/lit/ - Literature

What did you like about it?

>>21783467
The aesthetic descriptions were enjoyable to an extent. But the plot was weak and inconsequential imo.

>>21783461
I'm reading this now. I think its fun but I was expecting a lot more the way some people talk about it.

>>21783461
Did you read the trilogy or the first novel?

>>21783515
Just this book. Idk if I want to pick any of the others up after finishing this one.

>>21783525
You definitely should and you should definitely pay full price for a new copy that’ll look good on your shelf

>>21783510
Realizing it's basically just reddit tier garbage

>>21783529
Nigga I bought this for $3 from goodwill and I'm about to sell it for $5.

>>21783529
That doesn't sound very cyberpunk desu

>>21783515
>Did you read the trilogy or the first nove
If you're trying to convince the OP to read the other 2, OP do not listen

I was disappointed with neuromancer. I gave count zero (the second book) a chance cause I thought a merc being rebuilt after an explosion was a cool idea, except that Gibson made it boring and made it only about 1/3 of the book, the other 2 being a teenaged hacker and then some woman that likes art
Don't continue on

>>21783537
Good man, I apologize.
>>21783538
>not building your own cyberdeck out of an old CRT tube, a clock radio and shit you scrounged out of a junk pile and reading on that
Ayyyy
>>21783554
^he’s right you know

>>21783554
I don't think anyone could convince me after that. Just gonna look for books on my own volition and ignore other people's opinions on what constitutes a good book, although I do agree with you here.
Thanks for the heads up tho. Truly this book was awful, I finished A Scanner Darkly right before picking this up and that story was leagues ahead of this one.

>>21783461
Filtered.

>>21783651

>>21783672
Who is this funny little man? Did you draw him?

>>21783461
>>21783475
>>21783510
>>21783525
>>21783531
>>21783537
>>21783538
>>21783554
>>21783637
>>21783651
This is why you should read Hardwired by Walter John Williams. True cyberpunk kino.

>>21783554
The merc shit was boring. Very video game. The art lady was the best part.

>>21783461
I liked it. It is much better than anything else he has written

>>21783461
It’s sucks. Some of the worst prose ever written.

>>21785079
>it's
Anyway the prose is great. I'm biased because I love noir though.

>>21783461
>>21783475
I wouldn't go so far as to call it shit but I was definitely expecting more. I enjoyed the atmosphere and the worldbuilding, those were definitely the strongest aspects of the book. Characters like Case are also some of my favorite protags to read, but yeah the plot, prose, and characters outside of Case and Molly were all pretty mid

>>21783531
Just realized people who read this in 3 decades or so will have no idea what it means and will probably conjure up very different images from the white noise static we grew up with

>>21785125
*Anyway, the

>>21785125
>he loves niggers
blech

>>21783461
Why'd you hate it?

>>21783461
No you

Neuromancer filters so many people

>>21783461
There are better books these days. It may have broken new ground in it's day but these days everyone and their dog has seen the matrix. Merging ai's, ok cool concept but the book is a bit of a struggle without a glossary imo. Yes there are glossaries online for neuromancer.

>>21783529
>you should definitely pay full price for a new copy that’ll look good on your shelf
an anonymous internet voice tells me to consooome

>>21787080
Imo if you need a glossary for neuromancer you're stupid and any opinion you have regarding books is irrelevant.

>>21783537
i had a copy i bought at the borders in the old wtc. idk what happened to it. i think i sold it on ebay. agree with everyone else that it's not that good.

>>21787072
this, so much scum around here these days. especially on Neuromancer threads.

>>21783461
It's influence is greater than it's quality and unfortunately, it's still the best written work of cyberpunk. And I published a cyberpunk book myself.

>>21783554
This. Count Zero sucked shit.

They're like travel books. It's fun to spend time in that world. The actual stories generally lean a little on the stupid side, admittedly.

>>21785250
Finn is my favourite character in the trilogy.

I wish the entire book was set in Chiba, perhaps expanding to Tokyo even. His noirish prose meshed really well with the metropolis setting as well as Case’s broken, drug-addicted mental state. Cyberpunk at its best.

>>21783531
>The sky above the port was the color of a television, tuned to a dead channel.
"A television tuned to a dead channel" can stand alone as a full sentence, so why the comma after "televison"?
It's unnecessary and breaks the flow of the sentence.

>>21787494
Because it is a subordinate clause you fucking mong

>>21787497
Subordinate clauses don’t start with praticiples. They start with subordinating conjunctions, you mong.

>>21787494
It’s not a subordinate clause. It’s a participial clause. Technically speaking, it looks restrictive to me, meaning the information is essential, because without it the sentence would only be saying the sky looks the color of a television, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

However, in fiction writing grammar doesn’t have to be perfect, and a lot of writers uses commas to delineate clauses when they’re not needed. This is usually, but not always, done for a (slight) pause effect. In my opinion, I think Gibson was going for that effect here. Whether or not you agree with his aesthetic judgement, however, is a different matter.

>>21787497
Are 18th century grammar rules still relevant in fiction writing? As far back as Mark Twain, at least, grammar was partially sacrificed for style and context. This is common place today. I agree with making it two sentences. It acheives the dramatic effect intended. Sure the second sentence is "incomplete" but it is not like it is all unintelligable gibberish on the verge of anarachy, or anything.

>>21784980
I didn't care for either part

>>21783537
Stonks!

>>21787540
He’s wrong, it’s not a subordinate clause, it’s a participial clause. Technically it shouldn’t have a comma because it’s restrictive. However, Gibson, like many writers, often uses unnecessary commas with clauses because of the slight pause effect it induces. He’a making an aesthetic judgment rather than following a grammatical rule. Whether or not you agree with him is a different matter, however.

>>21784980
It was intriguing at first when she gets recruited by the tech magnate, but resolves any suspense it had too quickly. She's supposed to do this job and all she manages to do is go shopping and take a shower before her ex waltzes back into the picture with the exact information she needs.
I agree Case was the best part, especially when he ate the bitch's pussy at the beginning. But even his plot feels like anticlimax. The whole novel feels like anticlimax.

>>21787540
Twain wrote in the dialect of his people, elements of which trace back to common 17th century conventions.

>>21787497
I know it's grammatical, but it still sounds retarded.
>The sky above the port was the color of a television,
PAUSE
>tuned to a dead channel.
The pause does, I admit, add a dramatic effect by heightening the clause making it stand out more alone, but I still think it's better without the pause.

>>21787423
>alpha and beta
>ego
Not in the novel.

>>21787072
>>21787412

its not a fucking filter to anything it was the first book i read (and pretty much started my reading "career") just because redditfags recommended it so much and it was fairly short. it's alright.

>>21787494
'cause it's an incidental relative clause

>>21787742
It's language filters people constantly. It being so highly recommended by reddit is precisely why it filters people. Plebian diletantes want to 'get into reading' and are afraid of classics so they think they are safe with Le epic matrix internet sci-fi book but have a 6th grade reading level so they naturally get filtered.

What are other sci-fi books that deal with hyperspace and AI, anyways?

>>21787882
The Quantum Magician

>>21787540
Even Shakespeare was doing it and it was old before him

>>21783461
Most "le classic must read sci fi" is like that.
Asimov sucks
Clarke sucks
Wells suck
Lem sucks
Dune sucks
Hyperion sucks

It's a shit genre

>>21787980
Dune and Clarke I agree with. Asimov, I agree some of the foundation books are overrated. Best ones are Empire and Earth.
Caves of Steel is pretty good too.

Wells is the best of the bunch, time machine and invisble man are both great. War of the Worlds is pretty good too

>>21787980
Everything is like that. You can reduce anything to "it sucks" if that is the kind of person you are.

>>21787992
My mistake, I went a bit overboard, by baiting instinct took over. Wells is good indeed. Philip K Dick is good, Jules Verne is good, I liked Ted Chiang as well. My personal favorite is Contact by Sagan.

Well, that's just like, your opinion, man.

>>21787980
I flipped to a random page in Hyperion the last time I was in a bookstore and the scene I landed on involved a guy getting his dick bit off by an android chick's metal teeth-vagina. What the fuck is /lit/ getting people into, recommending it as the Dark Souls of fantasy series?

>>21788106
thats the book of the new sun

>>21787429
Don’t you even talk shit about best boy Bobby

>>21788106
You don’t remember the Gaping Demon?

>>21787794
>It's language
the language is mostly just verbosity (which i like), you know, shit like this:

>And in the bloodlit dark behind his eyes, silver phosphenes boiled in from the edge of space, hypnagogic images jerking past like a film compiled of random frames. Symbols, figures, faces, a blurred, fragmented mandala of visual information.

i dont think anyone has a problem with that but rather with the plot. i should probably reread it once im done with Pynchon and infinite jest (so somewhere around october of next year)

>>21788246
Bro are you joking? That's exactly the kind of sentence that filters dumbasses who don't read and pick this up on a whim. Go on r/books and search neuromancer, if you can stomach it, and you'll see

>>21788270
it isn't the verboseness that causes the disapproval, its the plot, at least based on this thread and le reddit threads i went through

>>21788331
Niggers literally cannot follow the words, line by line. The difference between here and reddit is that there they're not pretentious about their inability to read, they're arrogant.

>>21788331
I don't understand why you are making the distinction, it's both. You need to lower your opinion of people. They literally can't read at a high-school level.

>>21788341
>>21788366

doesn't this shit seem a little arrogant to you? there are many, genuine reasons to dislike (or, at least not to be a fan of) the book: the amount of AIs and fancy technological systems that have no background context, or just the very fact in of itself that AI in of itself is a kind of Deus ex machina, especially when written in a time when there was no AI whatsoever to speak of in the real world.

>>21788106
I laughed like a motherfucker that whole chapter. How people fail to see the charm of this book is beyond me.

>>21787794
Op here.

The grammar wasn't the issue. The overarching story was fucking lame and had no lingering consequence implied in the world. Sure Case's issues have been resolved (the neurotoxins) but why the FUCK should I care that these AI's merged. What are the implications of this happening? So far as I can tell nothing. A glossary was absolutely unnecessary as most of the fictional devices are explained in context. It's just a bad story.

All the people defending it are pretentious faggots who think my issue with the book was the grammar and descriptive text. Like nah retard it's just a bad story.

>>21789196
>Like nah retard it's just a bad story.
Are you black?

>>21789204
Nigger

>>21788547
News flash friendo: we still don’t have anything even remotely resembling true AI. Fight me

>>21783461
>What a pile of shit this book is.
You take that back. It is a masterclass of nuanced world building.

The rest is shit though. Soulless characters (except Molly) that don't develop at all. Shitty pacing that made it seem over about half way through. Harshe punk prose which I can give it a pass for, bit doesn't make it easy. Crigey racist eye dialects.

>>21783475
>But the plot was weak and inconsequential imo.
Because it's barely a heist plot. A character study where the characters only change in the implants they receive.

>>21783461
The Sprawl trilogy is pure style over substance. I preferred the Bridge trilogy.

>80 replies
>not a single post itt demonstrates that they can actually read it

>>21787072
>Neuromancer filters so many people
Yeah, there isn't a single post in this entire thread that couldn't have been typed by a bot. It's genuinely sad 'people' want to share an opinion, when they don't actually have one. It really goes to show, mass literacy was a mistake. These proles should be tilling the fields, instead they are shitting up this board.

>>21783461
>>21783531
So true. I think the value of Neuromancer is in understanding how tech-bros, who all did/do read it and self-insert, see themselves.
>>21783525
They get worse. I can vouch that Neuromancer is much better than All Tomorrow's Parties.

>>21787072
>>21790086
It's a pedestrian heist thriller that's only good for an airplane read and being tossed into an arrivals bin afterwards. By far Gibson's best work and it's utter dross.

>>21790073
They're are retarded Space Jamaicans speaking an incoherent patois that turn up halfway through.
>>21789665
>It is a masterclass of nuanced world building.
No it isn't at all. The fact you'd even consider such a thing important or that Gibson could fulfill it indicates how low and limited your literary horizons are. Genreslop.

>>21787794
What are you talking about? It's an utterly pedestrian book in all aspects. Go back to your toddler lit containment threads >>21787018

Terribly meh book

gridlinked is superior

>>21788547
I am justifiably arrogant and sick of hearing bad opinions bybdumb people about good books.

>>21790110
Why do you keep repeating yourself? No one cares that you don't like the book, you are a baboon throwing feces with your platitudes.

>>21790086
>book is bad...because it is bad
unironically this is the level of rhetoric that most of /lit/ operates on nowadays
it's no wonder that half of the posts haven't even read the work in question, when the discussion is on such a low level it doesn't require having read it

>>21790309
>Why do you keep repeating yourself?
It's their version of upboats and downboats.

>>21790309
>>21790328
Go back to your genre fiction containment thread if you don't want be bullied for your shitlit. It's a very mediocre book that does not deserve to be read on its literary merits. The thread is about how mediocre and disappointing Gibson is, you're the ones looking for a kiddy lit hugbox.

>>21790349
>he just keeps repeating himself
lmao

>>21790378
Did you expect anything else.

Ahem. Snow Crash is the superior pulp cyberpunk book.

>>21790319
>Anime viewer
Opinion discarded

>>21791350
anime website, not an argument, etc

>>21783531
It’s incredibly Reddit. It wouldn’t even be a big deal if corporate tech ceos didn’t focus in on the line “the technology exists it’s just not even distributed yet” or something to that effect.

Virtual Light > Necromancer. Although the Sprawl Trilogy is better than the Bridge trilogy overall.

>>21787980
I find Clarke comfy as fuck. There's always an undercurrent of dread or fear of the unknown in his work.

>>21788106
Hyperion (second book) it has to be asked.

Is Moneta a cunt?

She didn't aid Kassad like she could've.

idk i find the concept of the deep unconscious AI and the highly lucid AI useful when dealing with thoughts

>>21788547
You don't need background context, the book gives you enough context to pick up on everything going on. It's not difficult, it just has style.