NeuromancerThis damn book took me forever to get through. Not that it's not great sf, by the way - because it is. Just as forward thinking and right on as the rest of his work. But I'm more interested in the odd little side details - the Sprawl itself, the people in the bars, Panther Moderns, 3Jane - than I am in all the tech forecasting.
Now, any book with Molly, the modern samurai with the embedded glasses and razor tip fingers, is worth picking up. Don't get me wrong - if I'd started the Sprawl series with the first one like I should have, I'd probably have enjoyed it more. But working backward put it in a different frame, and I got fairly bored halfway through.
I may have to revisit this one later. I suspect I am simply burned out on Gibson's cyberpunk view of our future/now. Which is why I jumped into some classic Harlen Ellison stories last night, changing directions for a new view.
final thought: You have to really admire that so much of it has already come true. I wonder what else will.
3 comments:
I found Count Zero to be my favorite in that series with Mona Lisa Overdrive a distant second.
Funny enough, he wrote Neuromancer on a manual typewriter. He had absolutely no experience with computers at the time.
He said in an interview that when he got his first computer, he was disappointed to find that it was essentially mechanical in design. He thought that it would be some "magical crystalline engine" IIRC.
I remember when I saw the appalling 'Johnny Mnemonic' movie, based on the Gibson short story which features Molly's first appearance. As soon as I realised that Gibson, who wrote the script, had removed her from the plot, I knew it was going to be awful. He obviously suspected the same, and couldn't bear to have the character contaminated by having her appear in such a piece of shit (which would presumably limit the chances of the never-to-appear 'Neuromancer' movie).
See, that's good to know, because I never saw Johnny Mnemonic, and I was thinking of checking it out just to see what they did with Molly. I'll just leave that off the list.
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