Comment by simpaticoder
Comment by simpaticoder a day ago
Glad I'm not the only one just getting around to reading Neuromancer in 2025! The shocking thing about the story is how very few screens there are in the world, and how ungrounded "cyberspace" is in physics. Cyberspace's mechanics are vague, and in fact are inconsistent with the other extent communication technologies. e.g. Case never seems to worry about getting a signal for his deck, and yet does worry about getting signals for, e.g. fax machines on space ships. It feels like the fabric of cyberspace must be ESP or telepathy (which is consistent with its description as a "shared hallucination". Gibson seems to be wrestling with new technology in a similar way to the authors of "Wierd Science" - where basically computers are magic. (And IIRC Gibson famously doesn't use computers IRL).
The other gobsmacking thing about Neuromancer is space. Near-Earth space feels fully-colonized and space travel is only slightly more exotic than air travel. In a similar vein, post-human biological modification is rather mundane, at least in our hero's circles. This is another area where real-world advances don't measure up. In these two areas I find the book to be quite a lot more optimistic than reality has turned out.
If you hold up Neuromancer to modern society to judge us on our engineering accomplishments, you'll find us coming up very short in every area other than pure software engineering. The irony is that in that particular area Neuromancer veers from science fiction squarely into fantasy. And yeah, it's still great.
> And IIRC Gibson famously doesn't use computers IRL
No, he famously didn't own a computer when he wrote Neuromancer.
“I wrote Neuromancer on a manual portable typewriter and about half of Count Zero on the same machine. Then it broke, in a way that was more or less irreparable. Bruce Sterling called me shortly thereafter and said, ‘This changes everything!’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘My Dad gave me his Apple II. You have to get one of these things!’ I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Automation—it automates the process of writing!’ I’ve never gone back.” [1]
[1] https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6089/the-art-of-fi...