Neuromancer by William Gibson

[lightreads]

Neuromancer

3/5. Do I need to say what this is? Look at me reading this, only twenty mumble years after multiple boys informed me, explicitly or implicitly, that my opinions on all literature known to man were irrelevant unless and until I read this book (and liked it, one presumes). You’ll note that this directly resulted in me not reading this for multiple decades.

I do not like it very much, for the record. It is what it is, and it suffers hugely from me having previously read many of the books that it engendered, such that I finally get back to this and find it reads as derivative rather than what it is. It also suffers from the racism, I should mention. Oh, and the thing where the male protagonist is a total loser and yet we have to spend all this time with him while a much more interesting woman does stuff that actually makes the story go. At least Gibson was apparently aware of that; he just didn’t do anything about it (in this book, anyway – I have the impression she gets better billing later).

What no one told me, however, is that Gibson can really write. I may not be interested in a lot of the stuff he’s interested in, he may have been baked out of his mind while writing most of this, I may find this tired and silly, but god damn if I didn’t reread certain passages of this multiple times just to figure out how he just did that. If I’d known he was writing like that, I would have read him twenty years ago. Though then again, I probably wouldn’t have known how to read a writer like that twenty years ago, so okay.

Also, I’ll say this for him, that is still a banger of a title.

Content notes: Fridging. Racist stereotypes in multiple directions.

Comments

[thefourthvine]

I read this one in college, which honestly was the right time — I knew enough to admire the writing, had not yet reached total burnout on the various bullshit, was excited to see a cool woman at all, and had yet to read everything that came after. I’m actually surprised and delighted to hear that you liked it as much as you did; I’ve had it on my “Don’t read, Keep the memory” list for at least a decade.

[lightreads]

If you want to revisit without revisiting, I recommend the relevant podcast episodes from Shelved by Genre. They like/admire this waaay more than I do, but have interesting and helpful things to say.

[kate_nepveu]

hah, I was just coming in to say that I'm not entirely sure I recommend them because they are very dudely, but ... (I listened to them on Lackey and generally enjoyed it, but haven't had any strong urge to keep going, forward or back.)

[lightreads]

Yes, very dudetastic, definitely. And if anyone knows of a non-dudes podcast doing similar work, I'd love to hear about it.

[kate_nepveu]

well, there's Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones, which is Rebecca Fraimow and Emily Tesh, which I can vouch for, though Emily's sound quality in the first season can be rough.

I've listened to one episode of Dragons Made Me Do It, which is one woman and one man, and liked it.

Strange Horizons has an intermittent criticism podcast, which seems to be generally hosted by one woman and one man, which I have not listened to.

otherwise my "genre podcasts to try" is a lot of stuff about movies and TV, alas.

[lightreads]

Thanks for these. This is why I was so sad when Be the Serpent closed down.

[aoftheis]

Jumping into this thread to recommend something because I also love Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones (and miss Be The Serpent)!

I recently discovered Wizards vs. Lesbians and in addition to having a hilarious title, it's great. Very smart and feminist, focused on the SFF community. Technically they're about the microgenre of wizards vs. lesbians but they are quite loose with that definition, it's more of a critical orientation. ;) For instance they've covered things like Piranesi, the Scholomance trilogy, Freya Marske, Nicola Griffith, and The Last Unicorn.

[lightreads]

Ooh, thanks!

[kate_nepveu]

I listened to their episode on The Fortunate Fall, which was from a while ago; does the volume of their musical stings get better? I had to dive for my volume control every time.

[aoftheis]

I have to admit, I listen to the episodes all out of order — I just queue one up if I've read the book recently — so I don't have a sense of whether the volume improves over time, sorry! Most recently I listened to an episode covering Zen Cho and I remember the volume of the musical sting being normal.