|
Of course, I immediately felt incredibly guilty for being frustrated with the novel, because it's considered classic. On one hand, it's hard to ignore what the book has done for the genre, but on the other hand, I really had some trouble enjoying the novel completely. I can see why. Not to mention Gibson is credited with anticipating and legitimizing the entire genre of cyberpunk. Did I really know what he meant by ICE.
Well, I'm just not sure. It's easy enough to sort out AI, coffin, razorgirl, street samurai, console cowboy, and ICE, but then I ended up second-guessing myself a lot of the novel. In a way, I felt like I was swept along without a handhold a lot of the time.That aside, there were a lot of things that intrigued me and pleased me about NEUROMANCER. This was my greatest disappointment, because I really wanted to understand Case and Molly, but by the end of the book I had no better grasp on their characters than I did before. Unable to do what he was once so good at, he becomes a self-destructive thug in Japan until his downwards spiral is halted by Molly, a "street samurai" with blades in her fingers and mirrored sunglass insets over her eyes, and Armitage.
Henry Dorsett Case, called "Case", was once a star hacker. Only, the scheme is a lot larger than Case could ever guess.NEUROMANCER is a difficult novel for me to discuss. Console cowboy. Entering NEUROMANCER was a little difficult for me perhaps because there's an entirely new vocabulary one must learn to understand the story. What annoyed me was that even as I was racing through the book, I felt as if the world of the book was somehow blurring around me, becoming indistinct and hard to define and understand. I felt like I was along for the ride, hitting every bump along the way, and somehow experiencing the same haze of mystery and confusion that Case has to deal with.
But this aspect frustrated me, especially because I wanted to absorb the world of the book the more I found out and the more I read, but instead got the opposite effect. NEUROMANCER has a ton of fabulous details, a sweeping plot, and a strange jittery energy that propels the reader straight to the ending. They offer Case the opportunity to be a cowboy again, if only he does what they say. In fact, I particularly loved Molly. A lot of the dialogue about the intelligence of computers/AI or Turing is enhanced unbelievably with a little background in that section of philosophy. And then there are a bunch of little jokes I'd have missed completely had I not just had a philosophy class that covered functionalism and minds/computers. I'm not entirely sure if this was because of the short, jumpy sections and chapters--or if it was because Case spends a good portion of the book under the influence of one drug or another--or if it's because Case himself doesn't have a very good grasp of what's going on a lot of the time. I've never quite felt that from a book before.
However, I don't feel like I got to know either of them at all in the story. However, after stealing from an employer, in punishment they damaged his nervous system with a mycotoxin that renders him unable to interface and continue his work as a "console cowboy". Case and Molly are both incredibly interesting. That's something I'd have completely missed otherwise--and who knows what I did miss.I suppose another drawback for me was the characters. It probably has to do with his hold over language. I am, for better or worse, a very character-driven reader. Rating a classic is always hard. In many ways, I enjoyed the novel immensely, but in others, I became very frustrated.
When a story is so driven by the plot, even if information is given about the characters and their motivations, they can still remain enigmas or mere pieces being moved about a game board rather than people. That "jittery energy" I mentioned. I'm not quire sure how Gibson accomplishes that. This story definitely was not character-oriented, but instead plot-driven. In the end, I have to evaluate the novel on my own, personal enjoyment level and how impressed I was by disregarding all outside factors.
This book is one of the most entertaining and well written books I have ever read. Gibson uses imagery that blows me away in it's creativity and power. It's a very detail oriented book, so weak readers will not like it.
Since he has no intellectual curiosity (other than the information that he steals) we only get perfunctory explanations of why anything happens, and often Molly or Wintermute need to explain things to him for the sake of the reader. The story is mostly told from his point of view and reflects his near-dead personality.The beauty of nature in Japan, theme of countless poets, is invisible to Case, as shown in the famous opening line comparing the night sky to "the color of television tuned to a dead channel".
The ostensible story is the attempt of an advanced computer system, Wintermute, to free and improve itself, but the real theme is the dehumanizing effect of technology, as shown as Wintermute's human servants. A rare science fiction book in which plot, style, and characterization work together.
But the real showpiece is the third servant, Case. One is an amnesiac who has literally been reprogrammed by a computer, a complete role reversal.
Molly has gotten herself "enhanced" with the claws and eyes of a cat: human turning into animal. Case lives in the present moment with little interest in the future or the past; ergo the narration is full of events popping out of nowhere and startling both Case and the reader.
It's not clumsiness on Gibson's part; it's a triumphant attempt to render a dehumanized personality, a true Case study.
There was a lack of description when there was high action and sometimes no transition between scenes. It had likable characters with interesting backgrounds and it was filled with new ideas and storylines. This could have been a good book. I often found myself asking, "What just happened." About halfway through the book I had to go to the Wikipedia entry for the book to find out what was going on. What went wrong. I don't think the author was able to fully express those things through the writing. I think that shows an issue in how the book was written if the audience cannot understand what is happening. Maybe this story would be a better fit for a movie or a different author.
I would read this book again, I LOVED it. Did you know Gibson's short story Burning Chrome coined the term cyberspace.
I'd been settling for mediocrity for so long, I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever read a good book again. Finally, and interesting story with intriguing characters.
I know that Molly Millions starts out in Johnny Mnemonic. This is where they got all the ideas for the Matrix film, only this story a million times better (shocker, I'm sure).
To introduce yourself to Gibson's matrix, you might want to begin with some of the short stories in Burning Chrome (not that I did) to avoid confusion, because a lot of the terminology in here is (hopefully) introduced in those stories. Amazing how much Gibson's writing has impacted our culture.
I look forward to reading the sequel, Count Zero.
|
