The Kiwifarms Unofficial Sci-Fi/Fantasy Book Club

[VeteranOfTheRetardWars]

I love when books just take their setting and run with it.
Like yeah, why wouldn’t people just have lenses grafted over their eyes instead of glasses in a cyberpunk Japan? Why wouldn’t there be some weird lump of lab-grown flesh and electronics in a shop window?
I also enjoy how our dude lost the thing he really loves to do, plug in to the matrix for work and pleasure, and became suicidal in the way the he wants someone else to kill him. I wouldn’t say the main theme of his character is addiction but it’s definitely there, and being passively suicidal is part of that in my opinion because he’s pushing his dose, as in how much risk he takes, further and further until one day it could kill him.

 

[Cemetery Support]

Anyway liking it so far.

With a lot of modern bookslop, you can skim the whole story and get the whole story, if that makes sense. Your eyes can graze paragaphs and get enough of the gist of whats going on to continue to the next one.

Gibson doesn't write in a way that facilitates passive reading. If the reader doesn't make an active estimation of whats going on from each sentence, they miss something or get lost. Skip a paragraph or a sentence, and the characters are somewhere new or discussing something different.

The author does a good job of grappling you down into his prose without boring you, which I admire.

I am on Chapter 4.

Spoiler: Chapta Fo'

Case is hacking into some organization to nab a copy of a dead man to help him hack into another organization. I'm excited to see the action that ensues.

Gibson was really a visionary (insert journoscum interview with an ai chatbot of a school shooting victim). Now that I consider it, I think Gibson did a good job of modelling a world that could be advanced towards. I don't know how large of an impact this book had but its popular for a reason and it effectively shat its ideas into the cultural lexicon and I think that is why it is worth reading.

I've yet to consider it deeply enough or read far enough into it to learn what Gibson's lesson about humanity or maturity or life is. Even if it's lessons aren't potent or deep, he still generated a vision of the future that people have tried to manifest.

 

[crowabunga]

I love when books just take their setting and run with it.
Like yeah, why wouldn’t people just have lenses grafted over their eyes instead of glasses in a cyberpunk Japan? Why wouldn’t there be some weird lump of lab-grown flesh and electronics in a shop window?
I also enjoy how our dude lost the thing he really loves to do, plug in to the matrix for work and pleasure, and became suicidal in the way the he wants someone else to kill him. I wouldn’t say the main theme of his character is addiction but it’s definitely there, and being passively suicidal is part of that in my opinion because he’s pushing his dose, as in how much risk he takes, further and further until one day it could kill him.

Another part of this theme I like is the juxtaposition between Case's net addiction that renders geography irrelevant to him, and the fact that Neuromancer is a globe-trotting adventure. I haven't paced myself well, but it's mostly spoiler-free to say that, if this was adapted into a film, it ought to have an (appropriately cyberpunk-flavored) Indiana Jones style "crossing the map" transition shown between geographic regions, that's how much they jump between setpiece locations.

It's also an anticipation of both the net-addled voyeuristic NEET and rootless professional / WFH culture enabled by web connectivity.

 

[del_toid]

I enjoy the prose in Neuromancer but I don't like things like this from chapter 2:

She settled back beside him. “It’s 2:43:12 AM, Case. Got a readout chipped into my optic nerve.”

He heard her tear the foil seal from a bottle of water and drink. “Here.” She put the bottle in his hand. “I can see in the dark, Case. Micro channel image-amps in my glasses.”

Oh, thanks, I just needed the time I figured your fancy glasses could do it, I didn't need the explanation

Kind of a nitpick but still annoying.

 

[VeteranOfTheRetardWars]

Having glasses implanted into your face absolutely has to be a cyber-hipster move, just saying.
If you can get razorblades in your fingers and plug in to the matrix you can absolutely get your astigmatism fixed pretty easy.
Hey, what’s the time?
Oh, it’s whatever o’clock. I can tell down to the second because my glasses have a neurolink tied to the Internet and blah blah blah my favorite band is The Circuit Fuckers you probably haven’t heard of them they’re super underground and blah blah blah do you want to grab some microbrew IPAs later?
Total hipster move.

 

[あらいぐま]

I'm curious, and sorry if this was already asked, but what do you guys prefer: Hardcover, Mass-Market/Paperback, or Digital
Personally I love how small mass market prints are, and call me weird but they smell nice to me. Hardcover books are harder to read with one hand so I'm not too much a fan of them, and then I love having physical copies of my books so digital is off the table for me.

Also, I want to recommend Blindsight by Peter Watts for a future poll

 

[nut butter]

I'm curious, and sorry if this was already asked, but what do you guys prefer: Hardcover, Mass-Market/Paperback, or Digital

I like digital most, and then mass market. I will admit that there's something that's just superior about holding a real printed book, and I do still buy/borrow real books a lot. However, both of my ereaders are over ten years old and I think that there's something about tech that has been used for long enough that makes it really charming to use, and it's so much nicer to read a digital version of a really long book than to deal with a massive book or really small text. The one downside to ebooks is that you miss out on having a well-stocked bookshelf, but I already have two of those, so I'm not really missing out. It's also nice to be able to have off-site backups of my library - if my house ever burned down I'd still have the lions share of my books, including highlights and everything backed up, whereas I'd lose all my real books.

Oh, it’s whatever o’clock. I can tell down to the second because my glasses have a neurolink tied to the Internet and blah blah blah my favorite band is The Circuit Fuckers you probably haven’t heard of them they’re super underground and blah blah blah

It's pretty impressive that Gibson basically imagined videogame HUDs with the built-in info and night vision and all that stuff back in '86. It's like Molly's a hipster, but the first generation of hipsters who like internally generated hipsterdom, as opposed to the wannabes who affected being a hipster to try and be cool.

 

[Strawb3rry]

I like digital most, and then mass market. I will admit that there's something that's just superior about holding a real printed book, and I do still buy/borrow real books a lot. However, both of my ereaders are over ten years old and I think that there's something about tech that has been used for long enough that makes it really charming to use, and it's so much nicer to read a digital version of a really long book than to deal with a massive book or really small text. The one downside to ebooks is that you miss out on having a well-stocked bookshelf, but I already have two of those, so I'm not really missing out. It's also nice to be able to have off-site backups of my library - if my house ever burned down I'd still have the lions share of my books, including highlights and everything backed up, whereas I'd lose all my real books.


It's pretty impressive that Gibson basically imagined videogame HUDs with the built-in info and night vision and all that stuff back in '86. It's like Molly's a hipster, but the first generation of hipsters who like internally generated hipsterdom, as opposed to the wannabes who affected being a hipster to try and be cool.

Heinlein wrote about screensavers back in 1966, over fifteen years before they were invented.

 

[Greedy Fly]

Also, I want to recommend Blindsight by Peter Watts for a future poll

Vampires are spooky right? Should be on-theme for October.

Also I like paperback for casual reading, hardcover for smaller books that I reread a lot, digital for doorstoppers.

I enjoy the prose in Neuromancer but I don't like things like this from chapter 2:

Agreed it's pretty artless exposition compared to his usual standard, but I'll cut him some slack for trying to explain google glass to people before google had been invented. Still it would've been smoother to just have lines like "Case guessed she had a readout chipped into her optic nerve" instead of her explaining established tech to him in dialogue.

 

[Nick Obre]

I just remembered a grievance I have with it

Did something happen between the present and the cyberpunk future that forces everyone to say your name in every sentence when talking to you, Case?

 

[Hugbox Kommissar]

Spoiler: Chapter 1

I like how the worldbuilding is just throwing the reader onto the street and letting them pick it up as they go. Chaotic and disorienting, but if you pay attention things start to make sense.

Several references to "wartime Russian" tech: Ratz's prosthetic arm, the mycotoxin that was used on Case.

Japan being on the bleeding edge of tech is peak 80's. I guess today Case would be traveling to Shenzhen or Wuhan.

I do appreciate the cynicism in the speculation that Night City only exists because its allowed to exist, either by the Yakuza or the megacorps. The prototypical cyberpunk free for all zone should really be in a South American or African economic extraction zone, not a first world country with megacorps owning everything.

The video arcade feels very archaic but I guess if there's one place that still has them in the future it would be Japan.

The gun Case rents feels very appropriate for a 3rd world rathole "a fifty-year-old Vietnamese imitation of a South American copy of a Walther PPK". No cyberlinked smartguns here.

I do like that the one time Case takes initiative is when he's imagining Night City as a cyberspace grid he's jacked into rather than meat on the street. Shows how differently he thinks about cyberspace (the real world for him) vs the actual real world.

The end of the chapter with Case just rolling over and going along with whatever feels realistic for someone coming down off an all-night amphetamine high and who just found out his girlfriend ripped him off for all he's worth.

Never picked up on it before but the money Linda uses to bribe the night watchman at Cheap Hotel is the same money Case gives her in the Jarre de The.

 

[del_toid]

Didn't realize I had made it all the way to chapter 7

He fumbled through a pocketful of lirasi, slotting the small dull alloy coins one after another, vaguely amused by the anachronism of the process. The phone nearest him rang. Automatically, he picked it up. “Yeah?” Faint harmonics, tiny inaudible voices rattling across some orbital link, and then a sound like wind. “Hello. Case.” A fifty-lirasi coin fell from his hand, bounced, and rolled out of sight across Hilton carpeting. “Wintermute, Case. It’s time we talk.” It was a chip voice. “Don’t you want to talk, Case?” He hung up. On his way back to the lobby, his cigarettes forgotten, he had to walk
the length of the ranked phones. Each rang in turn, but only once, as he passed.


the setup of Wintermute, Case and Molly figuring at whe has to do with Armitage and the job, and then showing off what he can do by having payphones ring as Case walks by is so fucking cool. I missed so much on my first read through.

 

[AnOminous]

Heinlein wrote about screensavers back in 1966, over fifteen years before they were invented.

Arthur C. Clarke wrote about geostationary satellites in 1945, although the technologies to make them actually work didn't exist until Telstar was launched in 1962, 17 years later.

Here's a kind of nifty early synth song about it from the same year.

 

[Old King Koaleamos]

I normally have a crime/noir book in rotation, so Neuromancer works. Will get to it.

Connie Willis' Terra Incognita, Ellison's Greatest Hits, and Poul Anderson's Broken Sword are also in my current rotation.

 

[ducktales4gameboy]

I'm about halfway through, I forget which chapter.

Haven't read Neuromancer since I was a teenager and one thing that really sticks out to me is how Gibson will mention a concept for a couple lines and drop it only to have some other later cyberpunk work pick it up and run with it. Shadowrun and Bladerunner stick out as particularly obvious examples with direct lifts; it's really one thing to hear them as 'heavily inspired by Neuromancer' and another to see that they've taken objects and concepts like nuyen and street samurai word-for-word. I also like Gibson's specific prose quirk of frontloading concepts where he'll start using a noun and use it in a couple varied sentences to give you enough context to figure out what the thing is and how it's used before actually describing it in detail, e.g. the mentions of coffins in the first chapter. Makes me wonder if they were commentary on capsule hotels as the first one was constructed 5 years before neuromancer's release and pretty much matches the description given in the text.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

Started reading and I already strongly dislike the prose a few paragraphs in
Reminds me of reading some really unapproachable academic papers in that I would have to sit down and deconstruct and re-parse every sentence to make it intelligible
If it doesn't get better soon I might have to sit this one out, my headache is strong enough already

EDIT: Nope, it is like this all the way through, I skipped ahead a bit to check.
I'll sit this one out for health reasons then, see you next month.

 

[del_toid]

Started reading and I already strongly dislike the prose a few paragraphs in
Reminds me of reading some really unapproachable academic papers in that I would have to sit down and deconstruct and re-parse every sentence to make it intelligible
If it doesn't get better soon I might have to sit this one out, my headache is strong enough already

EDIT: Nope, it is like this all the way through, I skipped ahead a bit to check.
I'll sit this one out for health reasons then, see you next month.

Understandable. It doesn't have the best flow, and you have to really actively pay attention to what's being said. IMO you should give it a good try, maybe a couple chapters, because once I got used to it I liked it. Also I wanna hear what you have to say about the story

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

Understandable. It doesn't have the best flow, and you have to really actively pay attention to what's being said. IMO you should give it a good try, maybe a couple chapters, because once I got used to it I liked it. Also I wanna hear what you have to say about the story

Mh, I don't know if "flow" is the right word. From what I understand, and from some more research to check if I'm wrong or right on this, it seems that Gibson never "slows down" to explain the world in plain terms. What he does is drop me as the reader in the middle of it and force me to infer the setting, slang, and tech from context, in prose that is consistently dense, elliptical, and fragmented. To me that's too much sensory overload, at least in my current health situation.
Currently in the first third of an annotated chapter-by-chapter breakdown and I can share my thoughts based on that if that's sufficiently valuable

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

I wanna hear what you have to say about the story

Be mindful that my thoughts will be rather high level and conceptual since they're based on condensed summaries and descriptions of the events. So, the story by itself is already a hard pass for my personal preferences, regarding what I appreciate, like, dislike, and despise in stories and media. And that's because the core topics are perception, manipulation, illusion, and deception. Not only is the protagonist a junkie who seeks to avert his perception of reality, deception and illusion are literally embodied in characters like Armitage and Riviera, not to mention Wintermute and Neuromancer bringing Case into illusions, and Wintermute's constant meddling.
To me this is immensely epistemically disrespectful, as pretty much every sentence in the book can be appended with the very smug and pseudo-intellectual suffix "... or is it?", and I despise that. Manipulation and deception also in terms of not-real things having real effects on people, like with Riviera triggering Molly and Case, and Case being constantly manipulated by Wintermute. It's one of my biggest personal pet peeves, I find it absolutely disrespectful towards my intelligence, it's the equivalent of playing sad music and showing me footage of starving kids in an effort to manipulate me into transferring my money to a stranger.
A lesser, but fundamental, annoyance I have with the plot itself is the author's lack of praxeological and epistemological understanding. "Human unpredictability" is also a topic touched upon, what with the crew working with profiles of the members, Molly doing something unpredictable, and Riviera underestimating his "companions" and adversaries, and Wintermute being irritated also. Also touching on the matter of AIs, like Wintermute and Neuromancer, having some sort of volition and agency, I find that it is a very false depiction of how volitional agents act, given my own praxeological and epistemological understanding. But most writers are not praxeologists, so I'm not going to hold that too hard against Gibson. Ultimately, he wrote a story that was compelling to many, and stepped over coherence and logic in order to do so.
I like the fact that the super-AI at the end actually honors the deal and doesn't fuck over Case and Molly needlessly, that would have been a sign of extremely poor writing to me. I hope that the next book will be significantly easier to read.

 

[crowabunga]

pretty much every sentence in the book can be appended with the very smug and pseudo-intellectual suffix "... or is it?",

While instrumentalization of person(alitie)s is core to the story, I never felt that the book was being cutesey with me as the reader or otherwise trying to wow me with some cheap epistemology 101 skepticism; while it is certainly the case that the characters operate under a veil of paranoia, deception and ignorance, I never felt that Gibson was trying to smugly "but what if it was all just a dream, dude?" at me.