Moving at the Speed of Light in Cyberspace
A Review of Neuromancer
by Lana Geselbracht, CS485
William Ford Gibson was Born March 17, 1948 in Conway, South Carolina to a contractor and a homemaker. He dropped out of high school at age nineteen and went to Toronto, Canada. Not wanting to be drafted into the Viet Nam war, he stayed in Canada and later married Deborah Thompson, a language instructor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Gibson called himself a "permanent pseudo grad student." He finally earned his bachelor's degree when he was close to 30. Having a traditional job like his friends didn't sound too good. William decided to take a science fiction course at UBC in hopes of an easy credit. During that time he took three months to write a short story-- a bargain he struck up with his teacher to avoid writing a term paper. During that time Gibson started liking the life of a house husband and decided writing was the best way to earn money while at home with the children.
"Technology has already changed us, and now we have to figure out a way to stay sane" Gibson observed in Rolling Stone. "The advance of technology is shown to cause as many problems as it solves. With that in mind he set to writing having computers and technology his main subject in writing. Neuromancer was published in 1984, the first book written by Wiliam Gibson. It was the beginning of a trilogy, followed by Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive. Neuromancer at first went unnoticed but within two years had won every major science fiction award, The Nebula, The Hugo, The Philip K. Dick, as well as the Ditmar Award from Australia. He sold the rights to his book, Neuromancer, for $100,000 to a movie producer.
Anyone who likes science fiction will like this book. This book was published twelve years ago but is timely for reading even and maybe especially now. He came up with the term cyberspace in this book. Although in his book, people's minds traveled through cyberspace not just the words that travel in cyberspace for real now. These people could cause havec. His audience would be the people who like traditional crime thrillers with the bad guys, murder, greed and love, and also includes computer hackers and futuristic thinking.
Gibson's style is one that bounces from scene to scene, people trying to control other people, computer vs. computer. the action is never slow although at many times the story is hard to follow. It is a very quick book to read, a page turner, but it is one that may well need to be read twice to pick up more of what has been written.
In Neuromancer, Case is the main character, a "computer cowboy," who has been punished by his former employers for stealing data. He has been given a powerful nerve poison so that he can't plug into cyberspace. He's walking around the shady town of Chiba in Japan when someone offers to give him a healing surgery if he will do some hacking for Armitage after being healed. Case agrees, and once surgery is over, hooks up with Molly and travels about stealing data from "fields in the matrix" by cracking computer security and moving in. There are some brutal murders. There were also many attempts on their lives. They travel through cyberspace to a very wealthy Tessier-Ashpool family- all genetic clones that own 2 computers. The 2 computers have artificial intelligence which has awareness of itself and free will, just like a human. One of these computers named Wintermute wants Case to find a way to control the other , Neuromancer, so that together they can gain freedom from their human masters. Along the travels of Case and Molly they find some powermad corporations trying to control the world's economy and goverments. They hire people to kidnap and assassinate too. Molly is not a nice person. She has surgically implanted nails beneath her fingernails. She also has permanently implanted mirrored shades. She is ruthless and leaves a wake of death to all in her path.
Neuromancer is a scifi book that took some time for me to get into and enjoy. The action was constant and I liked the little tidbits thrown in about Molly here and there-about the razor blades under her fingernails and the permanently attached shades. When Molly first came on the scene I had this stereotyped image of goody twoshoes just by the polyanna name. Boy was I wrong. She was one bad cyberspace cowgirl. What an obnoxious murderer she was traveling with Case. Case seemed a little calmer, willing to sell his soul though, to gain all the powers taken away from him by his former boss. He as a bad boy too in cyberspace. There were no characters to really align with along the way, no human good guys. I wish there was at least one human sane and civil in the story line who wasn't obsessed with death and power.
This was an interesting book to read, unlike anything I've ever read before. Most futuristic science fiction I've read was outer space travel. This was a wild and crazy and maybe not that farfetched (if we as people let power and greed and artificial intelligence get into the wrong hands.)
I'm not sure which I'd prefer to do next--read this same book over again so that some of the plot becomes more clear or try getting into the second and third books of the trilogy, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive in hopes that Gibson will explain what I've just read. There's so much of the book I don't understand. The author did hold my interest though and left me surprised at where it headed and its twist computer vs. computer ending.
Gibson, for not having written a science fiction novel before this, has made a strong entry with the technology futuristic thinking in Neuromancer. I look forward to seeing more of his writing about travel in the computer matrix.