"Neuromancer" by William Gibson

This is my second reading of this novel, this time as an audio book, the first being a .txt file printout when I was an undergrad. This is the seminal novel starting the 'cyberpunk' genre (which was already taking form at the time Gibson published it) and creating an entire subsection in literature. Let's be honest though, the book is hard to read. If you go on amazon, you will find dozens, if not hundreds, of negative comments complaining about jargon, density, unclear plot, unlovable characters, etc. etc. Newsflash: that's EXACTLY what the book was supposed to be. Some people even complain that the book is full of cliches. If they used their brains for anything else but mindless entertainment they would realize that this was the first book in the Cyberpunk genre (in 1984) and all of the things that are considered cliches today because they were repeated so many times over the past few decades were INVENTED by Gibson in this book. Saying this book is full of cliches is like saying 'The Lord of the Rings' is full of cliches.

This book invented terms and concepts we take for granted today, like cyberspace, jack-in, visual representation of computer networks and data, corporations ruling a technically advanced but morally and socially deteriorated world, also cloning, cryogenics, orbital resorts, black leather and chrome wardrobe were brought into the mainstream of science fiction after 'Neuromancer' became famous. The only problem is that we still today do not have enough special effects technology to make a movie out of it, though one attempt is scheduled for 2011, but may be shelved like many before it.

It is a very dense book. It is small, about 250 pages, while describing a whole new world, thus, by necessity, it is very dense. It is full of jargon which is not explained anywhere because Gibson invented it. The reader needs to be very careful, note all the references and new words and keep them in his mind at all time, as there are contextual clues later on where they become more clear. This is one of the beauties of this book, not for the feeble of mind and intelligence or imagination. There are no positive characters in the book. Everyone is an anti-hero, even the artificial intelligence Wintermute, which kills mercilessly and indiscriminately, including an 8 year-old boy in order to achieve its goal. There is very little to no moral fiber left in the world of the 'Neuromancer'; prostitution is almost a regular job (for both men and women), everyone is on some kind of narcotics, the world is polluted and dangerous and the rich are richer and more evil than ever.

The story follows the resurrection of a hacker, or 'cowboy', Case, who is saved from his last leg of life in Chiba City, coastal Tokyo suburb, and crime-capital of Gibson's Japan, by a brainwashed ex-special corps colonel Armitage, helped by a street-samurai, surgically-enhanced assassin Molly, with retractable razor-blades under her nails. Add to this a psychopathic performance artist who can materialize his thoughts holographically, a Rastafarian orbital space station, where the smell of ganja and the rhythm of Dub are the only constants, an illegal Artificial Intelligence with split personality disorder, cloned ninja assassins, and finally an alien artificial intelligence from the Alpha Centauri system which is only hinted at, and you get a milestone in science fiction and literature, a work which sole purpose is not entertainment, but expansion of the limits of the mind, something that all entertainment was supposed to do before the invention of reality television.

I am looking to read the second and third novel of Gibson's "The Sprawl Trilogy", the Sprawl being an unified metro area from Boston to Atlanta, which although do not mention Case again, and have a minor role for Molly, still happen in the wonderful, intricate and disturbing universe Gibson has created. A final note: although the book is a gem of literature, that cannot be said for the science part. Since the beginning of science fiction there have been two kinds of sci-fi writers: scientists and all the others. Scientists sci-fi writers, like Asimov and Clarke, take meticulous care to base their fiction on actual scientific theories, research, probabilities and possible directions. Their novels are based on hard science, their speculations could actually be true and possible one day, like the geocentric orbit for satellites which was first proposed ('invented') by Clarke. The other kind of sci-fi writers, to which Gibson belongs, do not care much about the scientific justification behind their work or speculations, but only use scientific concepts and facts as a jumping board into developing fantastic stories, characters and plots, which have little to no base in present or future reality or scientific research. Although many concepts and words from Gibson's novels became commonplace today (cyberspace, jack-in, etc.), most of his proposed concepts are unfeasible and unworkable, beginning from self-conscious Artificial Intelligence or machine in general, which is a favorite plot of non-scientist sci-fi authors, but has no basis in any scientific fact or theory. To put it simply, Artificial Intelligence is a branch of computer science concerned with studying function derivatives, and the probability of any kind of program, machine or construct achieving self-consciousness through this technology is equal to a big, round ZERO.