A review by dzengota
Neuromancer by William Gibson
2.0
It is interesting coming to the classics of the cyberpunk genre after seeing the ways the recent entries have changed it. The fingerprints of Gibson's works are all over it but Gibson's stuff is both deeply flawed and fundamentally different from what I've come to want and expect from cyberpunk.
What I've come to want from Cyberpunk is the transgressive, politically aggressive sci-fi of modernity. Fiction that is directly about the end-point of corporate capitalism and the way people operate within it. What I don't want is the rule-of-cool technobabel of Neuromancer. It does have the heart of large corporations and political entities controlling the world while people become criminals and scoundrels trying to survive underneath them or resist them, but its coated in ultimately meaningless descriptions of techno-jargon.
Speaking to a weird plot point for a moment: I initially found Case and Molly's romance simple but fun but was disappointed when it leaves the story for the last ~100-150 pages, only to show up in the last 10 to steal the last line of the book. Weird.
What I've come to want from Cyberpunk is the transgressive, politically aggressive sci-fi of modernity. Fiction that is directly about the end-point of corporate capitalism and the way people operate within it. What I don't want is the rule-of-cool technobabel of Neuromancer. It does have the heart of large corporations and political entities controlling the world while people become criminals and scoundrels trying to survive underneath them or resist them, but its coated in ultimately meaningless descriptions of techno-jargon.
Speaking to a weird plot point for a moment: I initially found Case and Molly's romance simple but fun but was disappointed when it leaves the story for the last ~100-150 pages, only to show up in the last 10 to steal the last line of the book. Weird.