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    Neuromancer
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    Neuromancer
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    Neuromancer
    Ebook324 pages5 hours

    Neuromancer

    By William Gibson

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Neuromancer is the most influential science fiction novel of our time. Cyberspace and virtual reality were invented in this book. It changed forever the way we look at tomorrow and was the inspiration behind the blockbuster film The Matrix. In 2009 it celebrated its 25th Anniversary.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateApr 28, 2011
    ISBN9780007383290
    Unavailable
    Neuromancer
    Author

    William Gibson

    William Gibson (1914-2008) was a playwright and author whose many works include Golda’s Balcony and Two for the Seesaw. The Miracle Worker, his most famous play, won several Tony Awards, including Best Play, and was made into an Academy Award-winning film starring Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke.

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    Reviews for Neuromancer

    4/5

    6,140 ratings190 reviews

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    • 4/5
      What on earth can I say about this SF classic that I finally, FINALLY!!! got around to reading? I've read Gibson's work before, Pattern Recognition, so I thought I knew what to expect when it came to his style. Then there's the fact that I am so well-aware of Neuormancer's impact on SF, as well as the real world, that I thought I knew what was coming.But picking up this book and reading the first few pages was a pure adrenaline rush of words. Punctuation aside, I'd forgotten about Gibson's amazing use of words and descriptions, the zing of his language. Even so far removed from this book's debut, it's easy to see how it created such a stir in the SF world at the time. It's also easy to see how much influence this book has had on so many current writers.I'm not going to bother with a link here, because I have nothing spoilery to say and let's face, the book's a classic. Even if I did spoil you, it wouldn't ruin the experience of reading the book. And for me, being so far removed from the book's debut and having read its progeny in terms of the genre, Neuromancer was more of an experience than it was a life-changer. It was good, don't get me wrong. Yes, it took me a little while to get into the rhythm of Gibson's prose, and I always felt I was catching on to what was happening just a little late, and even then, I wasn't sure if I got what I thought I got. One quick check to Wikipedia pretty much confirmed my interpretation of the book, so that's good. I particularly admired Gibson's use of the simstim, which was pretty darn cool.I can only image what kind of mindfreak this book must have been in the pre-cyberpunk SF world. This book must have been acid to those people. Again, the use of description was very enjoyable, and even I was surprised at the range of setting this book encompassed. I'm glad I finally got around to reading it, and maybe one day, I'll pick up more of Gibson's work in the future. Though, and I'm sure this is absolute heresy, I think I enjoyed Pattern Recognition more. Just chalk that up to the fact I read it first and it had a female POV, okay? :)
    • 2/5
      I think I'd expected Tron, The Matrix, or even Johnny Mnemonic. Instead, an unlikable druggie / tech addict goes on a VR-enhanced trip to evade dying at the hands of the mob, as his pseudo-girlfriend does. This might need a reread to see if I'd read the first time with too many expectations.
    • 3/5
      This was a re-read of an archetype of the cypberpunk genre, with all of the nostalgia that accompanies a visit to an old friend. Unfortunately, the first half (or more) of the book came across as being as muddled this time around as it did the first time I read it decades ago, as the plot does not develop and flow very smoothly. As before, I had the sense that it had been written and rewritten and edited and reedited countless times, to the point where it was easy to get lost on some details--even the second time around. Still, it's easy to see how much of an inspiration it was for much of what came later, from Neal Stephenson to The Matrix to countless other standards of the genre. It's not an overlong book, but it's easy to get bogged down (because of the muddled nature of much of it), especially if you're not technically oriented in the first place. But it's worth the effort, if only to see what launched the genre in the first place, way back when Ronald Reagan was president and guys like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were just getting the personal computing revolution going.
    • 5/5
      i think this is my favorite book ever
    • 3/5
      Here is the novel that started it all, launching the cyberpunk generation, and the first novel to win the holy trinity of science fiction: the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award and the Philip K. Dick Award. With Neuromancer, William Gibson introduced the world to cyberspace--and science fiction has never been the same. Case was the hottest computer cowboy cruising the information superhighway--jacking his consciousness into cyberspace, soaring through tactile lattices of data and logic, rustling encoded secrets for anyone with the money to buy his skills. Then he double-crossed the wrong people, who caught up with him in a big way--and burned the talent out of his brain, micron by micron. Banished from cyberspace, trapped in the meat of his physical body, Case courted death in the high-tech underworld. Until a shadowy conspiracy offered him a second chance--and a cure--for a price
    • 5/5
      Here is the novel that started it all, launching the cyberpunk generation, and the first novel to win the holy trinity of science fiction: the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award and the Philip K. Dick Award. With Neuromancer, William Gibson introduced the world to cyberspace--and science fiction has never been the same. Case was the hottest computer cowboy cruising the information superhighway--jacking his consciousness into cyberspace, soaring through tactile lattices of data and logic, rustling encoded secrets for anyone with the money to buy his skills. Then he double-crossed the wrong people, who caught up with him in a big way--and burned the talent out of his brain, micron by micron. Banished from cyberspace, trapped in the meat of his physical body, Case courted death in the high-tech underworld. Until a shadowy conspiracy offered him a second chance--and a cure--for a price
    • 5/5
      On my best 3 books in the world list. I was so engaged in this cyberworld I wanted it to be real. To show my devotion to this book I named my daughter Jane. I wanted to add the 3 but my husband vetoed that.
    • 3/5
      It was an interesting book, even more so considering that it was published in 1983, way before not only internet, but personal computers as well. It was a surprisingly hard read at first, as it was hard to get into Gibson's characters. I found them a bit flat and stereotypical: a nerd and a hot chick who starts sleeping w/ him for no apparent reason. However, I did appreciate the role reversal with a girl being the muscle.

      Nevertheless, the one thing that stands out in this book is imagery. Beautiful, haunting, ethereal. It's worth reading the book just for that.
    • 4/5
      In a few words: the body versus the mind.Sort of.I read this in a college class on literature and popular culture in a segment on cyberpunk. The best way to imagine this book, I think, is to take The Matrix, turn it inside out, and add the visual element of Tron. It's a curious setting, with a purpose that was up for some debate in class. Tech modified bodies, vat-grown meat, space vacations, out-of-body internet surfing...it's an interesting enough read just for the world Gibson lays out, which is good because I'm still not sure I understood the conclusion of the plot, except to say that it's something of a thinker. It remains a book that has stuck with me.
    • 5/5
      Man-machine interfaces. Hive minds. Personality transformations. Gibson weaves a fast-paced story, set in a world whose vastness can only be glimpsed through scraps of information and scattered references throughout the text.It demands your attention as the author plunges you headlong into the world of the Sprawl with no guiding hand at your side.Definitely not a light read, but a thoroughly enjoyable one nonetheless.
    • 1/5
      I make no claims as to being the target audience of this novel. I didn't understand it for a second, and must admit I'm still at a loss. But if you like cyberpunk-style writing, apparently you'll enjoy this.
    • 4/5
      “Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts . . . A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.”In “Neuromancer” by William GibsonA friend of mine tried to read "Neuromancer" and he really struggled to follow what was going on, he told me. Who was doing what to whom, and were they in the real world or a virtual world? Were the characters alive, dead or artificial? I think there was a section where the protagonist was experiencing things via another person's eyes, adding to his confusion. There were some space Rastafarians and a woman who spoke like Lady Penelope towards the end, whom at least he could tell apart from the others. The book was like a mix of Blade Runner, Tron and The Matrix. For him, I think it might have worked better as a graphic novel. And I said, "WTF?? ‘Neuromancer’ was one of the first to have a Stream of Consciousness feel in SF. You should go read Twilight instead! Maybe you're trying too hard - or maybe not, but some people do. I should be clear that I think ‘Neuromancer’ is a wonderful book, one I've reread many times, but in the hands of a writer who thought he needed to explain what is happening (as so many SF writers do) it would have been purely dreadful. Its magic comes from the way it seems to wash over the reader, much as some moments in life often do. The pace is amazingly sustained, but not if one pauses very much to think it through. I should also add that it can be reread and thought through, and it holds together if you do it. But I think that most of all it's an unbelievably fast book that needs to be read the first time in something of a rush.”I've read a lot lately that “Neuromancer” is hard to get into - I genuinely don't understand why. My very first impression, reading it in 1996, was that it was written in a very compressed language, dense with meaning, so that a short sentence actually has to be read carefully as you might miss something - not so much in terms of motivation or insight, but in his description of things and places. That's what I loved about it, actually; that and the brilliant dynamism of the plot. Later, I came to appreciate more the story concept of 'nested realities', or what we might now call avatar-based realities of various types, that feature in it, beautifully summarised by the line "Tell the Hosaka to tell Maelcum to unhook the modem", spoken by Case to the 'dead' personality in his head, with which he is interfacing via a hotel phone line in a space station above Earth that is connecting him to a phone in a spaceship nearby, on which is the Hosaka (computer) .... so yes in that sense it might be hard to get into, but not in any other. I love it when Case jacks back in for the first time in months: And flowed, flowered for him, fluid neon origami trick, the unfolding of his distanceless home, his country, transparent 3D chessboard extending to infinity. Inner eye opening to the stepped scarlet pyramid of the Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority burning beyond the green cubes of Mitsubishi Bank of America, and high and very far away he saw the spiral arms of military systems, forever beyond his reach. And somewhere he was laughing, in a white-painted loft, distant fingers caressing the deck, tears of release streaking his face.The appropriate question: is “Neuromancer” SF?It's a spectrum, so there isn't some nice, neat definition of what belongs. The best I can say is that it's at the softer end, if it belongs. The universe, the technology, even the AI - mostly a means of driving the plot forward, with minimal consistency and none of the justification that's de rigour at the harder end of SF. I wouldn't call the book particularly original. H. G. Wells had written about universal information services, “Doctor Who” had covered scheming artificial intelligence (War Machines) and virtual realities inside of a "Matrix" that you could jack into (Deadly Assassin). What Neuromancer did was draw these ideas together in a single, almost memorable package that could easily be mass-produced by a range of people (“Shadowrun” being an example). It did so poorly - almost nothing predicted has happened, many bold pronouncements turned out in reality to be utter carp, most of the core ideas about life and death have been shown wrong, about all the book got right was Google Glasses. And those have turned out to be far less useful than expected.NB: SF = Speculative Fiction.
    • 4/5
      I can't believe I missed this book in 1984 when I was reading science fiction and working as a programmer. No idea what I would have made of it 30 years ago but it still sounds vivid and new today.
    • 3/5
      A classic that paved the way to a whole genre and that got a lot of things right. But a bit of a slog to read.
    • 5/5
      Really beautifully written.
    • 4/5
      There's something about this book. Something odd and a little other-worldly way that feels both surreal and prescient, even now, even still, so long after it was written. And part of it is the reality of this world, and Gibson's willingness to make his readers WORK for it. This isn't an easy read to let float by, and there were some times when I put it down, unsure how I even felt about it... but then I'd pick it back up, and find myself unable to just read a single chapter, or even two; instead, I read it in maybe five sittings, in spurts of 70 pages or so after that first day I picked it up, and read just enough to get a taste.Whatever reason brings you to it--whether you want to know what got the ball rolling with cyberpunk and changed sci-fi, or how this was written when it was, or love sci-fi or have simply heard it's a classic--I think you'll find something here. The characters feel so real as to be able to step out of the page, and there are moments when Gibson's writing is simply perfect, rough and beautiful and everything it needs to be. In a really odd way, this reminded me of how I felt when I first read Jesus' Son, and when I first read Crime and Punishment. All such different books... all incredibly powerful, and driven by authors with exacting sensibilities that pushed readers to see differently, and maybe even learn differently.I can't wait to read it again.
    • 3/5
      Sometimes the author is so descriptive it's had to follow the story. It's like a giant SF poem, painting each page with complex narratives.
    • 1/5
      I tried to read this. I really tried. It was not fun. I got through the first chapter. I didn't care enough to continue. I have only so much time available. I'm not spending any more time on this.
    • 4/5
      A cyberspace heist, set in a not-too-distant future. This story is wonderfully imaginative - as expected from a book that defined the word cyberspace - and fairly bleak. Drugs, the matrix, cosmetic surgery, and the growing humanity of artificial constructs all make the people in the story into side-line characters, who are each exactly and only the same as their jobs. In its way, this allows for a sneaky sort of commentary on identity, and the possibility that the AI in this future world are just as human as the people. The writing itself is engaging, though the individual relationships between characters (especially male-female) are horribly dated and eye-rollingly 70's-esque, which creates an entertaining frisson given the way erudite references to technology and science create an overall futuristic landscape. It's the type of narrative that would make a flashy and easily adapted film - the kind with lots of style, but not any character-building (but isn't that kind of the point, anyway?).
    • 4/5
      Heralding the onset of the cyberpunk sub-genre, Neuromancer hits all the bells and whistles one expects. A dark and convoluted world where AI makes reality and the matrix (heh) brush shoulders so closely that one can't be sure where one ends and the other begins.
    • 4/5
      A thrilling cyberpunk book that has plenty of action and weirdness. Loved the writing and narration as the protagonist shows us this future world (with an alternate history) filled with technological wonders that is wonderfully imagined before technology really took off, including technological samurai, AI, and the matrix. Great book worthy of all its awards.
    • 4/5
      it had some good qualities but just dragged along without any overwhelming characters; left too much on the table for me
    • 1/5
      I don't quit books easily, or lightly. I started this one under the impression that it was one of the best of new scifi - unfortunately, I deem it one of the worst. I really don't know how it can be seen otherwise.



      I am not sure what language Gibson used to write the book - I gave up trying to figure it out after 100 pages or so. Some sort of cross between ganster rap and Jim Rome's glossary of smack. Perhaps if Gibson had included a dictionary, it wouldn't have been as bad. So abandoning the translation, I tried to look at the characters and plot. No dice; dimensionless, thoroughly unlikeable characters and overly convoluted and poorly written pseudoplot clouded by the bizarre terms introduced without any reference frame, this book can only appeal to those pretentious pseudo-intellectuals desiring to spout nonsense about how deep the work is, or what the artist was trying to convey in his/her painting, or how the scuplture evokes feelings of motion. Tripe.



      I tend to be pretty stubborn about books. I'll set aside a book for a year or more, placed marked, of course, to eventually get through it. I cannot do that with this book. Halfway through, I found nothing to redeem the lost time I invested in reading that far. More's the pity because Neuromancer is touted as a revitalization of the genre. I guess I'm wrong in my opinion that the genre needed no jumpstart. Certainly not in a form such as this.



      Whatever cyberpunk is, this is the nadir and not the apex, and it's a sure thing I'll not be reading any more of it. Maybe a long shower will wash away the residue and I can get back to some real science fiction. I want to give it a half-star, but I'll give Gibson another half for his decidedly warped imagination.
    • 4/5
      Essential reading.
    • 4/5
      Decent sci-fi story.
    • 4/5
      I actually really enjoyed this book, just don't ask me exactly what it was about!It took a little time to get into, as the copy I read had very small text and the writing style is quite detail oriented. It also didn't help that the tale is quite complex, with may futuristic elements that weren't very well explained, but sort of just dropped in, leaving you to fend for yourself.I found the characters rich and compelling, including the mysterious AI Wintermute. Both Molly and Case were excellently written and I found myself genuinely interested in them and their welfare.It's not a gentle read, so as long as you go into it expecting it not to be, I would recommend it quite highly.
    • 3/5
      I'm going to be honest with you: I couldn't keep my attention on this book enough to know really what was going on at any given time. The main dude got in trouble somehow in his job as a master thief? And was punished by having his brain altered so he couldn't log into the matrix anymore? I think? So when we meet him he's living hand to mouth as a thief, still, and is recruited for A Big Heist of somecyberkind. I think. He gets help from a "mirror-eyed" gal and...a dead person? Cripes. I give up. It was too much convolution and not enough interesting for me to care to try sorting it all out. I get that it's important as a forerunner to the cyberpunk genre, so I'm glad in that sense that I've experienced it, but it wasn't a fun ride for me.
    • 4/5
      It's easy to see how heavily Neuromancer influences the cyberpunk genre to this day. All the tropes and aesthetics are present, but it still holds up. Unlike sometimes where a foundational piece of a genre feels cliched because so many others came along and copied it, Gibson's work still manages to stay engaging. At times the technical babble is a little hard to follow, and some of the slang meanings take a while to pick up on, but that doesn't detract overall from the book.
    • 3/5
      Liked it a lot more the second time around. 3.5
    • 3/5
      This has been an iconic title for so long now that I'm almost embarrassed to be a first time reader in 2022.It's an ambitious book. There are many neologisms and other words used in unfamiliar senses. Written before the internet, the book imagines much of what is soon to come. But, of course, the author doesn't get everything right, and this adds to the confusing buzz. The plot is loosely described. It's something like a high tech Mad Max - dystopian, but advanced.I struggled to fully grasp what was going on, and to keep track of the plot. But this may be intentional on the part of the author.This is a landmark work, and I'm glad I've read it, but . . .