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/lit/ - Literature

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22497447 No.22497447 [Reply] [Original]

This is supposed to be a dystopia? It looks way better than this shitty timeline.

>> No.22497511

>>22497447
Gibson: 'Today, as then, all over the world, there are people who are living in situations that are infinitely worse than anything I have depicted, and they will for the rest of their short, miserable life - and, any of those people would immigrate to the Sprawl in a wink... and they would be so much better off... The only people who can view Neuromancer as a dystopia, are people living in a condition of extraordinary privilege. '

>> No.22497516

>>22497447
>This is supposed to be a dystopia?
No, but it's not supposed to be a utopia either.

Stop reading so much YA. You don't need to boil absolutely everything down to a single value judgement.

>> No.22497559

>>22497447
i hate sci-fi but i should read this because he wrote it in the dystopian shithole of vancouver, where i "live" if you can even call this living

>> No.22497610

>>22497447
The latest Iphone (the one you can play AAA games, right?) costs 3000 dollars in Brazil.
Almost 1/4 of everything we earn goes to the State, but half the country has no potable tap water to drink nor a real sewerage system.
Our Presidente just cut off about 140 million dollars in crime fighting but wants a new airplane that costs almost 100 million - the last timr his Party took office 60000 people died yearly do to violent (criminal) deaths.

Half the "cyber", double the "punk".
More 16 years, at least, of this shit.

>> No.22497625

I still can't believe CDPR got away with ripping off this incredibly popular genre-defining novel word by word for their AAA video game. The similarities are genuinely uncanny, and it's not in parodic self-reference or pastiche.
That said the world will get better once we have full dive. I feel Gibson didn't have the creative drive to imagine how shocking the body horror of today (or any cybebrpunk dystopia) would be either, but his discount Burroughs prose tries.

>> No.22497988

>>22497516
Isn't cyberpunk inherently dystopic at least? (I had to look up the word after writing it down but it seems that then it would align with your post however figured I might as well still post the question)

>>22497511
Where is this quote from? I couldn't find it myself.

>> No.22497998

>>22497988
A lot of cyberpunk is dystopic but it didn't begin like that. Neuromancer was supposed to be a big fuckyou to scifi like Star Trek.

>> No.22498070

>>22497511
Yeah real poverty is very grim and disgusting, and doesn't allow for larp. Cyberpunk is like subcultures from which it takes its name. It's playing dress up.

>> No.22498102

God what a shitty book

>> No.22498495

>>22497625
I think CDPR's game was overhyped but desu Gibson ripped off the aesthetic of Blade Runner and he openly admits it. I am saying this as a fan of the Sprawl trilogy (I tried to read his steampunk book about if Babbage succeeded and couldn't get into it).

>> No.22498608

>>22498495
Gibson was at best slightly inspired by P.K. Dick. He focuses on completely different themes and his writing bears no resemblance.

>> No.22498632

Neuromancer is the dystopian future if everybody remained white. It naturally looks like a paradise compared to gl0boh0mo

>> No.22498651

cyberpunk is to this day still stuck in "80s dystopia" and failed to predict the post-internet hellscape we live in now. cyberpunk desperately needs to innovate as it is painfully generic at this point.

>> No.22498654

>>22498632
the "french teen" agents part was really kino

>> No.22498661

cyberpunk world
>the state is weak
>normal people can become superstar hackers
>genetic engineering and transhumanism isn't dystopian
>corps aren't even conventionally evil
>technology advanced considerably
>it's evil because everybody wears heavy metal trenchcoats and the lighting is dark?

>> No.22498667

he didn't even own a computer until after he wrote it, all the tech dialogue was based on stuff he heard during scifi conventions and bars

he bought one after Neuromancer was a success and was terribly disappointed

he was less trying to predict a dystopia or the future and more "this shit sounds cool, I should make a book with these words"

>> No.22498669

>>22498661
Everything you wrote doesn't apply to neuromancer luckily.

>> No.22499233

>>22497610
Don't be born in the turd world. Problem solved

>> No.22499247
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22499247

>>22497610
At least you have phones in this world, no cellphones in Neuromancer. Plus its figurative anyway, you can live in second life or some other avatar world all you like and try and scam grandmothers out of their money if you want to be a criminal

>> No.22499257

>>22499247
I forgot to mention you can play the Cyberpunk game 2049 is it?

>> No.22499265

>>22498608
He said he borrowed the setting aesthetic from the movie. He was planning Neuromancer prior to watching the movie, but Blade Runner made him find the aesthetic he wanted.
Pkds original book is very different from Blade Runner. I prefer the original, has more story and the themes are quite different.

>> No.22499573

>>22498495
>Gibson ripped off the aesthetic of Blade Runner
Not really. It was a coincidence. He was worried that people would think that, but really he was combining stuff like Dashiel Hammett and Thomas Pynchon in a sci fi format.

>> No.22500191

>>22499573
>>22499265
>>22498608
>>22498495
Well i recant my statement. Gibson actually rewrote his book to avoid seeming like a blade runner ripoff.
I read the book years ago and my memory was fuzzy.

>> No.22500544

I like Gibson kind of, but why does every book in the Bridge and the Sprawl with the single exception of Neuromancer follow the same plot.
>several people see separate parts of a corpo conspiracy involving powerful people
>corpo efforts to kill them fail, but in evading them the different people are drawn together
>they more or less figure out what’s going on, and then appeal to a more powerful figure to intervene
>happy endings all around except for the one person who got killed/revealed to live in brazil

>> No.22500593

>>22498632
Its just a simple thriller book. It completely failed to forsee the advent of social media, which was sad for Nick Land because he based his entire worldview on Gibson's prophetic ability and is on the record as being shocked that cyberspace ended up being grandmas sharing cat pictures on facebook and not AI neo-China or whatever.

>> No.22500598

>>22498632
>Neuromancer is the dystopian future if everybody remained white.
It's heavily Asian themed you idiot, there are stupid Space Jamaicans in it who become important to the plot. It's a product of the 80s fear of Japanese industry taking over the world economy and what that world would look like.

>> No.22501208

>>22497447
>No, but it's not supposed to be a utopia either.

Nueromancer was much more a sci-fi novel with a lot of laced subtext on drugs and addiction with a lot of sensual prose as the character dives and takes acid trips

>> No.22501345

>>22497988
>Isn't cyberpunk inherently dystopic at least?
No

>> No.22501493

>>22498495
The Babbage book was ok but it was too bloated. The Sprawl trilogy is all killer no filler, wish he woulda stuck with that style. Had a cool premise though.

>> No.22501524

>>22501493
An alternate steampunk future where Babbage's computers became mainstream isn't even that interesting desu because steam computers would be primitive by pre-transistor electronic and even punch card standards. Yes the first general purpose computer was built in 1941 (electronic Z3), but steam computing would consume too many resources and they would have to ditch steampunk technology entirely to innovate computer wise. And steam computing would be too unwieldy.
Unlike cyberpunk which is based off the early days of the digital age. Transistor computers have far more potential technology wise for creative stories than a hypothetical steampunk computer

>> No.22501533

>>22501524
I am referring to late 19th century, early 20th century punch card computers, not Babbage style computing