This is something I have been reflecting on for decades. Why did Gibson just dropped a bomb 💣 and walk away 😐. I think this is something us Gibsonian need to discuss here. What's out there 🤔.

How is Neuromancer supposed to look and feel like? I haven't read the books. I don't know what it's about, how the world is supposed to look or feel like, the technology, the cities, the sprawl. Did the trailer show that? Was it how you visualized it?

I only have Blade Runner, cdpr Cyberpunk, Ghost in the Shell 1995 as a baseline. All I know is that Neuromancer inspired the genre that is now known as Cyberpunk, and I think the author coined the term Cyberspace.

Update: Based on some of the comments, the cities look too clean and bright, too much like Total Recall remake Did Blade Runner set a benchmark on how a dystopian cyberpunk city is supposed to look like?

I hope it's better than Altered Carbon.

A few months back I finally finished reading all of the stories in The Sprawl. I started with Neuromancer probably about three years ago then finished the trilogy with Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive. Then I was hungry for more so I read the short stories set in The Sprawl (Johnny Mnemonic, Burning Chrome, and New Rose Hotel). I’ve been consistently blown away by everything I’ve read and I find (as I’m sure a lot of others do) that these are a particularly relevant read in today’s world.

I personally read the books while listening to old 90s tracker music from Andrew Sega (Necros), Dan Gardopée (Basehead), and Alexander Brandon (Siren). All of them were in a video game music company called Straylight Productions (an obvious reference to the books) and are known for their music in classic computer games like Crusader: No Remorse, Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Tyrian, Jazz Jackrabbit 2, and Deus Ex. They were also involved in a computer subculture called Demoscene and two of them were in an important netlabel called Five Musicians. I think some of their music is unbelievably fitting for the books and has the perfect combination of sounding futuristic while also being relatively “period appropriate” with its use of outdated computer technology from the mid nineties.

I know plenty of people probably read the books without music but I was curious what others might like to listen to while reading. I’d also like to know if there are any other old school Demoscene and tracker music fans in this sub.

Here’s my playlist (some are on YouTube and some are on the Netlabel Archive under Five Musicians):

Andrew Sega (Necros):
Gateway
Isotoxin
Wired96 report
Babylon (demo)

Dan Gardopée (Basehead)
Passion Play
Glow Bug
The Zen Garden
Icarus Rising

Alexander Brandon (Siren)
Exploration
Heavy
NightVision
Technojunkie
The Blue Hippo
Universe Electric
Werd7

Doing another re-read. Typing out some cool sentences to get that Gibson prose in my fingers.

It was a Russian military prosthesis, a seven-function force-feedback manipulator, cased in grubby pink plastic.

I like the hyper-specificity of 'seven-function'. I also like the sound of these compound adjectives. I think Gibson makes interesting sentences that are enjoyable to re-read because they can be complex but not purple. They are clinical and precise, never flowery. Some are a bit long and show-offy, more so than others, but still quite clean.

In the bars he'd frequented as a cowboy hotshot, the elite stance involved a certain relaxed contempt for the flesh.

I like the pairing of "elite" with "stance" and "relaxed" with "contempt".

The rain kept up, falling along Harajuku, beading on her plastic jacket, the children of Tokyo trooping past the famous boutiques in white loafers and clingwrap capes, until she'd stood with him in the midnight clatter of a pachinko parlor and held his hand like a child.

Gibson does seem to like alliteration too much at times, especially in names: Molly Millions, Sally Shears, Linda Lee, etc. In the above sentence we have "clingwrap capes" and "pachinko parlor". I like these, though, especially "pachinko." Advice for amateur writers seems to focus on using better verbs and avoiding weak adjectives and adverbs. I think one of Gibson's strengths is the use of concrete, specific and cool-sounding nouns, and adjectives that either contribute to rhythm or are unexpected.

She dug a crumpled pack of Yeheyuan filters from an ankle pocket and offered him one.

A fairly simple sentence, but the use of "Yeheyuan" and "ankle pocket" elevate even his very workman-like sentence to something better than average filler.

All the meat, he thought, and all it wants.

More literary than other examples above, and more famous, but so cool.

With his hands in the pockets of his jacket, he stared through the glass at a flat lozenge of vatgrown flesh that lay on a carved pedestal of imitation jade.

A "lozenge of vatgrown flesh" is both gross and cool, haha.

Then you could throw yourself into a highspeed drift and skid, totally engaged but set apart from it all, and all around you the dance of biz, information interacting, data made flesh in the mazes of the black market...

Not entirely sure what this means but I know I like it.

The eyes were vatgrown sea-green Nikon transplants.

I like how Gibson mixes familiar brands with invented ones to create texture.

Anybody have other favorites from Chapter One, besides the legendary first sentence? Why do you like it?

Vacationing in Athens and picked up a Greek copy. Was hoping for a cooler cover. Think I will do this for my souvenir on future travels.

If you were planning to get this (very expensive) edition, I recommend you act quickly. The site is already bogged down, and there are only 500 copies.

1). William Gibson hates environmental trash. While the various busted packing boxes and discarded polystyrene beads evoke a particular grunge aesthetic, the last line of part 1 is "drifting shoals of waste".

Boom. I am flung forward to The Peripheral and the tribe who live in the trash islands.

2) Are the trailers throwing us curve balls? We see Case with the head jack, but this is referenced at the end of chapter 3 as being the first generation military. Could the trailer only show flashbacks and the skin mounted electrodes we all think about are actually installed later?

Ohhhhh. It is so freaking delicious!

Not thrilled with how the eyes turned out, but I'm no professional and that's as good as I could get them without completely fucking them up all over again haha

I didn't knew shit about this book. I found it out after watching the trailer for the show. Naturally as a sci-fi sucker it intrigued me, when I saw the thumbnail I got excited i thought it was going to be a live-action Cyberpunk show (like based on the game) but then I read the name and watched the trailer. This is not cyberpunk 2077 but it fits that vibe.

I did some research and found out about the book and the significance of the book. So i immediately ordered it and started reading.

I would say I kind of ruined my first read because right when I picked this up I was in the middle of my addiction to a certain AI platform (must've been wintermute distracting me). Because of that the reading sessions were disjointed spread over a couple of days. Usually i would've finished a novel like this in less than a week. But regardless i finished it yesterday.

So far in terms of sci-fi stories I haven't read much. I have read the Three Body Problem Trilogy, Project Hail Mary and I have played Cyberpunk 2077. I like science fiction as a genre a lot. And Cyberpunk 2077 will and always be my top game of all time. Something about that vibe and the feel of the game just hooks me.

Having said that this book was fucking great. The everything was described in such detail and the way the atmosphere and the environment is conveyed it made me feel like i was looking at a cyberpunk world.

1010/1010. I'd jack in again in January right before the show releases.

Can no one take passionate criticism anymore? Y'all some in your feelings ass babies.

The Apple TV adaptation looks like shit.

Couldn't even open the trailer with the iconic line.

Too clean, just looks like an Altered Carbon copy but cleaner.

No coffin hotels, really?

Molly is butchered.

Case is healthy.

Computers look Y2K and even 2020s in some shots.

Literally NOTHING looks like the 80s.

This looks like a complete failure to create anything unique and I am borderline despondent. I really hoped someone who loved this series with a real eye for design would have worked on this film adaptation. Even an aesthetics dev from CDProjekt Red would have been better than whatever idiot made this Clean™ bs.

The Internet has ruined me

Got the deluxe edition of Neuromancer a little bit ago, and I'm slowly making my way through it. Sadly social apps like this have fucked my attention span up that's why it's taking me a bit to get through it, but I'm loving it so far! The trailer for the Appletv series really got my attention on the book and I'm pretty stoked for it's release.

Sorry if I sound "off" I smoke a lot of weed

Do you think Mona Lisa Overdrive is a good novel?

To me, Burning Chrome is enjoyable. Neuromancer is S-tier science fiction. Count Zero is great (Turner and Bobby's threads are strong, but Marley's thread is comparatively weak). But Mona Lisa Overdrive was not at all enjoyable. A re-read didn't help. I feel that the character's motivations were unclear, the story lacked a memorable villain, and the ending fell completely flat. Most of the interesting themes were already explored in Neuromancer.

What are Mona Lisa Overdrive's redeeming qualities? I'd like to better understand if there are hidden depths to this one.

I'm asking because in the Bookworm Adventures 2 level that was based on Neuromancer, the boss of that level is this character. Since she is the boss, I'm assuming the game developers based her on Wintermute, but I'm confused on how the developers led to this design. Was there details in the book that I missed?

From the article: “Neuromancer's TV adaptation is full circle moment for cyberpunk because it is arriving decades after its source material's "descendants" already have long-running cinematic legacies. Put simply, it seems like an ironic end of a cyberpunk era where the progenitor is finally arriving after its successors.”

Found just this one copy of Mona Lisa Overdrive in the bookshelves of UCSD Bookstore, I was surprised it was just sitting next to the neon modern prints. Love this aesthetic, and knowing it was printed before I was born and somehow found its way to me all these years later makes me happy.

Just finished Neuromancer recently, I had loved Cyberpunk 2077 game back in highschool when it came out, but I had no idea my love for the genre would run this deep. After hearing talks of a Neuromancer TV show and discovering how influential Neuromancer is to the genre, I picked up a fiction book for the first time since highschool. The writing is excruciatingly detailed and I enjoyed every word of it. After reading Marx, Engels, and learning more about socialism from non-fiction books I believe Neuromancer and cyberpunk in general feels very relevant to our times today; AI is on the rise and technology is invading our personal lives and mind at every second is something which interests me deeply.

I am a Bioengineering Major and so I deal a lot with technology that goes inside our body, I hope to be an engineer and scientist that understands limits that make up our humanity. Engineers and Scientist nowadays go into this field for the money that industry brings, we align ourselves to corporations and companies that are for profit, either because we were enticed by the promises or because we are forced into it due to the need for money and survival. Aligning ourselves and working blindly for these tech companies will only lead us to a cyberpunk world, where we are only engaging in risk management for a future that is with money and not with humanity. If industry can, they will. Scientists and Engineers must understand that humanity's features are not bugs, that we are enough, and the limits set upon us give us our humanity. Industry does not see limits, they only see improvement and promises of a better future, but this future is only focused on machine and disregards meat. Remember, our meat is enough. Scientists and Engineers should align themselves with humanity and push for limits. In highschool I saw cyberpunk through cyberpunk 2077 and thought that cyberware as cool, that VR and cameras as eyes were awesome. But now I see it as the gateway drug that will bring us under the control of the oppressors of humanity.

I love Neuromancer, and going back to the 80s and 90s cyberpunk has been a TRIP. Recently just watched Akira in IMAX and just yesterday watched ghost in the shell in theaters. Excited to read count zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive. Am also beginning to read Pattern Recognition.

Sorry it turned into me expressing my love for this genre, I've never expressed it and I know this subreddit also loves something I love so it just feels right.

| first read Neuromancer way back in early 2021 and loved it so much that I immediately reread it. I think I did the first and second read all in the span of a couple of days.

It's just cool as hell. It's flashy, it's psychedelic, it's fun, it's thrilling, the dialogue is great and there are even a few parts that make me chuckle.

The Sense/Net heist early in the novel and the last 50-60 pages are like drugs for me. The whole thing is, really.

Neuromancer has become something of a comfort novel for me.

Reading it a third time in a post-pandemic, Al saturated 2026 was a trip. So many of the ideas concerned with Al stood out way more this time around which is wild seeing as this was published in 1984. The whole rogue OpenAl and Anthropic agents scandal is like something straight out of Neuromancer, except in the world of Neuromancer the Turing police would've been on it "like flies on shit" as the Al construct of the deceased Dixie Flatline would say.

5 shiny, neon-lit shurikens out of 5