Book Review: Neuromancer by William Gibson

[juushika]

Title: Neuromancer (Sprawl Book 1)
Author: William Gibson
Published: New York: Ace Books, 1984
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 270
Total Page Count: 185,720
Text Number: 547
Read Because: buddy-read with Teja, purchased used (years ago!) from Duvall Books
Review: A burned-out hacker is given a risky second chance when he's hired by a rogue AI. This is a grim, bazaar-style cyberpunk, wandering past a dozen technological inventions and locations; it revels in and cements cyberpunk's aesthetic, but these bits of worldbuilding rarely reappear and only occasionally influence plot. A few do, and those are interesting—namely, the nature of the AI and the Villa Straylight—but the overall effect is tiresome. As is the uninspired protagonist, and the plot which begins with a disconnected travelogue and ends with an straightforward climax. I can appreciate Neuromancer as a historical artifact, but this doesn't offer what I love about -punk genres (I like some idealization to balance the anxiety) and the rest of the narrative fails to impress.

"The Villa Straylight," said a jeweled thing on the pedestal, in a voice like music, "is a body grown in upon itself, a Gothic folly. Each space in Straylight is in some way secret, this endless series of chambers linked by passages, by stairwells vaulted like intestines, where the eye is trapped in narrow curves, carried past ornate screens, empty alcoves..."

[...] "In Straylight, the hull's inner surface is overgrown with a desperate proliferation of structures, forms flowing, interlocking, rising toward a solid core of microcircuitry, our clan's corporate heart, a cylinder of silicon wormholed with narrow maintenance tunnels, some no wider than a man's hand. The bright crabs burrow there, the drones, alert for micromechanical decay or sabotage."

#I just did a buddy-read of this with Missy and we are still talking about it #short version: I can appreciate its role in subgenre creation but otherwise found it unremarkable #and tbh it hits few of the -punk tropes I enjoy which is ironic and its worldbuilding/aesthetic failed for me #but there were a few exceptions: the AI were one #and Villa Straylight was the other #much of the novel lacks the push/pull that I want from -punk but Villa Straylight has it #this interlocking manufactured techno-historical dreamscape set against the waste and corruption that we see in its residents #inspiring concept in the midst of an uninspiring narrative