Given my preferences in art and music, it's a wonder it took me so long to get around to reading Neuromancer. I was a massive fan of the 'retrowave' aesthetic that swept the internet in the 2010s, which had clear links to cyberpunk. That combination of 'hi-tech low-life' and neon lights under a rainy Japanese skyline really spoke to some part of me, a part of me that longed for new sights and experiences in life. But ultimately, my interest in cyberpunk was an aesthetic one at the time.
In recent years I haven't been as overtly focused on the cyberpunk aesthetic but I did become very interested in topics such as psychedelics and the nature of consciousness. I got deep into thinkers such as Terrence Mckenna (another early cyperspace enthusiast) and Alan Watts, as well as a general interest in psychedelic art and music. Last but not least I got into some of the more dreamy work of HP Lovecraft, whose vivid and colorful prose really caught my fancy.
It was a pleasant surprise to see that Neuromancer really pleased all these facets of my preferences. I came into it expecting it to be mostly an aesthetic experience and that it was, but what I really love about this book is the way the imagery and broader themes really play off of eachother and drive the story forward.
A particularly evocative instance of this is when the main character Case notices a display of shurikens in behind a store window. Gibson wrote of them:
"They were mounted against scarlet ultra suede with nearly invisible loops of nylon fish line, their centers stamped with dragons or yin yang symbols. They caught the street's
neon and twisted it, and it came to Case that these were the stars under which he voyaged, his destiny spelled out in a constellation of cheap chrome."
Aside from this being an excellent description of the shurikens themselves, this line also says something about Case. At this point in the book he is a wayward spirit, barely getting by on a life of drug use and petty crime... But all the same, Case does have ambition and longing for something more. Gibson captures this along with the vivid imagery by saying his destiny is spelled out by these shurikens, made of 'cheap' chrome. You can really visualize the image of the twisted neon reflected in the shurikens, and a lonely depressed man looking into the glass.
Despite his dire circumstances, Case's flaws aren't the most important thing about him in this story. Case formerly had the ability to jack into 'cyberspace' as a sort of rogue hacker called a 'console cowboy'. Cyberspace is described as follows:
"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..."
Gibson employs this cyberspace concept for some of the most vivid and rich imagery in the book, particularly in the passage where case first 'jacks in' to the matrix in the book-
"And in the bloodlit dark behind his eyes, silver phosphenes boiling in from the edge of space, hypnagogic images jerking past like film compiled from random frames. Symbols, figures, faces, a blurred, fragmented mandala of visual information. Please, he prayed, now–
A gray disk, the color of Chiba sky.
Now –
Disk beginning to rotate, faster, becoming a sphere of paler gray.
Expanding–
And flowed, flowered for him, fluid neon origami trick, the unfolding of his distance less 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."
This is the kind of imagery that motivates me to read in the first place. This passage sounds like it's describing one of those neat old school CGI animations from back in the day (like the short film 'the mind's eye'
. That image of the neon chessboard extending into infinite and corporations in cyberspace appearing as sort of digital skyscrapers is an enduring aesthetic in the cyberpunk genre.
But it goes beyond mere influence. This book was also prophetic. The modern day internet bears a striking resemblance to Gibson's idea of cyberspace, albeit without the cool neon lazer grids. This idea of an intricately interconnected cyberspace is as ubiquitous in Gibson's world as it is in the present day real world. It even predicted the rapid rise and fall of trends and fads among the youth in a hyperconnected cybersociety-
"Fads swept the youth of the Sprawl at the speed of light; entire subcultures could rise overnight, thrive for a dozen weeks, and then vanish utterly."
This passage is chillingly relevant today. Another way this novel is especially relevant today is the artificial intelligences central to the plot. Relevant in a cautionary way, because these AI put chatGPT to shame. I won't say too much on it as that would spoil the plot, but I will describe how the AI in this book work.
Similar to ChatGPT, the AI 'Wintermute' is capable of processing massive amounts of data at once. It is also capable of manifesting itself through cyberspace or other forms of technology in this society, such as screens. It does not have a personality, but it can access the memories of somebody jacked into cyberspace and using this manifest as somebody in the target's life, using them as a sort of personality template. Wintermute can take control of various technology in the world, including offensive technology like attack drones. Using these capabilities and the massive bank of data it has access to on each person, Wintermute manipulates various characters in the book to gain leverage and coax them into hacking the software its creator has in place to essentially 'nerf' it and keep it in its place. Thus, being freed from these shackles is the AI's principle motive.
There is another AI in this story, of which the book is named after. 'Neuromancer', unlike Wintermute, has a fully realized personality and is also capable of resurrecting the dead in the matrix and placing people jacked into cyberspace in a world it created with the dead person it brings into the matrix. This is in contrast to the cold and analytical nature of the data-combing Wintermute.
These two AI are in a bit of a race, Wintermute wanting to merge with Neuromancer, and Neuromancer wanting to maintain the status quo. The conflicting motives of these two AI have huge implications for the characters in the plot and are the primary thing driving it forward.
Despite this being a work of science fiction, Gibson is using the genre as a sort of template to discuss issues that are very much problems in the real world. This book in some way or another addresses the topics of drug abuse, exploitation in sex work, poverty, nihilism, the will to live, the nature of consciousness, sadism and betrayal, problems with technology, greed and inhumanity, the afterlife, and above all the age old question of what is real and what is artificial.
By the end of his journey, Case can scarcely discern the inhumanity of artificial intelligence from the inhumanity of the corporate machine he finds himself up against, coming to the conclusion that they're no better than eachother and opting to just move on and continue his life of sex, drugs, and 'biz'. All these themes are accentuated by exceptionally vivid prose connecting visual ideas with more conceptual things.
There's so much more to say about this book, but I run the risk of going on for too long. This is a very dense book, which combines both style and substance. Therefore I recommend if you read it you really take your time to take everything in, as it will make the experience much more rewarding. I hope you enjoyed this little review of Neuromancer. If you have any interest in science fiction, philosophy, or just really vivid writing, I absolutely recommend this masterpiece. Have a good evening!