Ratings745
Average rating3.8
Winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards, Neuromancer is a science fiction masterpiece—a classic that ranks as one of the twentieth century’s most potent visions of the future.
Case was the sharpest data-thief in the matrix—until he crossed the wrong people and they crippled his nervous system, banishing him from cyberspace. Now a mysterious new employer has recruited him for a last-chance run at an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence. With a dead man riding shotgun and Molly, a mirror-eyed street-samurai, to watch his back, Case is ready for the adventure that upped the ante on an entire genre of fiction.
Neuromancer was the first fully-realized glimpse of humankind’s digital future—a shocking vision that has challenged our assumptions about technology and ourselves, reinvented the way we speak and think, and forever altered the landscape of our imaginations.
Featured Series
3 primary books4 released booksSprawl is a 4-book series with 3 primary works first released in 1981 with contributions by William Gibson.
Series
3 primary booksSprawl Trilogy is a 3-book series with 3 primary works first released in 1984 with contributions by William Gibson.
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There are classics that are impressive for being the first of their kind and still standing the test of time, and others that make you so happy for how far a genre has come. Neuromancer is the latter for me. Gibson here seems more invested in cramming in as many made-up techie-sounding words into a sentence rather than building anything interesting character or story-wise. I love cyberpunk because I love the interaction between man and machine, but while Gibson drops cybernetic terms left and right, there's no real cultural, biological, or personal significance to any of it.
The prose has no rhythm, no allure. The character interaction is so stilted its laughable - the main female character, Molly, is such an obvious 80s action girl fantasy, who of course immediately jumps on the dick of this depressed drug addict, Case. I couldn't really tell you much else about what anyone did because I could not focus on any of it between all the random tech lingo and uninteresting plot. Oh right, and all the white people hanging out in future Japan. eye roll
Cyberpunk, and sci-fi in general, has come a long way since Neuromancer. I think I'd rather keep going forward than look back.
Iconic, historic, inspirational but difficult to read. Filled with its own vocabulary, perspective changes, time shifts, and disruptions. The reading process was not enjoyable and the imagery, although well described, was difficult to picture and feel a part of. As the inspiration behind so many visual content like the matrix and cyberpunk, its no surprise that visual recreations of this book have been great. But, as a book, the descriptions and imagery just wasn't there enough for me to connect to.
I listened to the unabridged audiobook version of this book and it lost me. I really wanted to like this book, but Gibson gets far too into descriptions of scenery (which doesn't really hold my attention), and he jumps right into characters with no introductions. I couldn't keep track of the different characters and I only had a vague grasp on the plot.
Maybe listening to it as an audiobook makes it harder to follow. I might give reading the book a try in the future to see if it goes any better.
I DNFd this book. If you'd like to find out why, check out my review here. https://youtu.be/r2Y3d7YJBjU
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