Search - Neuromancer

Published in 1984, Gibson describes a Blade Runner type world complete with a matrix that humans jack-in-to for a virtual experience. This is years before Matrix films were created and released. Gibson even developed his own realistic "techno" language years before on-line world took off.

The biggest difficulty I had is Gibson's extensive use of this language. It adds to the story to make it more real, but slows the read and makes it at times hard to understand.

Way too cyber-punk for me. Didn't even make sense at times. Gibson is ordinarily a talented writer, but fell short here in basic explanation (even contextually) about what the heck is going on in this novel.

After hearing about this book for years, I finally had a chance to read it - and was a bit disappointed. While I will always appreciate this novel as the one that kicked off a whole new era of science fiction, there have been so many variations on this theme that Neuromancer's plot itself now comes across as a little plain.

I also had a little bit of trouble swallowing some of the plot points and character interactions - I spent a lot of time thinking "Well, I'm sure XYZ happened for a reason, but I wish I knew what that reason was."

I kept trying very hard to like this novel, being that it's been to sci-fi what Lord of the Rings was to fantasy, but it just seemed like a lot of work getting through the plot to finish a story I've heard retold a thousand times since it was written.

This classic piece of scifi earned its reputation with the tale of an internet cowboy named Case and his adventures with a Razor Girl named Molly. The world Gibson immerses us in is creative and not over-explained, yet it still makes sense. The impact his vision of the future for the internet, the matrix, and ai has had on scifi is immediately apparent. A must read for any scifi fan and enjoyable for fans of immersion literature and character studies.

Check out my full review.

Brilliant and surrealistic in its vision of a possible future, but very difficult. I think many will find this almost inaccessible. If you like complex, twisting, turning stories with a model of the world that is at the edge of your ability to grasp it, check this out. If you like something a little more linear and less dramatic, this may not be the book for you.

You better have read this then! Gibson's book was absolutely phenomenal, and the way he bends your mind with new and different ways he sees technology (and the world) going in the future is absolutely wild! Be warned, he sees a dark future, so this is not for the feint of heart! However, the adventure this book takes you on is one you will remember!