Difficulties with Neuromancer by Gibson

[PizzaCaviar]

Hi everybody,

I started reading Neuromancer recently and I'm having a hard time figuring out what the hell is going on sometime. English is not my native language and I have not read a lot of English lately, especially sci-fi. So I was wondering if some of you who have read Neuromancer already could tell me if I'm getting it right so far.

*SPOILER* Do not read the following if you have not read Neuromancer already.

I just finished Chapter 2 and there's something that troubles me. Case went to the arena with Molly and he goes and grab something to eat at some point. All of sudden he sees Linda, a friend of his. She runs past him, he chases her, he gets attacked by some kid who then gets killed by Molly. Unfortunately it is too late as Linda is already dead. I think I got this part right but what I'm confused about is this part before Case sees Linda run past him :

"Seven days and he'd jack in. If he closed his eyes now, he'd see the matrix. [...]

Then the fear began to knot between his shoulder. A cold trickle of sweat worked its way down and across his ribs. The operation hadn't worked. He was still here, still meat, no Molly waiting, her eyes locked on the circling knives, no Armitage waiting in the Hilton with tickets and a new passport and money. It was all some dream, some pathetic fantasy... Hot tears blurred his vision."

This part is really confusing me because it just does not fit with the rest of the chapter. I thought one needed to be connected to some sort of console to enter the matrix (a bit like in the movie "Matrix")?

Should I be confused? Is this intended or did I miss something? I'm hoping none of you will spoil me as I'm really enjoying the book so far, although I have to read through most paragraphs several times to get it.

Thanks,

 

[kythe]

You aren't the only one with trouble following the story. English is my first language, yet I have the same problem! I have attempted to read Neuromancer, but get stuck in the first few chapters because I find the descriptions hard to visualize and the story doesn't immediately make sense.

I'm not sure whether I should read your spoilers. It might help me get in to the story more if I try again to read it, if I already know what to expect.

 

[Chris Guillory]

I don't quite know how to put this, but I feel like Gibson wrote the story with the assumption that the reader is already familiar with the world he created. And if they aren't, then too bad for them because he doesn't stop to explain.

 

[Lenny]

I started reading Neuromancer recently and I'm having a hard time figuring out what the hell is going on sometime.

My favourite description of Gibson's writing style in Neuromancer goes something along the lines of: "It's as if Gibson wrote an entire book, then cut out a quarter of the words". It can be a very confusing read at times.

Weirdly, the only other properly cyberpunk book I've read, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, also has a writing style that turns the mind inside out. Good book, but I found it very hard to read.

"Seven days and he'd jack in. If he closed his eyes now, he'd see the matrix. [...]

Then the fear began to knot between his shoulder. A cold trickle of sweat worked its way down and across his ribs. The operation hadn't worked. He was still here, still meat, no Molly waiting, her eyes locked on the circling knives, no Armitage waiting in the Hilton with tickets and a new passport and money. It was all some dream, some pathetic fantasy... Hot tears blurred his vision."

This part is really confusing me because it just does not fit with the rest of the chapter. I thought one needed to be connected to some sort of console to enter the matrix (a bit like in the movie "Matrix")?

*SPOILER* Do not read the following if you have not read Neuromancer already (or, at least, the first two chapters).

We meet Case in the first chapter, and learn that he'd been "a cowboy, a rustler, one of the best in the Sprawl", but had made a mistake and had his talent burnt out of him with a Russian mycotoxin. He dreams of being able to get back into cyberspace, the matrix, but his nervous system is cooked, and he's a prisoner of his own flesh - he's helpless, feeling sorry for himself, and doesn't believe he'll ever be able to 'jack in' again.

In the second chapter, Case is approached by Armitage, who arranges for surgery to fix what was done to him. In the extract you've quoted, Case is walking around an arena, and is starting to think about once again being able to 'jack in' - he's fantasising about getting back in to cyberspace: "If he closed his eyes now, he'd see the matrix".

Then the fear starts to take hold that this new beginning, that his being able to do what he's been dreaming of for two years, isn't real. In his head, he panics that the operation has failed, that he's still a prisoner of his own flesh, and that his new beginning is just a figment of his imagination - he's been wallowing in self-despair for so long that it's become habit. He's so used to things being terrible, that he's having trouble accepting the possibility of something good happening.

Whilst you're correct that Case needs to connect to a console to enter the matrix, he's still within the physical world at this point, and is imagining the worst.

 

[tinkerdan]

I read this over twenty years ago and I don't recall much about it. Usually that happens when I don't care for a book. I have most of Gibson's first books because a friend introduced him to me and made sure I had copies. I had to read this over to find out what was going on and since I don't recall much I can't spoil anything.

What it looks like is typical Gibson where there is a lot of stuff left out because the book relies on a specific amount of suspense built along obscuring what's going on. I think in this case that there eventually is at least a partial explanation of what Case experienced at that point or maybe I should say what he didn't experience. It's a certain sense of being connected while not connected in a way that at least tells the paranoid mind that everything is still there and that once he does jack in everything will be fine. This is something that has been missing since they killed his connection with the mycotoxin.

So If you can preserver it may become clearer to you. But I can't guarantee the whole novel will be memorable because I can't remember it and would need to read it all again.

 

[PizzaCaviar]

Thanks to all you for taking the time to read me and reply. It is comforting to see that I'm not the only one to be confused by Gibson's style. I thought that my English got much worst after 4 months of not reading after slaving it out at work.

Lenny your explanation was very clear and helpful, special thanks to you. Like you said it yourself, I kept on reading (Chapter 4) and now understand better Gibson's universe. Of course, this is always what happens when I read sci-fi in another language. It gets clearer as I dive deeper into the author's mind. But this was very confusing and two words sentences do not help. I was wondering if I was missing some important piece of the story, like Case is actually already "jacked in" (thanks for clarifying that out btw, I was not 100% sure about it ) and most of the book is just his own dream.

Anyway, I will keep on reading it and may come back towards you if confused again.

Good day to you,

 

[Toby Frost]

"It's as if Gibson wrote an entire book, then cut out a quarter of the words"

My friend Owen once said exactly the same thing! Perhaps Gibson realised this, because the sequels are far easier to follow - and, in the case of Count Zero, perhaps better. Certainly more polished.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

He re-wrote some of it a few times, especially (notoriously) the introduction. I think the whole trilogy does still stand up; and it's good that there's plenty of space for the reader to use their imagination...

 

[Michael Colton]

If people are interested, there are some rather interesting interviews with Gibson many years later discussing the book. How he feels about it now, reasons he could never write it again, that sort of thing. It was a book for a time and place and all these years later it does a rather swell job of taking us back to that time and place.

 

[PizzaCaviar]

Hey Michael, could you please link the interviews you mentioned above? Thanks.

 

[Ursa major]

I don't recall many difficulties when reading the book. I wrote the following in July 2008, after finishing it:

Let me state that I don't particularly seek out books where the main character is a drugged up loser on his uppers, moving from deal to deal with the expectation that each day may be his last. However, I did like this book. To some extent, it shows its age (I've been reading a lot of Alastair Reynolds recently), but I can see why it's seen as such an important book. There is a good balance between the world building (you're told what you need to know), story, character and concept and its pace is such that this reader did not dwell on any inconsistencies.

One could argue that this complaint --

I don't quite know how to put this, but I feel like Gibson wrote the story with the assumption that the reader is already familiar with the world he created. And if they aren't, then too bad for them because he doesn't stop to explain.

-- shows PoV in action. Why would someone immersed in a world spend their time describing it to themselves in a way that someone not immersed in it would fully understand without any effort? ButI'm not sure it is that difficult to understand the Neuromancer's world, at least in terms of being able to comprehend what's going on in terms of the character and plot. I don't recall -- and I think I would have mentioned it -- having this problem myself, but then perhaps I expect less (and less of) the world building than others might.

 

[The Judge]

PizzaCaviar, you are definitely not alone! I had real difficulty with it. My thoughts when I read it a couple of years ago:

My other read has been William Gibson's Neuromancer. I'm a third of the way through and I've had to force myself to get that far. I know it's a seminal work. I know it's incredible and has won all kinds of awards. I just can't understand what's going on, nor do I care.

and

Also finished Neuromancer though that was more of a struggle. I frequently had to re-read sections to try and interpret what was going on – at times I felt I was reading a foreign language with only the merest connection to English. A well-imagined dystopia, certainly, and despite the techno-babble Gibson was able to invest the characters with reality and emotion so by the end I cared a little for them, but it was too much like hard work to make sense of it.

I can't now recall anything of the plot or the characters, only the difficulty I had with it.

 

[Vince W]

I read Neuromancer when it was first published and I had zero difficulty in reading and understanding it (at least I thought so). However, with Gibson's latest novel The Peripheral, I struggled with the first few chapters coping with the slang and jargon. His style hasn't changed, but how I react to it has.

Perhaps when I was younger I just didn't know any better and was just swept up in the book, but now, until I had a firm handle on what things meant, it was a bit rough.

 

[Nerds_feather]

The matrix = a virtual reality visualization of large-scale computer networks (i.e. the internet before there was such a thing), which individuals can navigate as if physically present (but they are not, they are just "jacked in" (connected) to a "deck" (console).

 

[Ray McCarthy]

The first Arpanet test was 10:30 pm, 29 October 1969.
The public Net split from Military in 1983, and some time then there was "Bitnet" for University access. Not sure when JANET started.
By 1988 I was certainly accessing "internet" via a server in London I accessed from Co. Clare on 300 baud modem to an x.25 PAD in Belfast, then X25 to London. I was doing email mostly. OS was CP/M, really my screen was a remote terminal session on a Mainframe in London. But it was very different from the BBS dialup and Prestel systems I had accessed directly from 1981 onwards (1200 / 75 baud modems).

In 1989 the draft for HTML was published and the Web Sites started appearing in 1992. I was using 28K in 1994 as soon as it was available with Mosiac browser. (32 bit TCP/IP for Win3.11 was I think 1993). By 1998 I had ISDN and could use 64K or twice as expensive 128K. Then later 1998 we moved out of town and only had 19.2K line till December 2005 when I got the 13km microwave link, still the same today at 8Mbps down and 1Mbps up. We are very far from having VR like the Matrix.

The Internet with documents, file transfer, email etc preceded Web Sites. Web Sites are not the Internet. Hypertext existed before HTML or Websites on PCs on local disks using particular applications.

Brunner's "Shockwave Rider" 1975 describes the Internet and Malware/Viruses (computer tapeworms). Trojans already existed from late 1960s (a tape would be sent and as well as the advertised demo it would install malware on the Mainframe, hence Trojan). But Mainframe Trojans didn't replicate as envisaged by John Brunner.

 

[Nerds_feather]

There were large-scale computer networks and the "internet protocol suite" (TCP/IP) but not what we think of as "the internet" (i.e. the WWW, pervasive/ubiquitous usage by individuals and commercial entities, etc.) when Neuromancer was written. And ARPANET and NSFNET had not merged yet either.

Also, Shockwave Rider is dope.

 

[Michael Colton]

One of the best interviews with Gibson (or perhaps it was a forward/essay, I forget now) is when he describes how disappointed he was when he finally got his own computer. He had expected some sort of beautiful crystalline structure inside, very fantastical, but instead found a clunking, whirring, Victorian-esque piece of machinery. While amusing, it also highlights another important point about him: he was writing primarily about emotional and social issues, not technological ones. He has stated this endless times in interviews when he tries to shrug off people calling him some sort of prophet with the similarities in his work with the internet, as well as his coining of 'cyberspace.' His exploration was humanity in such a circumstance and it's insights into the time he was writing, not a prediction of that circumstance. That it happened is almost incidental.

Or, as he likes to say, any contemporary reader will instantly ask why Neuromancer didn't have cell phones in it.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

didn't have cell phones

They are really completely unrelated to computer and network development. You could have a world that has either but not both.
Neuromancer is more about social and people issues, not about computers and networks really.

the WWW, pervasive/ubiquitous usage by individuals and commercial entities,

Purely a matter of scale.
Most people outside 1st World have not used Internet.
Over a third of people in many western countries have never used the Internet or the Web.
By being a user of Websites and a computer you immediately will have a distorted view of the Internet (and Web which is just one of many things on the Internet). Smart Phone Apps "for a Web Site" are NOT WWW or Web site usage, but special internet applications, they are damaging the WWW concept. But that's another story.

Also, Shockwave Rider is dope.

Drugs is a theme. But it's certainly about computer created identities, issues of computer internet privacy etc and internet before it really existed, though I don't quite understand your comment.

He had expected some sort of beautiful crystalline structure inside,

He just needed to take the lids off the ICs and CPU and RAM etc ...
Really old computers had EPROMs with a window. A cheap toy microscope lets you see the Silicon crystal
https://www.google.ie/images?q=eprom+close+up

Hidden Chip art
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/
https://www.google.ie/images?q=chip+art
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_art

 

[Toby Frost]

While amusing, it also highlights another important point about him: he was writing primarily about emotional and social issues, not technological ones.

Well said. I think that's what all the really great SF writers do.

I'm guessing that Nerd's Feather meant "dope" as in "jolly good", as the kids of today say.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

"jolly good", as the kids of today say

Ah, one Species, separated by a nearly common Language