Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/12/19/jon-gray.html
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But who will cover this?
One of these days i’ll have to read this.
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I wish I’d never read it, because then I could for the first time.
I’m about 2/3 of the way through Gibson’s The Peripheral, I’ll be sorry when I’m done. (I hear Peripheral is becoming a TV production?)
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I feel the same about The Shining, i re-read it once and it just wasn’t the same. Some books really deliver when you don’t have any expectations of where the story is going. I do legitimately want to read Neuromancer but i never remember the title when i’m looking for books to buy… i’ll have to add it to my Amazon wishlist at the very least.
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I don’t much care for it, but it’s more distinctive and comprehensible than a whole lot of other crappy SF covers out there, so that counts for something.
I went looking for a GIF of Ultron talking about being “tied up in strings” and came up empty. Oh well.
I still think it’s highly overrated, personally.
It’s ok, but Gibson rips off a lot of the Wachowski’s imagery and characterizations from the Matrix movies. I’m surprised he didn’t get sued, or at least have to give them partial credit for the characters he “created.”
(ETA: yes, this is a joke–I’m aware how linear time operates and was poking fun at the Wachowski’s unabashed thievery)
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Eh… not the word I’d use. I do like bright green.
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Snark tag missing? Or did you forget to close one earlier?
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Am I missing an /s tag? Doesn’t Neuromancer predate The Matrix by at least a decade?
@Boundegar jinx
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(I assumed that would be self-evident on a place like BB)
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I guess my snark filter is turned up too high today.
Cheers.
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You could make a more serious accusation about Vernor Vinge’s “True Names” from 1978. Experiencing a world-wide computer network as a virtual reality interface, war over control of the global net, the emergence of a godlike (within the Net) AI because of the sum of the computing power has hit that point. (Of course, Arthur C. Clarke pioneered that one with a 1960s story about the first full interconnection of a global phone system.)
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Not true about ripping off the Matrix but definitely true about ripping off Blade Runner (giant pyramid building headquarters in the sprawl) and Escape From New York (time release poison in Case, stealth attack gliders Armitage/Corto flew into Moscow).
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I beg to differ. meh
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I like the digitally painted faces from back in the day on the covers of Neuromancer, Burning Chrome, and Count Zero (didn’t care for the silver android look on Mona Lisa Overdrive… felt it was too derivative of other work at the time, and diverged from the feel of the art of the previous covers).
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We’ll have to agree to disagree about whether having a big building in the middle of a giant city or a tangential reference to a military glider constitutes ripping off another work. As far as a time-release poison…eh, I just don’t see it.
The Wachowskis, on the other hand, were trying to make a Neuromancer movie for years but couldn’t get it done, so just decided to port the characters almost beat for beat into a PKD story and go from there.
This sounds overy harsh, of course, because Gibson is always magnanimous when he talks about it and recognizes that it’s all part of a big blob of culture everyone is drawing from.
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Be prepared to read through it about four times before you get it.
Have to say I don’t like this cover. It doesn’t have the cyberpunk feel of the copy I have. This is a shame, given that blade runner 2049 refreshed the cyberpunk visual style.
But then Blade Runner 2049 seems to rip off Count Zero with the spinner crash into the garbage dump. This makes sense, with Count Zero being the second sprawl book.
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