My General commentary in this
book is here.
Neuromancer by William Gibson has proven
to be both a prophetic and influential work. While Gibson inevitably got
some things wrong, (he completely missed wireless technology) he got so much
right. The depiction of the Matrix anticipated the Internet. This alone gives
this book special distinction. On the cultural
end, this novel predicted that people involved with digital technology would
earn social approval within popular culture, or in more common terms, it
predicted that digital technology and those who were skilled at manipulating it
could be considered “cool.” In the mid
1980s, this seemed like such an unusual concept. I remember thinking this the
first time that I read this book. Today,
so much technology is considered “trendy.” Video games and the people who play
them are often seen as hip and cool. Other groups, such as hackers and online
social groups, are often romanticized. Gibson’s prediction that tech
culture would become socially popular may have turned out to be the most
prescient aspect of this work. The
question arises: How much of this did Gibson predict versus how much did
Gibson’s vision of the future actually shaped what is now a kind of “Techno –Cool?”
From its initial publication, this book
has been popular with young people and people interested and involved with
technology. By influencing these people, Gibson may have actually helped to create
this new kind of “cool.”
This
was one of the first, perhaps the very first, books of the “cyberpunk” genre.
As such, it has had an enormous impact on science fiction that has come since.
Gibson painted a picture of a dark world that was dominated by digital
technology as well as powerful and malevolent corporations, and one that was
full of hip and colorful characters. I have read few other cyberpunk books, and
although I am sure that there are some that are some very good ones out there,
the books that I have read seemed to be pale imitations of this novel.
The
character of Molly seems to be a template for so many characters that came
after. These days, science fiction and young adult books, as well as films,
often depict assertive female characters who are physically attractive, technically
competent and also exhibit fighting prowess These characters are often depicted
as cool and trendy. Molly is all of these things. To some extent, these female
characters have become something of a cliché.
These
attributes are on display in Molly’s first meeting with Case. It involves her
taking him by force.
“My name’s Molly. I’m
collecting you for the man I work for. Just wants to talk, is all. Nobody wants
to hurt you.” “That’s good.” “ ’Cept I do hurt people sometimes,. I guess
it’s just the way I’m wired.” She wore tight black gloveleather jeans and a
bulky black jacket cut from some matte fabric that seemed to absorb light. “If
I put this dartgun away, will you be easy, Case? You look like you like to take
stupid chances.” “Hey, I’m very easy. I’m a pushover, no problem.” “That’s
fine, man…Because you try to fuck around with me, you’ll be taking one of the
stupidest chances of your whole life.” She held out her hands, palms up, the
white fingers slightly spread, and with a barely audible click, ten
double-edged, four centimeter scalpel blades slid from their housings beneath
the burgundy nails. She smiled. The blades slowly withdrew.”
Molly
is not as sanitized or toned down as many of her imitations are. She shows more than just physical prowess.
She is a trained killer. Her violence is not always directed at malicious
characters. Though she has a code of ethics, her morality is questionable at
best. It seems few books dare to take their protagonist as far as Gibson went
with Molly.
Later,
Case observes Molly going on the attack,
“The right attitude; it was
something he could sense, something he could have seen in the posture of
another cowboy leaning into a deck, fingers flying across the board. She had
it: the thing, the moves. And she’d pulled it all together for her entrance.
Pulled it together around the pain in her leg and marched down 3Jane’s stairs
like she owned the place, elbow of her gun arm at her hip, forearm up, wrist
relaxed, swaying the muzzle of the fletcher with the studied nonchalance of a
Regency duelist. It was a performance. It was like the culmination of a
lifetime’s observation of martial arts tapes, cheap ones, the kind Case had
grown up on. For a few seconds, he knew, she
was every bad-ass hero, Sony Mao in the old Shaw videos, Mickey Chiba,
the whole lineage back to Lee and Eastwood. She was walking it the way she
talked it. “
The
above passages paint a picture of “cool and tough” action. Yet, the text seems
to question from where these images and ideas originated. Are we just
glorifying something we learned from television, films and fictional
characters? What impact do books and
films have on our psyches? This passage highlights some of the complexities of
this book and of Molly’s character. It
is not just a futuristic action story about “bad-ass” characters. Gibson
questions the origin and the validity of these concepts.
As
I noted in my original post, I first read this book shortly after it was first
published. At the time, it seemed original but in some ways also unusual.
Rereading it now, when many of its concepts have become commonplace in both
fiction and in real life, it is an enlightening experience. This book has held
up very well over the years. It is still very much worth the read.
