Ask Slashdot: What Is Your Favorite William Gibson Novel? 298
dryriver writes: When I first read William Gibson's Neuromancer and then his other novels as a young man back in the 1990s, I was blown away by Gibson's work. Everything was so fresh and out of the ordinary in his books. The writing style. The technologies. The characters and character names. The plotlines. The locations. The future world he imagined. The Matrix. It was unlike anything I had read before. A window into the far future of humanity. I had great hopes over the years that some visionary film director would take a crack at creating film versions of Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive . But that never happened. All sorts of big budget science fiction was produced for TV and the big screen since Neuromancer that never got anywhere near the brilliance of Gibson's future world. Gibson's world largely stayed on the printed page, and today very few people talk about Neuromancer, even though the world we live in, at times, appears headed in the exact direction Gibson described in his Sprawl trilogy. Why does hardly anybody talk about William Gibson anymore? His books describe a future that is much more technologically advanced than where we are in 2017, so it isn't like his future vision has become "badly dated." To get the conversation going, we rephrased dryriver's question... What is your favorite William Gibson novel?
The one he has not written (Score:5, Interesting)
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Case, you got to read the book, Case. If you do, Case, you'll understand why, Case. Case, its pretty obvious, Case. Case the Case, Case. Case Case Case, Case Case Casing Case.
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The Johnny Mnemonic movie wasn't bad, but they tried to make a full movie out of the script for a half hour episode of a series. JM was a short story, a good one, but none that would offer enough material to fill 100+ minutes of movie material, and it shows. Yes, they added some stuff but it was mostly filler, and while most of it did actually fit the world of Gibson's cyberpunk it felt tacked on and corny, like that cyber-priest.
Plus Reeves can't act worth shit.
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And that explains how Phillip K Dick short stories become such blockbuster (and/or fabulous) movies.
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I find the opposite to be true. Wm Gibson is extremely literary, and it requires closer reading than someone like Neal Stephenson, who is very happy to explain his created worlds in as much detail as you can handle. I find Gibson's work to be more of a challenge, but worth the effort, much in the same way I find classic literature and even poetry to be worthy challenges.
You don't have to like it, of course, but you also can't knock it as lacking literary value. That kind of comment is more of a reflectio
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Oh god. I love much of Neal Stephenson's work but in Seveneves the nerdsplaining gets seriously out of hand.
Gibson's "The Peripheral" is probably my least favourite work of his. I liked the concept of The Jackpot but otherwise I found it quite forgettable.
Neuromancer, on the other hand.... in fact everything up to Virtual Light I found superb. I don't have a favourite.
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Ok, so debunk the physical events in Seveneves. I've had only two conversations about it, with competent astrophysicists, and they weren't willing to call BS on any of it. One, though, worked up an experiment to possibly prove some of the plot, involving Chinese satellites and a weapon now alluded to as 'Rod of God', even though it was a pipe dream then. Yeah, we need more space junk in LEO.
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Ok, so debunk the physical events in Seveneves. I've had only two conversations about it, with competent astrophysicists, and they weren't willing to call BS on any of it.
I'll second this. Seveneves might have some faults, but it actually does a hell of a job with scientific plausibility. Except, you know, the moon asploding.
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That is what good SciFi and Fantasy all have in common, the suspension of disbelief for a single event or concept. Multiple disbelief only ends in Kungfury. The moon could explode if a black hole went through it a high proportion of c is it likely to happen? Fuck no but it is SciFi.
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Don't like his work either. It's science fiction without the science, and the fiction that's left over isn't that good. He would be better as a surrealist painter.
Re:The one he has not written (Score:4, Insightful)
Can you give an example of writing where there is concrete stuff and substance?
Neal Stephenson. Gibson was a master of creating atmosphere, and then in many cases not taking the story much farther than that.
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Can you give an example of writing where there is concrete stuff and substance?
Neal Stephenson. Gibson was a master of creating atmosphere, and then in many cases not taking the story much farther than that.
Thank you. I've been trying to read 'The Peripheral' and just can't get past a few pages. You describe my issue perfectly, lot's of atmosphere, story doesn't seem to go anywhere.
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I've only read one book by Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash. It's certainly not a bad book, but I did not find it particularly enjoyable outside of the novel concepts that would appear throughout the book. The rat-things, for example, were cool to think about but so incredibly impractical that I couldn't suspend disbelief, even for a science fiction novel. I also got a little lost in the beginning of the novel figuring out which parts were happening in the real world and which were in the metaverse because h
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Neal Stephenson is a master of creating substance without any thought to how to end his books. His books are mostly a vehicle to support the propagation of an idea. He seems to have no love affair with character or place. I love his stuff but DoDo seems like an excuse for him to read more primary documents then anything else (which he admitte3d to loving at a Portland talk he gave about System of a World. The Diamond Age ends like a serial cliffhanger. Reamde was a like a boilerplate movie script. What the
Neuromancer (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish someone would turn Neuromancer into a film, it would be far better than a lot of the garbage we get at the cinema these days.
Re:Neuromancer (Score:4, Interesting)
Impossible. You can try, but I am certain you'll fail just like all others did. Try it yourself. Take the novel and turn it into a script. Then gauge just how long it really is and what run time you'd end up with. Not with the whole trilogy, just the first, just NM. You end up with a movie that runs 5 hours and you already left out half of what's important. Cut it more and what you end up with is a movie that makes no sense, explains no character, you will of course get a story out of it but in the end, nobody who knows the novel will recognize it anymore.
A lot of the novel is internal monologue and information about the characters' mood, ideas, ideals, hopes and expectations. How'd you want to do that, if at all? In a voiceover while they stare meaningful into the evening sky that looks like a TV tuned to a dead channel?
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I thought Ender's Game translated to the movie well. Perhaps because the author was involved in the screenwriting?
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Good case in point is "Johnny Mnemonic" Somebody tried to make a movie out of one chapter and failed miserably:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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So make it a Netflix series, like Sense8.
There are directors and screenwriters who have been very skilled at conveying internal monologue, mood, ideas etc. I think of Kubrick's Clockwork Orange and Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation. Also Scorsese's Taxi Driver and Sam Mendes American Beauty. Lot's
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The point is that if you even tried to put the content of Neuromancer into a single movie, it would run far, far longer than anyone would be willing to sit through. What I could see is it being turned into a TV series like Bab5, you take the basic plot and spin a few subplots around it to stretch it to 26-30 episodes. That could work.
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After watching Blade Runner 2049 this weekend I believe that Denis Villeneuve should give it a go.
Johnny Mnemonic (Score:2)
Johnny Mnemonic [wikipedia.org] with Kaenu Reeves is kind of that :
it's an adaptation of a Gibson's short story that introduce the universe and a few characters that Gibson will later use for its Sprawl trilogy.
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There was a attempt to turn Neuromancer in to a movie around 1986/7: King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp reported [dgmlive.com] that he had started work on music for the soundtrack.
In August it was reported [hollywoodreporter.com] that Deadpooldirector Tim Miller is to direct an adaptation of Neuromancer for Fox. I think some King Crimson music would go very well e.g. Level Five [youtube.com] as title music.
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I like Fripp, but I think his music might be a little too conventional for Neuromancer. Some of the contemporary electronica has finally caught up to Neuromancer.
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I never thought I'd hear someone call Fripp "too conventional."
But you also made me sad again that the original King Crimson line-up only made one album. :(
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Don't get me wrong. Maybe I should have said that Fripp is too influenced by the European classical tradition to be appropriate for a Neuromancer soundtrack. Too serious. I imagine the music for Neuromancer would be more informed by the disposable electronica, dubstep-influenced, and the chopped, sampled stuff. Not that it would be better music, just more appropriate.
I'm a big fan of Fripp. I've seen various incarnations of King Crimson (an
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Lucky! I'm 38, so I must live vicariously through my father's recollections. I yet hope that that down-tempo electronica will one day rediscover the joy of the mellotron.
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It would bomb miserably at the box office, because most of the audience would perceive it as a rip-off of "The Matrix", "Tron", and dozens of other films that have used Gibson's tropes. Most people under the age of 40 have never heard of "Neuromancer" and would never be able to fit the movie into their preconceptions of a story that was written 30+ years ago.
On top of that, mu
I like all WIlliam Gibson novels. (Score:3)
I know the neuromancer and the bridge triology and like both. Perhaps the Bridge triology is a bit better because the scenarios described are more plausible, as is the character of Chevette in "Virtual Light".
Then again, in the neuromancer triology all three books where quite memorable, whereas Idoru was sort of meh IMHO.
In general, I'm not a SF fan (Score:2)
Uniformly brilliant (Score:2)
He has not made one dud book and if I was to choose one to be best I would say The Peripheral but I could change my mind in 2018.
Please keep writing Bill.
None (Score:3, Funny)
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Actually, I thought this was sort of a silly topic for Slashdot, and that it merited a silly answer.
I have enjoyed reading Gibson and Williams, and Williams actually answers my email and sent me a nice signed print book when I pointed out a technical problem he had with an e-book.
Ditto. (Score:2)
Heh. (Score:2)
What is your favorite William Gibson novel?
Who?
Actually, although I wouldn't have been able to place the author's name, I did consider reading Neuromancer when I came across it, many years back. Didn't do so, but I might pick it up, now that I've been reminded.
Is today's fortune a coincidence? (Score:2)
Not badly dated? (Score:2)
"Three megabytes of hot RAM"
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You can still fit a lot of ICE breaker code in 3MB!
Neuromancer, hands down (Score:2)
Article reads as if Gibson has stopped writing (Score:2)
Because (Score:2)
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Funny, but for the rest of the millenials, TV tuned to a dead channel was often referred to as an "ant race".
Think "static" on a monitor screen as projected by 1908s sci-fi shows.
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I know... I know... that was the whole point of my (attempted) joke. NM.
I got it, and I even thought it was funny. However, my LCD televisions still generate static and even white noise for nostalgia's sake, which I think might have had something to do with the reception of your joke here in nerdland.
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Why novel? (Score:2)
His shorts stories were better than his novels. The early novels, especially, contained far too much filler in order to stretch out what was really a novella into commercial length.
Among his short stories, I think Hinterlands is still one of the best bits of any sort of fiction I've read.
Physical is Cheaper than Digital (Score:2)
Off topic a bit, but I noticed that on Amazon, Burning Chrome is cheaper as a paperback than the Kindle version.
I'm seeing $9.49 for the Kindle and $8.11 for the paperback. As a Prime member, shipping is $0.00.
https://www.amazon.com/Burning... [amazon.com]
Trees would seem to be more expensive that bits down the wire. Dystopia.
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It is for this reason that I have gone back to buying paper books... I am incentivized to do so... not my fault that they apparently want to work a lot harder and eat up all their margins bringing me those words printed on paper rather than make ebooks cheaper....
Changes over time... he's getting better (Score:2)
For a long while it was Neuromancer, if for no other reason than that opening line, and the overall tone and mood. Good science fiction? No. Beautiful prose, definitely.
The Blue Ant trilogy, including Spook Country, took the lead not too long ago. Solid writing, better story, still just on the cusp of our world.
But the Peripheral is damned brilliant. Wild-ass SF ideas, great writing, probably one of my favorite books of all time.
This should be a poll (Score:2)
List all William Gibson books and let people vote!
Counter-Answer (Score:2)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, by Philip K Dick
But seriously, I read Neuromancer for the first time ~8 years back, and it came across as visionary for the period in which it was released. That is to say, it was kind of a slog to read now, and most everything new in it has been done to death since. Maybe his other stuff holds up more? Maybe I was in a weird headspace and I'd like it a lot more if I re-read it?
I tried reading Snow Crash as well, by Neal Stephenson, and distinctly thinking "This would ha
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That's quite pertinent. One of the main plaudits given to Gibson is he always seemed ahead of his time, and had such massive influence on SF to follow. Of course everything he did in the earlier books has been "done to death" because everyone copied him. Although that might make his earlier works seem dated somewhat, it says a lot for the quality of his vision.
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Dick, though, holds up really well, despite being a lot older. So if you're a freak like me who questions the premise of this article, and you haven't read his stuff, give it a shot :)
FALSE! After 35 years of reading science fiction and fantasy, I saw that the new Blade Runner movie was coming out, and realized "You know, I've not read much PKD, I should fix that." So I ordered some material and collections, and got to work.
Some stories like "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" are fine, minor dated bits, but the core story is strong. But other stories have a lot of uninspected misogyny which makes them hard to read - not like he's been mean or anything, it reads more like a young ma
Not really (Score:2)
I read a lot of SF and Fantasy, so I feel little shame in saying I've read no Gibson outside of Neuromancer.
It was OK I suppose. But I wasn't really fond of his protagonist. Dude wasn't sympathetic at all, and in the end I just did not like him. I think I would have enjoyed it more if he'd written it from the point of view of his female bodyguard. Also his universe was dystopian and ugly. I already have one ugly dystopia narrated by people I don't like, I don't need more when I go to read.
OTOH, if that
Dogfight. (Score:2)
In the Burning Chrome Anthology, this short story, of all of Gibson's work, had a greater impact on my research than any other story he wrote.
He only co-wrote it too. It was written by Michael Swanwick and William Gibson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I gave up. (Score:2)
I read all of William Gibson's books from Neuromancer all the way through All Tomorrow's Parties, and I gave the hell up. None of them even approach the quality of Neuromancer. The only one that was any good at all was Idoru, and that was no Neuromancer.
At this stage I am convinced that William Gibson didn't actually write Neuromancer, at least not on his own. I think, at best, it was a joint project with John Shirley and Bruce Sterling, and Gibson himself may or may not have been involved.
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Yeah. There isn't a single wasted word, it's poetry in prose form, it still feel visionary three decades later and although his later work is excellent it can't quite match this.
Although if you include short stories, Johnny Mnemonic is at least as good.
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Love Neuromancer.
I also really love the short stories Burning Chrome and New Rose Hotel.
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I dumped a text file of Neuromancer off a Gopher server way back. Sorry, Bill, I never bought a copy. It seemed meta at the time.
But it is still prophetic.
Re:Never heard of him before. (Score:4, Informative)
He's a science fiction author that wrote one of the most influential books of the last century.
His material is available from all good bookstores and several bad ones, check him out.
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Like here: https://www.sfbok.se/forfattar... [sfbok.se]
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He's a science fiction author that wrote one of the most influential books of the last century.
His material is available from all good bookstores and several bad ones, check him out.
Wow, that's high praise. Assuming Neuromancer is the book you're referring to, where do you place it on the most influential list and why? I could assume for coining the term 'cyberpunk' or something along those lines. IMO there's a case for most influential in the SciFi realm but overall... that covers a lot of ground.
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Well, he's not exactly Orwell or Solzhenitsyn and a lot of people haven't read him because "ugh, science fiction" but the development of the Internet and pop culture since Neuromancer has drawn heavily on his writing.
where do you place it on the most influential list and why?
Good question. I suspect I'm not widely enough read to create a sensible looking list - and sadly I fear I'm rather better read than many.
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Well, he's not exactly Orwell or Solzhenitsyn and a lot of people haven't read him because "ugh, science fiction" but the development of the Internet and pop culture since Neuromancer has drawn heavily on his writing.
where do you place it on the most influential list and why?
Good question. I suspect I'm not widely enough read to create a sensible looking list - and sadly I fear I'm rather better read than many.
Fair answer. And most likely you are better read than most, unless we include social media. Then I'm afraid... :-)
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His ideas outstrip his writing, and when you get right down to it, those ideas tend to be rather obvious.
He's a pamphleteer disguised as a novelist, and his work would have been better shorter.
High school English classes. There's a lot of mediocre literature that gets studied in high school English classes, because 13 year olds need to be hit over the head with the idea of literature.
I don't think Orwell is terrible, I just think he's overrated
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Almost every book is overrated. Ever read Moby Dick? Overrated garbage. How about The Great Gasby? Samething, over rated trash.
Point being, I have yet to read any book that lives up to the fan devotion or the hype.
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Neither is overrated. Well, maybe Great Gatsby, a little bit.
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Yeah they are. Both are highly overrated. Mostly they are over rated by ether high school or college literature professors. Who themselves are often over rated. Which of course leads to these professors trying to force this dreck down entire generations of students who couldn't give a shit. No wonder reading sucks among the young.
Let the children read what they want to read. Who gives a shit if a bunch of teenage girls are reading about sparkly vampires? At least they are reading.
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Doubtful. I simply pointed out that every book rarely meets the hype that is given to it. But just because a book is over rated, doesn't mean its a bad book.
The Harry Potter books as an example. Once you get around the fact that the main character is a complete idiot then the rest of the books are not that bad. Do they rate the lavish worship fans seem to give them? Well to the fans maybe but over all, no the don't.
My favorite books are the Harry Dresden books. But even I can see that the books
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How did this discussion become about "the children"? At some point in an education, it's worth reading something that you wouldn't have picked off the shelf yourself. If I hadn't been forced to read books, I'd still only be reading Mad Magazine and comic books.
It became about "the children" when I hijacked the discussion to suit my own agenda. Come on, this is slashdot, that is how these things happen.
I want to address one fallacy you have there. You are talking like reading comic books or Mad Magazine is a bad thing. I thought myself to read at age 6, yes I had help with the big words, so I could read Richie Rich comics. From there I picked up Xmen at issue 86, or abouts. It if wasn't for comics I would never have read the Original Phoenix Saga.
I stil
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You never had to deal with my highschool literature teacher. Anything after 1850 was trash to her. I actually got my views on books in school from a lecture by Orson Scott Card.
I believe that your experience with Shakespeare might be exactly what I'm talking about. Did you love it after you read it or years later? After you had developed enough background in reading to understand it.
I have read Tolstoy.
I should have worded that differently to say "I am reading Tolstoy." I have been for the last 20 years, but making it through War and Peace is on my bucket list.
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You're so cute. Which is your favourite Gibson book though?
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I know. I mean, it's not like even Wikipedia has an entire section devoted to his influence.
Oh, wait.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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My beige Correcting Selectric II mocks you. As does my Hooverometer. Anyone can wield a hand cycle wheel nto even knowing what the degree marks would be used for. Fixing stuff seems to be going out of vogue too quickly.
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. I was already more familiar than he was with all the tech he name-dropped. I suspect a LOT of us nerds on Slashdot who are old enough would agree.
Which tech did he name-drop that you were familiar with?
I mean, he's never been deeply into technology anyway, he's far more interested in people and their environments. But still, since you're suggesting his work is derivative, I'm curious to hear how.
I am starting to think Gibson may be a coming-of-age fan phenomenon.
I disagree. The writing is still sublime, the books are interesting and fun to read and they continue to explore a coherent future world. The plot of Neuromancer remains fairly unique, albeit at times simplistic.
Shit, you may as well suggest that HMS Ulysses
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Bullshit. You claim you were using the word "Cyberspace" in 1982? Not only using it, but seeing so much of it that it sickened you? Sorry, that's just hard to believe.
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hhmmm.... curious. I've been reading science fiction since the 60's. I have a personal library of over 700 novels, plus what I've borrowed from public libraries, and I've never heard of this Gibson character.
Sounds like you are either Russian reading Russian sci-fi, a troll, or both.
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"Unique writing style", that's a good one. How about "endless stream-of-consciousness tack-on sentences that span pages"?
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I don't know, when I read fiction, I do it to relax and enjoy myself, reading endless sentences in foreign languages isn't exactly my idea of relaxing and unwinding.
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Well, that's great for you. Others have different reasons.
FWIW, not a novel, but "Burning Chrome" is one of the few stories that draw me in and give belief to the world it describes. Not many writers can do that.
Tailor-made cancers. indeed.
Another idea I liked was the use of synthetic endorphins to allow malfeasants to continue their deeds while injured - sometimes badly injured. "Walking on bloody stumps" comes to mind.
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English is my first language, yet I'm still with you here, I find the stories to be compelling but the writing to be second-rate. Stephenson's Snow Crash is what Neuromancer wanted to be. Now, if only we could get some decent film adaptations of... well, anything, really.
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Time to revisit the works of Gibson.
Another piece of work that might have inspired Gibson is Max Headroom.
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IIRC the story goes that Gibson walked out of Blade Runner (original 1982 version) after 20 minutes, because "it was too much like the inside of my head".
So Syd Mead had some concept of that world.
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First thing I thought when I saw the new one was "Oh finally someone to direct Neuromancer."
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I forget myself, but that's an awesome picture!
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I think that one is my favorite, also. I like female protagonists and this book has one of the best. And, for female protagonists, book one of The Bridge Trilogy (can't remember the title) is another very good one.
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I think I like that one best too. As I recall, "steampunk" wasn't even a thing yet when that came out. But perhaps it helped that Bruce Sterling was involved, to keep things from getting too abstract with just Gibson alone.
And Jean-Michel Jarre's Revolutions [wikipedia.org] makes a great soundtrack to read it by. Lots of steam and brass.