Wednesday, 30 January 2008 01:21 pm
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deckardcanineDo you speed up -- or at least allot more time for -- your reading when you approach the end of a book? I do. In the latest case, I polished off a little less than a fifth of the book in one evening, because it had been more than two months already.
The book was William Gibson's Neuromancer, which I had chosen partly to help me with my NaNoWriMo story, tho I read only a little of it late in November. I doubt that an earlier start would've helped anyway, because the writing style is often terse in its informality.
I first learned of Neuromancer from a college-assigned essay on virtual reality, and a few associates have mentioned if not recommended it since. Apparently, it marks the pioneering of cyberpunk. As much as I seem to like sci-fi, VR (in principle), and the Net, I've had little experience with the subgenre. My endeavor was to be as educational as it was entertaining.
I'd gone in expecting to be reminded persistently of Tad Williams's Otherland, which I love. Instead, I was far more likely to think of either the computer game Deus Ex or the movie Ghost in the Shell, both of which I hold in high regard, but with some reservations.
The first few dozen pages were far more punk than cyber. This was sometimes fun, with its stealthy action and dark dialog ("You're a Mr. Who. You pay to stay one. Not a Mr. Name."), and sometimes patience-trying. My favorite character was Molly, the assassin with Lady Deathstrike-style retractable claws and shades implanted in her face. She was, in fact, the only character other than protagonist Case whom I really cared about, and I'm not even sure about Case. That said, I did rather welcome a few other characters. Maelcum's Rastafarian diction reminded me of Rule of the Bone; his partly aloof involvement was not so much out of place as a nice foil.
When the cyberness got going, things became abstract. I knew it was time I graduated from the ninth- or tenth-grade reading-level fare of Otherland, but for something I read as I rode home from work, it was awfully hard to follow. There are plot points that still escape me. I can only imagine how hard it must have been in its year of publication, 1983. At least the occasional synesthesia descriptions ("an aching taste of blue") were hot stuff, especially for a synesthete like me. Oh, and FWIW, the word "Neuromancer" doesn't appear in the text until somewhere in the last 50 pages.
The informal third-person narration is another two-edged sword. It fits with the focal character, but I question some of the editing. Sometimes two characters have quotes in the same paragraph. Then there's vague grammar that takes a moment to understand:
"Eat it. Eat a dozen. Nothing'll happen."
He did. Nothing did.
This might have been a matter of artistry to illustrate the challenging world of the future. If so, it was redundant.
By the end, I was definitely getting tired of the criminal underworld. The lack of unambiguous friendship or love, the disregard for innocent lives... and let's not forget the recreational drugs. Case and a few others are serious druggies. The theme is obnoxious enough when it appears in the works of Philip K. Dick, Stephen King, and even J.R.R. Tolkien. To Gibson's credit, it's sometimes as integral as it is character-appropriate. But again, it seems redundant in a world that's almost a drug in itself.
Finally, a word on AI: When a physically present robot takes on a life of its own, I tend to like it. When a cyberspace construct takes on a life of its own, it creeps me out. The latter, herein, was about as influential as a classical pagan god and every bit as amoral.
Ultimately, the book is one of those things that I consider so far out there that I'm hard-pressed to label it good or bad. Now I could go for something which, while written with adults in mind, doesn't require a rereading of sentences or keep me wondering who to root for. The Great Divorce might do the trick.
The book was William Gibson's Neuromancer, which I had chosen partly to help me with my NaNoWriMo story, tho I read only a little of it late in November. I doubt that an earlier start would've helped anyway, because the writing style is often terse in its informality.
I first learned of Neuromancer from a college-assigned essay on virtual reality, and a few associates have mentioned if not recommended it since. Apparently, it marks the pioneering of cyberpunk. As much as I seem to like sci-fi, VR (in principle), and the Net, I've had little experience with the subgenre. My endeavor was to be as educational as it was entertaining.
I'd gone in expecting to be reminded persistently of Tad Williams's Otherland, which I love. Instead, I was far more likely to think of either the computer game Deus Ex or the movie Ghost in the Shell, both of which I hold in high regard, but with some reservations.
The first few dozen pages were far more punk than cyber. This was sometimes fun, with its stealthy action and dark dialog ("You're a Mr. Who. You pay to stay one. Not a Mr. Name."), and sometimes patience-trying. My favorite character was Molly, the assassin with Lady Deathstrike-style retractable claws and shades implanted in her face. She was, in fact, the only character other than protagonist Case whom I really cared about, and I'm not even sure about Case. That said, I did rather welcome a few other characters. Maelcum's Rastafarian diction reminded me of Rule of the Bone; his partly aloof involvement was not so much out of place as a nice foil.
When the cyberness got going, things became abstract. I knew it was time I graduated from the ninth- or tenth-grade reading-level fare of Otherland, but for something I read as I rode home from work, it was awfully hard to follow. There are plot points that still escape me. I can only imagine how hard it must have been in its year of publication, 1983. At least the occasional synesthesia descriptions ("an aching taste of blue") were hot stuff, especially for a synesthete like me. Oh, and FWIW, the word "Neuromancer" doesn't appear in the text until somewhere in the last 50 pages.
The informal third-person narration is another two-edged sword. It fits with the focal character, but I question some of the editing. Sometimes two characters have quotes in the same paragraph. Then there's vague grammar that takes a moment to understand:
"Eat it. Eat a dozen. Nothing'll happen."
He did. Nothing did.
This might have been a matter of artistry to illustrate the challenging world of the future. If so, it was redundant.
By the end, I was definitely getting tired of the criminal underworld. The lack of unambiguous friendship or love, the disregard for innocent lives... and let's not forget the recreational drugs. Case and a few others are serious druggies. The theme is obnoxious enough when it appears in the works of Philip K. Dick, Stephen King, and even J.R.R. Tolkien. To Gibson's credit, it's sometimes as integral as it is character-appropriate. But again, it seems redundant in a world that's almost a drug in itself.
Finally, a word on AI: When a physically present robot takes on a life of its own, I tend to like it. When a cyberspace construct takes on a life of its own, it creeps me out. The latter, herein, was about as influential as a classical pagan god and every bit as amoral.
Ultimately, the book is one of those things that I consider so far out there that I'm hard-pressed to label it good or bad. Now I could go for something which, while written with adults in mind, doesn't require a rereading of sentences or keep me wondering who to root for. The Great Divorce might do the trick.
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"The Death of Bowie Gizzardsbane" is worth the price of the book alone. NESFA (New England SF Association) reprinted it in hardcover a while back, with good supplemental material, you can order it through them if you can't find it elsewhere.
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