I just re-read Neuromancer for some reason and... I still don't really get it.
Though I'm not certain it's making any particular statement. The hero mall-ninja. The wasp nest of big money. It's like a bunch of dream images each with their own resonance rattling around in what would be unfair to call 90s pastiche... because to be fair to Mr. Gibson, he invented what was later imitated.
@futurebird
One thing it does is set Victorian-era social structure, income disparity, and lack of social mobility in the future. It's a warning that we could end up there again, and a look at what that might mean.
@futurebird I’ve read 3 or 4 Gibson novels — mostly when they were new, and none recently — but none have stuck with me in any way. Not the characters, plots, or situations. Zip. 🤷♂️
I kept trying to like his stuff; I really did. And it’s not even that I think it’s bad or didn’t like it… it just went in one eye and out the other. 🤷♂️
@tantramar@futurebird I’m no aficionado, but this bit from Pattern Recognition on jet lag really stayed with me “…her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can't move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.”
@tantramar@futurebird Neuromancer was groundbreaking mainly in—for lack of better word—the “vibe” of the world building & grunge-tech-antihero tropes. It’s all been so copied since, it feels like pastiche now.
I enjoy WG’s work more for the ideas in the story & some of the writing style than the characters or plots exactly. I just like hanging out in his brain a while.
And perhaps I’ve gotten more out of his interviews & essays than his fiction over the years.
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