Neuromancer

Neuromancer is known as a progenitor of the cyberpunk genre, and it certainly captures that essence in the early chapters, but tends to lose itself to the complexity of the world as it continues, and honestly this feels intentional. Case experiences a world through drug addiction, forced sobriety, the pursuit of the high, and eventually a new high unfettered by his magic liver. In the same way that Case experiences the world in his various states, the writing follows a similar suit, and unfortunately a fair portion of this leads to a feeling of mundanity.

The plot increases in complexity as we learn the reality of Wintermute and its alter-ego, but the resolution falls a bit flat as we get a simultaneous "super-villain-esque allow me to explain my evil plan to you" scenario, and also a vagueness surrounding what actually happened to the AI identities. Many of the confusing points throughout the story that you could have figured out on a second read-through are simply explained directly in the end, removing a lot of potential for discussion and excitement for figuring out the clues.

It's one of those books that is certainly worth reading once. But only once. Maybe the sequels improve on the formula? But at least from a popular media perspective, I've never heard tale of the following entries like I've heard of this starting point, so it seems doubtful they are impactful.

I know this is not the best review, I'm sleepy and also I forgot to give a review back when I originally finished the read so it's been a couple months.

What the fuck did I just read?

This book was a whirlwind. It took me forever to get into it, then I basically read the last two acts in one sitting. It's hard to know what to make of it. Much of what's written here has been covered by more recent cyberpunk literature, film, and so on, but there's a lot I'm holding onto.

For instance, one thing that really blows me away is the way that the natural world is described through the language of technology. This is immediately clear upon beginning the book, and part of the challenge of reading it is just trying to figure out what is going on in this world. Gibson just throws us into it and hopes that we'll be able to figure it out for ourselves. If you give it the time and patience, you will, but this isn't clear when you begin reading it. Then, you acclimate to the Gibson's cyberpunk dystopia. Gibson's manner of describing things begin to feel more natural, and you acclimate yourself to it. Until the last third of the book, when (view spoiler)

Speaking of the Tessier-Ashpool's, Gibson does something really interesting in the way he contrasts them with the rest of his world:

"You couldn't kill a zaibatsu by assassinating a dozen key executives; there were others waiting to step up the ladder, assume the vacated position, access the vast banks of corporate memory. But Tessier-Ashpool wasn't like that, and (view spoiler). T-A was an atavism, a clan."

My reading of Gibson is in the way he sees the difference between Late Capitalism (or extra-Late Capitalism, in this case), and what came before. It seems that pre-Capitalist society (represented by Tessier-Ashpool) was one entirely driven by humans over human needs, desires, and so on. However, Gibson's larger, Late Capitalist world is cybernetic. It is made up of all sorts of automatic feedback cycles to keep itself growing. It can't be destroyed. It can either continue developing at its natural pace, orrrrrr 🥁🥁🥁

It can be accelerated .

And, from the moment we learn about Wintermute, we--as readers who are familiar with the conventions of fiction--know that this is exactly what is going to happen. The characters don't fight it. They are too busy looking out for their own lives; they have been struggling for too long. And this, my friends, is what makes capitalism a tragedy. As Deleuze and Guattari (via Mark Fisher in Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?) point out, "Capitalism [was] a kind of dark potentiality which haunted all previous social systems. Capital, they argue, is the ‘unnamable Thing’, the abomination, which primitive and feudal societies ‘warded off in advance.'" But now that it's here, it appears indestructible.

Lastly, Freud looms large over this text. The death drive and libido both loom large here, but I haven't read enough Freud to say exactly how. It's most obvious with Case and 3Jane, but there may be other characters that Gibson is playing with on Freudian grounds as well.

I wish I had something more positive to say about what it means, but I don't yet. What I do know is that I'm absolutely fascinated by this book. There's so much to unpack.