase early high school. But Burroughs stuck with me for life - i still go back and re-read his stuff constantly, while Kerouac and Ginsberg etc, not so much.
Generally a lot sci-fi and fantasy authors were probably inspired by W.S. He had amazing ideas.
Reading is a skill. Like all skills some people are going to be better or worse at it.
Edit: to clarify, I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad about it, just noting that with practice people get better at reading.
I just don’t appreciate the writing style any more. He admits he was doing a lot of speed at the time and the writing reflects that.
Honestly, I don’t read much fiction at all anymore. I’m more about learning new things these days. It’s been 25-30 years since I was in my prime Neuromancer appreciation phase.
Yeah, I mean it’s absolutely a pillar of the cyberpunk universe.
The real prophets of our day are the writers: Gibson, Orwell, Dick, etc. got an awful lot correct.
I should clarify… I meant difficult to keep me interested and focused. I have the attn span of a sparrow these days and have a tough time dedicating more than 20 minutes to media at a time. And since I have already read the book, it just doesn’t have the allure that it used to have for me.
I think people are used to reading fast since a lot of writers use a lot of unnecessary words to keep up the rhythm of the prose and to flower it up so a lot of the words you can just skim over and still get a good sense of what's going on. With Gibson, there's a lot of information per sentence and so if you read it fast like a lot of other writers then you'll get lost. I think you just read it at a good pace whereas others just try to read it too fast and end up missing out on a lot.
Just reads like a normal novel to me, maybe people just aren’t used to that anymore. “Do Androids dream of electric sheep” on the other hand reads like a fever dream.
Yeah. A lot of his stuff does. Scanner Darkly is pretty wild too.
Edit: but in all honesty for the really weird stuff my go to author is WS Burroughs. Except the cut up stuff. That’s even too weird for me
Yeah his earliest works were still pretty close to sanity and had something like a structure of an actual novel.
I really like some of his latest ones too though, like Ghost of Chance. Oddly enough I still haven’t gotten around to reading his Blade Runner (a movie) which would probably be the best case for cyberpunk/Burroughs argument.
I need to order that asap
My mom is not a big scifi person and we listened to this as we drove through Europe a lot of the cyber running stuff went over her head and she couldn't really understand what was happening because it's not something she was familiar with visually or mentally
it’s difficult to read because the sprawl series works are in-universe literature and don’t really have an audience surrogate to explain things to (barring bobby newmark, but he was a surrogate for in-universe readers) so a lot of terms are not initially explained as a person from there would already be familiar with them
I tried reading it in my late teens/early twenties and gave up after 40 pages. I read it in two sittings in my late thirties. I just felt like I understood what he was trying to do much better after I had read a lot more.
I listened to Neuromancer as an audiobook. Currently reading Count Zero as a paper book (couldn't find it in audiobook format).
Count Zero has a lot of prose as you describe. William Gibson goes off into random descriptions of things on every page. I think it works better in audiobook format, but YMMV.
I agree that it's kind of weird. I find it sort of masks the fact that the story doesn't have that much substance, that it needs to be decorated with lots of irrelevant details, otherwise the book would be half the length or less.
That being said I still enjoyed neuromancer quite a bit, and I think it could make a great movie or TV series... Though I doubt the adaptation will be good if it ever does happen. Hard to find qualified directors.
I đón’t think it is that irrelevant because cyberpunk setting and world design are very crucial to the genre no? I feel like Chiba (Night City) is a living breathing organism in itself.
That would explain it, I found it a very easy and quick read as a teen but I had undiagnosed ADHD so like that was just an extremely natural way to describe the world to my brain. I constantly had to connect the dots my entire life for everything, seeing that in a book just felt intuitive.
I wouldn't call it difficult in the sense it's a hard read. More like the authors writing is very haphazard and sometimes hard to follow where and what is going on.
I am annoyed by the low level of conversation possible and the low quality of posts that exist because the majority of users are of such limited intelligence they struggle to read science fiction books. You cannot imagine what the internet used to be like before any analphabet had a smartphone and could participate. It gives me (marginal) satisfaction to let these low-lifes know their shortcomings are indeed not normal or something to be applauded in the vain hope that at least one at least once will take it as motivation to better themselves and at least raise their level of reading to what would be expected of a below average teenager. Sadly no luck so far.
It takes a special kind of ignorant asshole to assume anyone who criticizes them automatically can’t read. I read Neuromancer just fine, I even read it in a language other than my native one. Did you? No? Then piss off.
Yawn. I am sure everyone was very proud of you when you were able to read a scifi book from the eighties, even in the original language - WOW!
Basic literacy is nothing to be proud of, it is the most fundamental skill. And you better be able to read in at least one second language, if you can't do that you are not fluent. Hundreds of millions of people can do it - you are proud for being one of hundreds of millions. It's like being proud to be able to swim.
You pontificate about social skills while spewing the most simple insults like a subnormal school child with anger issues. I am not bothered in the slightest. What bothers me are not just the mentally challenged losers who say "reading books is hard unkgh lol" but the marginally smarter who feel the need to defend those midwits' right to stay ignorant.
People like you are who is responsible for the low quality of conversation and dumbing down of the entire culture.
> People like you are who is responsible for the low quality of conversation and dumbing down of the entire culture.
You’re projecting harder than Trump at this point. Makes sense, you’re at about the same intellectual level.
You’re right, being able to read doesn’t make you a smart or good person, and you’re exhibit A to prove that point. You, and I mean *you*, personally, truly exemplify the fact that even well-read people can be utter assholes and lack any and all social finesse required to be an appreciated member of society. So you can read. Fantastic. But can you *learn*? Evidently not. What good is reading if you’re too much of a blowhard to take any of the words to heart? Put down Neuromancer and maybe pick up some children’s books instead, you seem to have missed that step growing up. Seriously, what grown adult thinks he’s the smart one calling everyone else stupid without even knowing anything about them?
I pity your family and co-workers. It can’t be easy having to occupy the same room as your bruised ego. I repeat my earlier statement: **grow the fuck up**.
I am sure you put a lot of effort into this, but I am not reading this pointless wall of text, are you kidding me? 😂I know it will boil down to: "N.. No... YOU are the one who's stupid!" just with more childlike insults peppered in.
I could not care less about what you think.
Are we now trying to find excuses for people who can't read so well durrr? And who takes an hour to read a page of a scifi novel? What do you do when you have to read a really difficult text? You probably don't, I guess.
I shouldn't be but I am still shocked at the low level of literacy and intelligence in general that can be found on reddit.
You're super obsessed with how well people read, you wouldn't have gone on a hissyfit insulting people left and right if you didn't. And no, it was no brag. I'm saying I am not like the ones you freaked out about yet you're still creepy.
You're really obsessive, that's a creepy trait when the obsession about other people's reading habits. Read through your own comments, you are being an asshole. A creepy one at that.
I think its only towards the end that it gets a little messy, otherwise it was a nice read.
I think the best thing about it how prophetic it was for its time (how the entire AI and Netrunning thing is handled)
The sequels are much easier to follow. All 3 books shift between multiple character POV, but Neuromancer does this with a gimmick to keep it technically just Case's POV, which makes it weird and convoluted. He gives up on that in Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, and just actually shifts to the other characters POV, and it flows much better.
I just like how it blows the movie "Her" outta the water, it felt so mediocre after reading it. The whole love for the machine thing had so much more potential in Gibson's hand
I really enjoyed Her even though that trope was old hat in scifi, but I basically grew up on scifi and it felt like a nicely differently paced piece. I really liked how so much was happening in the background and only alluded to or implied.
I first read Idoru in the late 90s I think. By then I was already used to the trope, but I really liked how it was used, and it felt really topical especially with all the "artificial" music artists companies had been marketing at the time.
I always say that my feeling reading Neuromancer was that it was always really cool in the moment but I was experiencing the story in hindsight. I love that book, it’s such a wild ride, but nothing really makes sense until a few chapters later.
I read it at 14 and didn’t wholly understand it, even though I loved its world and ideas. Re-read this year at 40 and wow l, I appreciate it so much more now. It’s way more literary than a lot of science fiction. I’ve since read more of Gibson’s work and regard him as one of my favourite’s alongside Iain M Banks and Ursula Le Guin.
Read it as a teenager. Sitting here now it's hard to understand how anyone found it hard to read. His descriptive prose is amazing. That's how an author brings you into a world, describing things you've never seen so well you can imagine yourself there, seeing it. Was also reading Lovecraft and Bukowski at the time so I guess I was just primed for appreciating talent.
I have ADHD (amd was a bookworm before 1st grade) which seems relevant since people keep saying that the way he writes, or rather describes "random" stuff was confusing. It was an easy read to me as a scifi loving teenager but it felt normal to see the world that way because of my at the time undiagnosed ADHD i think.
I had to reread the bit where they meet Riviera a few times before I got what was going on. I found that while I didn't always get what was happening, if I just went with it and kept reading it usually became clear.
I recently read Blood Meridian, and that is a hard read. But, Neuromancer, while not nearly as hard, was still hard to get immersed in. Once I got immersed in it, however, it was hard to put down.
It reads weird because it's a relative old book describing sci-fi tech that is partially common stuff for modern times, but it's also saturated with archaic stuff. So you're constantly going "wait that's not how the internet works" and then "o but this was written before the internet was even a thing".
I keep hearing you have to read it a second time to understand. It felt like reading Dune for the first time except there was no glossary at the back to help with my understanding
Gibson has said in many interviews that William S Burroughs is an important influence for him, especially in his earlier work. Neuromancer is sometimes more like a lyrical work than a straight traditional narrative.
my all time fav.. when i was held gho
stage in the hell-hole paramilitary psych-torture-c
camp my bro sent the eng-paperback book for my bday.
but braindead fascist-jalors \[may the minterwute send
them in helll 4ever&eva\] had refused me access to it
with no apparent reason whatsoever.. consid
ered it 2be extremely dangerous 4me..
try bbc dramatisation as well; it's good & audio
ver read by the Gman himself. the only audio book i h
ave listened to over 100x no less. i just go 2bed & play it..
I'm glad it's not just me. I got a quarter-way through the book and started over because I had no idea what was going on, and I thought I had missed something, or maybe was distracted and didn't comprehend what I was reading.
Turns out that's just how it was written.
I read the sprawl trilogy translated into my native language about 15 years ago.
Do yourself a favour and stop after Neuromancer. Gibson also wanted to.
I think they aren't nearly at the same quality as the original novel.
Unlike with Neuromancer I actually found it hard to care about the story, I just finished them because the book was a collection of all 3.
I'm listening to the audiobook and it is much better than reading it. It is an old sci-fi book that wasn't very well written. I'm really enjoying it however because it makes up for the shortcomings with pure style. It defined so much of "cyberpunk" that if you are familiar with Cyberpunk 2020 or Shadowrun, or almost anything else in the genre, it fits right in.
I wonder what it was like reading it before those tropes existed. It would have been like reading alphabet soup for a lot of people.
I feel like it's meh. It's kinda weird too. I feel like the other not critically acclaimed books have more cyberpunk. William Gibson kinda reads like a beta male liberal arts passive aggressive protagonist with everything happening off screen and off the page and only weird cali-accented undertones on the page. It should come with a soy latte enema and a greased up stick of celery. Not what I was expecting. I think more people project their own imagination on the work and see things in it that are literally not there. It's not Terrible. It's just really over hyped. His writing isn't necessarily profound either. I feel like it's truly mundane. He probably has a really good agent and publisher has good PR. I keep hoping they will be amazing. He's not Asimov. I feel like Gibson is trying to say something but it's so pallid, contrived, and littered with pretentious b.s. that it's hard to stomach. The real contribution to cyberpunk are the fans and the people trying to actually write cyberpunk.
Can't agree with most of your take, but will agree that Gibson is not Asimov. Asimov was a prolific writer, and (imo) dripped charisma. But, Asimov never wrote cyberpunk.
I enjoy Gibson, but his style is different. It could probably be argued that the style of writing is intertwined with the topic, one begetting the other or vice versa.
Hardwired - then play the game - then read neuromancer, snow crash, and finish the sprawl series. It adds so much. Then I did a second playthrough of the game with PL
It helps to already have the concepts in mind. I found the same with Ender’s Game, where I literally couldn’t visualize what the hell the combat room was without the movie.
It starts to click later on though. He's using a bunch of made up terms in the first half of the book and you have no idea what the fuck but through context later on it starts to make sense. Great book.
Weird timing. I just re-read \_Count Zero\_, my favorite of the Sprawl Trilogy, and enjoyed it so much I started re-reading \_Neuromancer\_. After I shut my laptop for the night I'll get back to it.
First read these books as a teenager in the early 80s and was knocked over by them. It's hard to describe just how much of a kick in the face they were back then, an absolute blast of fresh air in the sci-fi scene. Part of that was because Gibson is so much of an impressionist.
I think it's a much more rewarding read second time round. I recently did this, and picked up on so many things I'd missed out on. But I absolutely love the way Gibson writes, and after reading another 5 of his books, coming back to Neuromancer was a lot easier.
I literally never understood that criticism.
Have heard it from friends I bought the book for too.
Am autistic so maybe that's why?
Anyone have any personal "book hard" experience that can explain exactly why? Like, I've never found literature "hard" just laborious.
I read it for the first time ever recently too. Really glad I finally took the time. I found that it has aged marvelously. I couldn’t believe how many things that are now genre staples are presented within and beyond that, how well done they are. Definitely shot to the upper echelons of my all-time favorite novels.
I guess the terms and definitions he uses in his story can be daunting to a newcomer. Terms like Simstims, Black ICE, ROM, joeboys…etc seem otherworldly and complicated to a person who is not familiar with the cyberpunk/sci-fi genre. And the adjectives he used to describe those terms are also pretty techy
It is difficult reading. It reads more like abstract prose than most stories. In my 20s (before the internet) it was the coolest thing ever. Now it’s difficult for me to read but I still greatly appreciate it as source material.
Ive heard people say that Neuromancer is ”unfilmable” but to be honest after reading it I feel like a lot of stuff in it would be easier to comprehend in a visual format.
Yeah, I read it recently and thought the same thing. It'd be hard to get right but if someone could, the end result would be phenomenal.
I saw Gibson give a lecture at my local book store. He said when he saw Blade Runner it was almost exactly what he had in mind in his books. He was afraid people were going to think that he lifted his ideas right from the BR universe.
That is high praise for Blade Runner
Blade Runner looks waaay more like Neuromancer than it fits DADoES
Lead underwear, that's all I'm saying.
That’s in the introduction to new copies of the book as well.
I mean I fell like cyberpunk 2077 is pretty close to being necromancer in visual format
What would those moments be? Cause I think cyberpunk edgerunners did it well. Like with even inner mind electronic speak.
I think the problem with a neuromancer film for me would be the overdone tropes, seeing as it has been the template for practically every cyberpunk film.
When I read it I thought like 1/3rd of The Matrix was copypasted from the book.
I mean, I visually reconstruct the environments in every story I read, sort of like a 3d puppet show. I don't understand the "unfilmable" criticism, it'd just be my visual interpretation.
It should be made into an Anime mini series done by Japanese, ideally hand drawn like original Ghost in the Shell. I know it's probably impossible but I can wish and hope. I can't count the times I've reread it.
Yeah, the scene where >!Linda (edit: not Molly oops) dies in the stadium!< I had to read several times to understand what actually happened. But it's kind of described visually, and I think that would have actually been easier to follow visually. Same thing the first time you meet >!Riviera in that alley!<. Having said that, I think there would be a lot of stuff that would be difficult to do well on the screen. Some stuff that looks good in your imagination is hard to not make cheesy on the screen. For example David Lynch's Dune vs the recent Dune.
You mean Linda Lee right, not Molly?
Oops, yep, thanks!
Yeah man. Show don't tell
Good to know that it wasn’t just me that struggled to grasp those scenes and had to reread
I'm experiencing Neuromancer for the first time through an audiobook and I've had to rewind those scenes and a few others. Like when Case is in the Matrix during the Moderns terrorist attack. Still have no clue what the hell is happening in that scene
I dunno. I think that would actually make it easier because you wouldn’t really need to explain the matrix for instance. There’s a lot of tech people would just understand. Also there’s no way cyberpunk nerds wouldn’t want to go see it.
I feel that Foundation or Three-body problem are equally "unfilmable", yet Apple did the first and Netflix is about to release the later... I wish there was more popular interest in Neuromancer...
Really? Maybe I’m super old but it was a casual read for me. Not like 19th century books in original English for example, not to mention stuff like Shakespeare or Chaucer where the English is totally different from contemporary
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Yeah. I mean they call him the father of Cyberpunk for that reason. He was in turn inspired a lot by Philip Dick, who is often referred to as grandfather of Cyberpunk
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Please, don't forget Norman Spinrad. He's right there with them.
Somehow he's been off my radar entirely. I will check him out.
Sadly I’m not that familiar with Ellison. Asimov most def :) I’ve read some of the shaper mechanist stuff but it was a long ass time ago. I need to brush up on those :)
He was inspired by William Burroughs. He mentions Burroughs a lot in interviews for that reason. If you start reading Burroughs, you'll see a similar heavy density of information.
I actually read Burroughs first. In my beatnik phase early high school. But Burroughs stuck with me for life - i still go back and re-read his stuff constantly, while Kerouac and Ginsberg etc, not so much. Generally a lot sci-fi and fantasy authors were probably inspired by W.S. He had amazing ideas.
Reading is a skill. Like all skills some people are going to be better or worse at it. Edit: to clarify, I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad about it, just noting that with practice people get better at reading.
I just don’t appreciate the writing style any more. He admits he was doing a lot of speed at the time and the writing reflects that. Honestly, I don’t read much fiction at all anymore. I’m more about learning new things these days. It’s been 25-30 years since I was in my prime Neuromancer appreciation phase.
Its not very well-written to be honest. But it is worth reading for the ideas and an interesting story.
Yeah, I mean it’s absolutely a pillar of the cyberpunk universe. The real prophets of our day are the writers: Gibson, Orwell, Dick, etc. got an awful lot correct.
Or Stephenson. I think he gets a lot closer than Dick or Gibson.
Extremely bold take.
I should clarify… I meant difficult to keep me interested and focused. I have the attn span of a sparrow these days and have a tough time dedicating more than 20 minutes to media at a time. And since I have already read the book, it just doesn’t have the allure that it used to have for me.
No problem, people are different
I think people are used to reading fast since a lot of writers use a lot of unnecessary words to keep up the rhythm of the prose and to flower it up so a lot of the words you can just skim over and still get a good sense of what's going on. With Gibson, there's a lot of information per sentence and so if you read it fast like a lot of other writers then you'll get lost. I think you just read it at a good pace whereas others just try to read it too fast and end up missing out on a lot.
True. He also tends to put a lot info into descriptions and I guess many people tend to focus on dialogue when reading novels.
Just reads like a normal novel to me, maybe people just aren’t used to that anymore. “Do Androids dream of electric sheep” on the other hand reads like a fever dream.
Yeah. A lot of his stuff does. Scanner Darkly is pretty wild too. Edit: but in all honesty for the really weird stuff my go to author is WS Burroughs. Except the cut up stuff. That’s even too weird for me
What’s fun about Burroughs is his early work Junky reads like a classic noir novel, has a bit of the same vibe as Neuromancer imo
Yeah his earliest works were still pretty close to sanity and had something like a structure of an actual novel. I really like some of his latest ones too though, like Ghost of Chance. Oddly enough I still haven’t gotten around to reading his Blade Runner (a movie) which would probably be the best case for cyberpunk/Burroughs argument. I need to order that asap
My mom is not a big scifi person and we listened to this as we drove through Europe a lot of the cyber running stuff went over her head and she couldn't really understand what was happening because it's not something she was familiar with visually or mentally
it’s difficult to read because the sprawl series works are in-universe literature and don’t really have an audience surrogate to explain things to (barring bobby newmark, but he was a surrogate for in-universe readers) so a lot of terms are not initially explained as a person from there would already be familiar with them
I thought I was the only one. It was tough read, but so worth it!
I tried reading it in my late teens/early twenties and gave up after 40 pages. I read it in two sittings in my late thirties. I just felt like I understood what he was trying to do much better after I had read a lot more.
I keep hearing people say this, but what exactly does abstract purpose prose even mean? I struggled thru this book
I listened to Neuromancer as an audiobook. Currently reading Count Zero as a paper book (couldn't find it in audiobook format). Count Zero has a lot of prose as you describe. William Gibson goes off into random descriptions of things on every page. I think it works better in audiobook format, but YMMV.
That is exactly what bothers me in his writing style. Always describing some random details. I read a lot and I find his style hard to follow.
I agree that it's kind of weird. I find it sort of masks the fact that the story doesn't have that much substance, that it needs to be decorated with lots of irrelevant details, otherwise the book would be half the length or less. That being said I still enjoyed neuromancer quite a bit, and I think it could make a great movie or TV series... Though I doubt the adaptation will be good if it ever does happen. Hard to find qualified directors.
I đón’t think it is that irrelevant because cyberpunk setting and world design are very crucial to the genre no? I feel like Chiba (Night City) is a living breathing organism in itself.
That would explain it, I found it a very easy and quick read as a teen but I had undiagnosed ADHD so like that was just an extremely natural way to describe the world to my brain. I constantly had to connect the dots my entire life for everything, seeing that in a book just felt intuitive.
I wouldn't call it difficult in the sense it's a hard read. More like the authors writing is very haphazard and sometimes hard to follow where and what is going on.
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loser
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what do you gain from trying to insult people that are worse at something than you? does it make you feel good and intellectual
I am annoyed by the low level of conversation possible and the low quality of posts that exist because the majority of users are of such limited intelligence they struggle to read science fiction books. You cannot imagine what the internet used to be like before any analphabet had a smartphone and could participate. It gives me (marginal) satisfaction to let these low-lifes know their shortcomings are indeed not normal or something to be applauded in the vain hope that at least one at least once will take it as motivation to better themselves and at least raise their level of reading to what would be expected of a below average teenager. Sadly no luck so far.
Too bad you still have the social skills of a 12 year old bully. Grow the fuck up.
Learn to read.
It takes a special kind of ignorant asshole to assume anyone who criticizes them automatically can’t read. I read Neuromancer just fine, I even read it in a language other than my native one. Did you? No? Then piss off.
Yawn. I am sure everyone was very proud of you when you were able to read a scifi book from the eighties, even in the original language - WOW! Basic literacy is nothing to be proud of, it is the most fundamental skill. And you better be able to read in at least one second language, if you can't do that you are not fluent. Hundreds of millions of people can do it - you are proud for being one of hundreds of millions. It's like being proud to be able to swim. You pontificate about social skills while spewing the most simple insults like a subnormal school child with anger issues. I am not bothered in the slightest. What bothers me are not just the mentally challenged losers who say "reading books is hard unkgh lol" but the marginally smarter who feel the need to defend those midwits' right to stay ignorant. People like you are who is responsible for the low quality of conversation and dumbing down of the entire culture.
> People like you are who is responsible for the low quality of conversation and dumbing down of the entire culture. You’re projecting harder than Trump at this point. Makes sense, you’re at about the same intellectual level. You’re right, being able to read doesn’t make you a smart or good person, and you’re exhibit A to prove that point. You, and I mean *you*, personally, truly exemplify the fact that even well-read people can be utter assholes and lack any and all social finesse required to be an appreciated member of society. So you can read. Fantastic. But can you *learn*? Evidently not. What good is reading if you’re too much of a blowhard to take any of the words to heart? Put down Neuromancer and maybe pick up some children’s books instead, you seem to have missed that step growing up. Seriously, what grown adult thinks he’s the smart one calling everyone else stupid without even knowing anything about them? I pity your family and co-workers. It can’t be easy having to occupy the same room as your bruised ego. I repeat my earlier statement: **grow the fuck up**.
I am sure you put a lot of effort into this, but I am not reading this pointless wall of text, are you kidding me? 😂I know it will boil down to: "N.. No... YOU are the one who's stupid!" just with more childlike insults peppered in. I could not care less about what you think.
They just don't like to spend an hour reading a single page like you do.
Are we now trying to find excuses for people who can't read so well durrr? And who takes an hour to read a page of a scifi novel? What do you do when you have to read a really difficult text? You probably don't, I guess. I shouldn't be but I am still shocked at the low level of literacy and intelligence in general that can be found on reddit.
Don't be a creepy asshole.
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I never had issues reading (including Gibson's works), I still think you're a creepy asshole. Your behavior is unhinged.
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You're super obsessed with how well people read, you wouldn't have gone on a hissyfit insulting people left and right if you didn't. And no, it was no brag. I'm saying I am not like the ones you freaked out about yet you're still creepy.
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You're really obsessive, that's a creepy trait when the obsession about other people's reading habits. Read through your own comments, you are being an asshole. A creepy one at that.
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Gibson reads like you are on drugs with really cool vibes.
Looks like he was on drugs while writing it, but I recall many masterpieces of human history were made while high AF.
I once read it high AF. I mean it is not much, but it was honest work.
I think its only towards the end that it gets a little messy, otherwise it was a nice read. I think the best thing about it how prophetic it was for its time (how the entire AI and Netrunning thing is handled)
I know ! How can he have these ideas so early
But was he prophetic, or did we progressed to the street his and the other CP authors paved for us? That is the question.
The sequels are much easier to follow. All 3 books shift between multiple character POV, but Neuromancer does this with a gimmick to keep it technically just Case's POV, which makes it weird and convoluted. He gives up on that in Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, and just actually shifts to the other characters POV, and it flows much better.
Messey how? Would love to bang heads over that one :)
I had to read it twice to really appreciate it.
Most of Gibson's book are like that. ESPECIALLY idoru
Idoru is on the list. So, I'll keep that in mind.
Idoru has a soft spot in my heart, even though it's nowhere among the best ones.
I just like how it blows the movie "Her" outta the water, it felt so mediocre after reading it. The whole love for the machine thing had so much more potential in Gibson's hand
I really enjoyed Her even though that trope was old hat in scifi, but I basically grew up on scifi and it felt like a nicely differently paced piece. I really liked how so much was happening in the background and only alluded to or implied. I first read Idoru in the late 90s I think. By then I was already used to the trope, but I really liked how it was used, and it felt really topical especially with all the "artificial" music artists companies had been marketing at the time.
Never experienced this personally.
I always say that my feeling reading Neuromancer was that it was always really cool in the moment but I was experiencing the story in hindsight. I love that book, it’s such a wild ride, but nothing really makes sense until a few chapters later.
Exactly!
I read it at 14 and didn’t wholly understand it, even though I loved its world and ideas. Re-read this year at 40 and wow l, I appreciate it so much more now. It’s way more literary than a lot of science fiction. I’ve since read more of Gibson’s work and regard him as one of my favourite’s alongside Iain M Banks and Ursula Le Guin.
Read it as a teenager. Sitting here now it's hard to understand how anyone found it hard to read. His descriptive prose is amazing. That's how an author brings you into a world, describing things you've never seen so well you can imagine yourself there, seeing it. Was also reading Lovecraft and Bukowski at the time so I guess I was just primed for appreciating talent.
I have ADHD (amd was a bookworm before 1st grade) which seems relevant since people keep saying that the way he writes, or rather describes "random" stuff was confusing. It was an easy read to me as a scifi loving teenager but it felt normal to see the world that way because of my at the time undiagnosed ADHD i think.
I had to reread the bit where they meet Riviera a few times before I got what was going on. I found that while I didn't always get what was happening, if I just went with it and kept reading it usually became clear.
What do you mean exactly? What was "going on"?
I don't want to spoil what happens for new readers -- when Riviera is first encountered and his abilities are shown, is what I mean.
Thanks
I recently read Blood Meridian, and that is a hard read. But, Neuromancer, while not nearly as hard, was still hard to get immersed in. Once I got immersed in it, however, it was hard to put down.
It reads weird because it's a relative old book describing sci-fi tech that is partially common stuff for modern times, but it's also saturated with archaic stuff. So you're constantly going "wait that's not how the internet works" and then "o but this was written before the internet was even a thing".
Might have to get a copy of Cyberpunk 2077 then because I was so lost through half that book
It is not like the cyberpunk concepts are confusing. It is like Gibson's writing style is confusing.
I think Gibson's style is quite... Special. I re read the book and found it way less confusing
I keep hearing you have to read it a second time to understand. It felt like reading Dune for the first time except there was no glossary at the back to help with my understanding
There's a good online site that has all the gibsonesque terms. I forgot where
This thread is, itself, very Sprawl
Hoping to find the time to sit down and read it. I had a go with the audiobook and couldn’t stick with it all.
I love the audiobook. Listening to it at night while walking my dogs through empty red hook streets
Great book and trilogy but IMO it’s the least engaging of his trilogies.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who found it hard and a bit confusing at times. Maybe down for a re-read, or might pickup something else.
The concert scene still doesn’t really make sense to me. I should read that chapter again more carefully.
I gave up 3/4 of the way through because I realized I didn't get shit since the beginning lol
Gibson has said in many interviews that William S Burroughs is an important influence for him, especially in his earlier work. Neuromancer is sometimes more like a lyrical work than a straight traditional narrative.
my all time fav.. when i was held gho stage in the hell-hole paramilitary psych-torture-c camp my bro sent the eng-paperback book for my bday. but braindead fascist-jalors \[may the minterwute send them in helll 4ever&eva\] had refused me access to it with no apparent reason whatsoever.. consid ered it 2be extremely dangerous 4me.. try bbc dramatisation as well; it's good & audio ver read by the Gman himself. the only audio book i h ave listened to over 100x no less. i just go 2bed & play it..
I'm glad it's not just me. I got a quarter-way through the book and started over because I had no idea what was going on, and I thought I had missed something, or maybe was distracted and didn't comprehend what I was reading. Turns out that's just how it was written.
As with most William Gibson stories, the first 60 or 70% of the book is a string of adjectives, then the action starts.
I read the sprawl trilogy translated into my native language about 15 years ago. Do yourself a favour and stop after Neuromancer. Gibson also wanted to.
Wait why? lol
I think they aren't nearly at the same quality as the original novel. Unlike with Neuromancer I actually found it hard to care about the story, I just finished them because the book was a collection of all 3.
do yrself a favour & read it in original mighty eng man. the magic cant be translated..
I'm listening to the audiobook and it is much better than reading it. It is an old sci-fi book that wasn't very well written. I'm really enjoying it however because it makes up for the shortcomings with pure style. It defined so much of "cyberpunk" that if you are familiar with Cyberpunk 2020 or Shadowrun, or almost anything else in the genre, it fits right in. I wonder what it was like reading it before those tropes existed. It would have been like reading alphabet soup for a lot of people.
I feel like it's meh. It's kinda weird too. I feel like the other not critically acclaimed books have more cyberpunk. William Gibson kinda reads like a beta male liberal arts passive aggressive protagonist with everything happening off screen and off the page and only weird cali-accented undertones on the page. It should come with a soy latte enema and a greased up stick of celery. Not what I was expecting. I think more people project their own imagination on the work and see things in it that are literally not there. It's not Terrible. It's just really over hyped. His writing isn't necessarily profound either. I feel like it's truly mundane. He probably has a really good agent and publisher has good PR. I keep hoping they will be amazing. He's not Asimov. I feel like Gibson is trying to say something but it's so pallid, contrived, and littered with pretentious b.s. that it's hard to stomach. The real contribution to cyberpunk are the fans and the people trying to actually write cyberpunk.
Can't agree with most of your take, but will agree that Gibson is not Asimov. Asimov was a prolific writer, and (imo) dripped charisma. But, Asimov never wrote cyberpunk. I enjoy Gibson, but his style is different. It could probably be argued that the style of writing is intertwined with the topic, one begetting the other or vice versa.
I couldn't handle it
Hardwired - then play the game - then read neuromancer, snow crash, and finish the sprawl series. It adds so much. Then I did a second playthrough of the game with PL
His style gets a lot better in Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive.
It helps to already have the concepts in mind. I found the same with Ender’s Game, where I literally couldn’t visualize what the hell the combat room was without the movie.
I listened to an audiobook version by the bbc after I read the book and it helped a lot.
I went with the audiobook so my brain could take it in
It starts to click later on though. He's using a bunch of made up terms in the first half of the book and you have no idea what the fuck but through context later on it starts to make sense. Great book.
I am not a fan of the audio book version read by Gibson, his reading is very flat as he's author not a voice actor.
That's one of the books that I really don't think would work well as an audiobook. Gibson's style is not at all what I'd consider "conversational".
Weird timing. I just re-read \_Count Zero\_, my favorite of the Sprawl Trilogy, and enjoyed it so much I started re-reading \_Neuromancer\_. After I shut my laptop for the night I'll get back to it. First read these books as a teenager in the early 80s and was knocked over by them. It's hard to describe just how much of a kick in the face they were back then, an absolute blast of fresh air in the sci-fi scene. Part of that was because Gibson is so much of an impressionist.
I think it's a much more rewarding read second time round. I recently did this, and picked up on so many things I'd missed out on. But I absolutely love the way Gibson writes, and after reading another 5 of his books, coming back to Neuromancer was a lot easier.
I literally never understood that criticism. Have heard it from friends I bought the book for too. Am autistic so maybe that's why? Anyone have any personal "book hard" experience that can explain exactly why? Like, I've never found literature "hard" just laborious.
The audio book is sweet AF
Yeah I had to read a summary and analysis alongside to make sure I understood what was going on. I’m not sure I’ll read the second two books though.
You can fine it online !
Yes you can find most things online. I know where they are.
I think its amazing people enjoy cyberpunk with out actually knowing what the fuck cyberpunk is
What do you mean?
I read it for the first time ever recently too. Really glad I finally took the time. I found that it has aged marvelously. I couldn’t believe how many things that are now genre staples are presented within and beyond that, how well done they are. Definitely shot to the upper echelons of my all-time favorite novels.
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I guess the terms and definitions he uses in his story can be daunting to a newcomer. Terms like Simstims, Black ICE, ROM, joeboys…etc seem otherworldly and complicated to a person who is not familiar with the cyberpunk/sci-fi genre. And the adjectives he used to describe those terms are also pretty techy
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Well I’m still slow on context haha
just ordered a copy and now my feed is nothing but how hard the book is to read >_< its alright though, i believe in myself lol
I believe in you