Neuromancer (Sprawl #1) in Metafilter

Jan 18, 2024 Jeremy Preacher rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi

A five-star review of a foundational book of the genre is kind of unnecessary, really, but man is this very much my thing. It is my thing because I grew up on all the works inspired by Neuromancer - the aesthetic, the language, hell, the internet. But I just now read it and I really liked it, so I'm gonna talk about it.

Gibson has a way with description that makes this world feel real and grimy and lived-in, which not all science fiction does. The seedy low-rent district it opens in feels like th A five-star review of a foundational book of the genre is kind of unnecessary, really, but man is this very much my thing. It is my thing because I grew up on all the works inspired by Neuromancer - the aesthetic, the language, hell, the internet. But I just now read it and I really liked it, so I'm gonna talk about it.

Gibson has a way with description that makes this world feel real and grimy and lived-in, which not all science fiction does. The seedy low-rent district it opens in feels like the seedy low-rent district of a real city, with real people and real bars and not-yet-real cybernetic body modifications that still feel exactly correct. The increasingly weird shit feels grounded in the actual world and, either hilariously or terrifyingly, the book feels more prescient now than it did in 2004, when the foreward to the edition I read was written.

The plot felt like it took a while to get moving, but came together nicely in the end, all the seemingly disparate pieces falling into place. I'm not sure it would have quite held me all the way until that point if all of the bits hadn't been so interesting, and I'm not at all sure it would work for someone who fundamentally didn't care for the aesthetic of cyberpunk, because the emotional tone is choppy and alienated and the character work, while, I think, fundamentally sound, is not precisely chock-full of likeable people.

And my one real solid criticism is that man, while there is a female character I like a lot, there are only three in the whole damned book, one who gets fridged early on (and it is so very much a classic fridging), one who shows up at the very end mostly as a plot device, and Molly, who I very much enjoyed and would have enjoyed more but for her final performance as the Damsel in Distress. It's not something that has aged well at all. But the mechanism by which she gets to be the action hero to our protagonist's junkie hacker is very cool and most of the book didn't annoy me on that front, except with the near-complete lack of women. For a book written by a dude and published in 1984, this is really not a bad showing.

Anyway, a book I was always going to like, expected to like, and indeed did like. Gonna go read some more Gibson now. ...more

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Jun 12, 2025 Pete rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson is a fantastic cyberpunk novel.

There is also an excellent audio play adaptation done by the BBC on YouTube. That is very much worth a listen. It’s great that the book is finally going to be made into a TV series.

The book is a marvelous evocation of an exciting cyberpunk world. Case is a matrix jockey who has been disabled by people he crossed. He is accompanied by Molly, a bodily enhanced razor girl. They are hired to take on a mission by Armitage, a strangel ...more

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May 16, 2007 Matt rated it liked it · review of another edition

Since I was between books recently, I pulled this book off my shelf and started flipping through it. I had read the book years ago, but was struck to see how little of it had stuck. I could remember virtually nothing about it.

Having given it another go-round, I can say that I still don't really get what all the hype around this book is about - beyond, perhaps, Gibson's dubious distinction of being the first to coin the term (and perhaps the concept) of "cyberspace." It is certainly an addictive ...more

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