/lit/ - Literature

>>8506533

I first read "Neuromancer" on a cyberpunk kick brought on by a serious case of infatuation with "Bladerunner". I too was unimpressed. The dissolute protagonist and the rampant drug use in the novel bored me as I had recently read plenty of this sort of thing from P.K. Dick. The rest of the story felt like a mediocre mystery novel, especially since AI and cyberspace were wellworn concepts by the time I read "Neuromancer" in the Oughts. I later read "Snowcrash" and after the first chapter was ready to write off Gibson as a hack. Ironically, my first reaction was to post a thread on /lit/ about how much better "Snowcrash" was.

A decade later, I think I have aged to fit the book. Where I had seen Case as a base appeal to subculture readers a decade earlier, I now empathize with him. His loves, his failures, his self-destructive behavior: these resonate more with me now than they did then. Accepting the protagonist has freed me to appreciate the other aspects of the novel. The AI are amoral and insane; this jives with my personal opinion of what the Singularity will yield: diseased fruit of flawed minds. The eccentricities of the Tessier-Ashpool family ring true; I could easily see Jeff Bezos or Peter Thiel founding a similarly dysfunctional clan on an orbital station.

Finally, cyberpunk for me is inseparable from the visual medium. In my mind's eye, Case is hustling on "Bladerunner"'s streets. Because of this symbiotic relationship where one is incomplete without the other, I don't consider cyberpunk to be the best of science fiction's written form and I can understand those who don't care for it. However, I think "Neuromancer" is the best of the subgenre.