Comment by jmyeet

I was very much alive in the 1980s but for no particular reason I never read Neuromancer at the time. No specific reason I guess other than I never fetishized Japanese culture. I read it back in the 2010s and was... underwhelmed. I see this pattern a lot: a given work is seminal but it doesn't tend to age well. Much of the accolades are based on nostalgia.

Cyberpunk as a genre is inherently both xenophobic and Orientalist [1]. In the context of the 1980s (before 1987 when Japan's bubble popped), this makes perfect sense. There was a genuine fear of the Japanese taking over. Japanese tech companies were at their relative peak. So people both feared and fetishized Japanese culture and products.

Interestingly, I did read Snow Crash when it was published (1992 and that did have a big impact on me. I also think that book is solely responsible for a whole generation of people thinking VR was ever going to be a mainstream thing when in fact the metaverse is fundamentally flawed because of network latency.

To me, cyberpunk was pretty inaccurate. Technology for the longest time was rebellious and hopeful. It's only really in the last decade that tech has turned dystopic. I can actually see a techno-feudalistic future now but it's not at the hands of the Japanese (or, now, the Chinse).

What I guess is interesting is how white supremacy is so pervasive. It certainly underpins cyberpunk.

[1]: https://www.polygon.com/2021/1/30/22255318/cyberpunk-2077-ge...