This morning I finished reading William Gibson’s Neuromancer. For quite a while, I had been thinking about reading it but the reviews and descriptions of it made me think that it would probably be not exactly my cup o’ tea. But it’s considered an “important” book so I kept thinking about it. Then Thinkgeek added it to their list of stuff you can get with Geek Points and it seemed like the perfect opportunity. (I still have lots of Geek Points)
It turns out that I was right about it being “not exactly my cup o’ tea”. (My cup o’ tea being space ships, strange planets, bizarre aliens and so forth, though I do enjoy something a little different once in a while if it’s good.) For nearly the first half of the book I considered giving up on it but I have often read books that took that long to get interesting so I kept going. It did get somewhat more interesting and I’m glad I stuck it out to the end. My biggest problem with it is that I didn’t care about any of the characters. I just couldn’t really feel anything about them. I expect a book to make me love the good guys and want to help them and then hang out with them after the adventure is over and hate the bad guys and want to participate in their destruction. I did not like any of the characters in Neuromancer but I couldn’t really hate them either. They were just blah.
I’m not sure about Neuromancer‘s status as an “important” book. I don’t really care. I’m glad I read it because now I know. It was not bad. It had some good ideas and an okay story.
Next on the reading list? I think I’ll go back to Andre Norton for a while. Because it’s there.
August 26th, 2010 - 6:59 pm
I have to wonder how many people read this because it’s An Important Part of the Canon or some such business.
August 27th, 2010 - 7:03 am
For a minute there I was worried that I had read a book just because it’s Important but actually I read it just because I could get it free with my Geek Points.
August 27th, 2010 - 9:57 am
The only William Gigson story I’ve ever read is “Johnny Mnemonic” when it was published in Omni Magazine in 1981. (Yes, I used to subscribe. No, I didn’t save any of the issues. Sob?) Anyway, it was a pretty good story but I really couldn’t get into the whole noirpunk scifi or whatever that was, so I haven’t read anything else of Gibson’s. (I haven’t seen the Keanu Reeves movie of the story either.)
August 27th, 2010 - 10:00 am
Oops! I meant “cyberpunk.” That’s how important that stuff was to me, I couldn’t even remember the word. To tell you the truth, I’m more old fashioned — I prefer the strange-world-exploring sort of science fiction to the hi-tech urban crime stuff.
August 27th, 2010 - 2:58 pm
I think Neuromancer is “important” in the sense that it blew lots of minds when it was first published, but like many SF novels, it’s likely to become a period piece. Last fall, I wanted my students to have a basic sense of how cyberpunk flourished, so I assigned Gibson’s story “Burning Chrome,” which is the same sort of tech-conscious exercise in style Neuromancer is, only in far fewer pages…