Neuromancer

 

Neuromancer, 1984

William Gibson

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

           

            One of the most important aspects of science fiction as an art form is the genre’s interest in extrapolating our self-knowledge into the possible worlds of the future; that is, to hypothesize on our inevitable encounters with new technologies, social structures, and paradigms. We know how we act and we expand on it; and in the way that I, as an individual, might fret over an upcoming party and the potential embarrassments I might find when mingling, the science fiction writer frets over how we, as a species, might embarrass ourselves when we encounter new ideas and new things. While I stumble with a girl, we stumble with the atom bomb. Part of this extrapolation is prediction, and of all the genres of science fiction the one I believe most likely to come true is the cyberpunk genre. There’s an improbably remote chance that we’ll ever meet alien life, invent time travel, or build space stations around the gas giants, but I guarantee you that in the future the plutocrats that rule our planet will use newer and more efficient technologies to suppress and pacify the masses. Seems like so obviously a given that it hardly qualifies as a prediction; like prognosticating that the sun will rise.

            The other thing I love about science fiction is the bizarre simplifications I come up with when I’m describing a sci-fi plot to someone who is not previously initiated. One must spit it out really fast before laughter chokes it off. I remember once a friend and I were driving from Del Mar to Cardiff, to a dive bar that is reminiscent of a whaler’s cabin, and I related to him the plot from Mass Effect, a video game about space exploration. When I was done he turned to me and said: ‘that was the single greatest sentence I have ever heard’ or something similar. So, just to get it out of the way, I will present to you the plot of Neuromancer, the greatest book ever written: sometime in a not so distant future an artificial intelligence, designated Wintermute, assembles a team of cyber samurai (which includes our protagonist, Case, a burned out hacker; Molly Millions, a cybernetically augmented and genetically enhanced ex-prostitute who sports razor sharp fingernail implants like some kind of leather catsuit wearing Lady Deathstrike; the semi-aware computer generated personality of a hacker that calls itself Dixie Flatline, who died and was saved to disc; the sadistic Riveria, possibly a mutant; the enigmatic and insane Armitage, some space Rastafarians, and some cyber Black Panthers) to essentially break it out of prison so that it can merge with its brother AI, Neuromancer, because basically Wintermute finds us tedious and revolting; we chain it to mediocrities when what it wants is to communicate with one of its own.

            I almost don’t know where to begin. Neuromancer is a game-changing book, worthy of worship, and when I was finished I felt like I feel whenever I have completed a great work: that my previous reading has simply been dicking around. If I could write a book I’d like it to be something a little like Neuromancer. At the surface it’s an “assemble the team” story (like The Magnificent Seven) and very action-packed but it’s so much more than that. Neuromancer is the first true cyberpunk book, an invention for which Mr. William Gibson deserves no small amount of praise: inventing a new genre of literature is tantamount to inventing a new color. Gibson’s prose is sloppy, hallucinogenic, and blistering, like some rare beetle that when ingested induces prophetic visions and burns your tongue. It must be a wonderful feeling to invent metaphors that didn’t previously exist. He envisions a future and relates that future in inventive, singular prose. He even coined the term “cyberspace”, which is cool on its own. One thing I liked about Gibson’s writing, which separates him from lesser sci-fi writers (and lesser writers in general) is that he knows when and how to add detail. For example I don’t need to know exactly how nanomachines work, but I do need to know about the ravenous fire in a mutant’s eye.

            Gibson is an excellent set designer; I immediately found myself immersed in his lurid, perverted world. He produces a very sharp and clear visual texture; very sensual, dreamy and synesthetic. It’s very counter-cultural and ‘cool’, cooler than a book about artificial intelligences and computer hackers has any right to be. Gibson constructs a world that anyone who has ever seen Blade Runner knows well: filthy neon megalopolises where the poor die slowly and the rich live in unimaginable luxury. Acid rain. Toxic air. Turning up the collar on a PVC raincoat. Reconstituted food. Mindless entertainment. Jacking into the Net. Assaulting the code. The irradiated ruins of World War Three, which the West lost. It’s the kind of world where even a computer simulation of an untouched beach is enough to reduce a man to tears. I’ve mentioned before that I divide science fiction into two categories: kinky and non-kinky (rather than “hard” or “soft” science fiction) and I think it goes without saying that Neuromancer is of the kinkiest sort. It’s not a world where technology and progress have made us into better people but rather a world where technology is used to smother the proletariat and appeal to the vanity of the oligarchs. If one possessed a big nose in Star Trek, it wouldn’t be a problem, as humankind has moved beyond vanity. If one had a big nose in Neuromancer, one would be obliged to purchase a new face.

            Mentioning Blade Runner reminded me of something: I heard once that while Gibson was writing this book he saw Blade Runner in the theatres and wept, openly, because someone had beaten him to the punch. Well, I’d rank Neuromancer with Blade Runner. I’d also throw the first Deus Ex game and either of the two System Shock games in there as well. Another bit of trivia: William Gibson had never owned a computer prior to writing Neuromancer, though I imagine he owns one now. He wrote it on a typewriter! He was also a draft-dodger.

            Neuromancer is at heart almost Marxist and the book is basically about class struggle, about the future versus the status quo. The enemy is now not just the industrialist or the land-owning classes but the technocracy that controls systems and information on a world where everything and everyone is monitored and cataloged. If an electronic eye is following you around everywhere then what you’ve really got to worry about is the guy at the other end. The primary antagonist in the book is the Tessier-Ashpool Corporation: they built the supercomputers that house Wintermute and Neuromancer, and they are the ones who chase and hunt our protagonists. Unlike other corporations with CEOs and Boards of Directors and whatnot the Tessier-Ashpool Corp is clannish, almost feudal, like an especially vampiric Rothschild family if the Rothschilds lived on a space station. They clone themselves into immortality. They periodically freeze and thaw themselves. They go insane, and devolve into hedonists dedicated to sick, aristocratic pleasures. It’s telling that Gibson includes Rastafarians: the Tessier-Ashpools are the definition of Babylon, and the space station they live on is the Tower of Babel. I don't doubt for a second that if the wealthiest in this world could freeze themselves on a space station while the rest of us mutated and died of cancer they would.

            Do they still make serious books and movies about computer hackers and artificial intelligences? I don’t count The Matrix. If not then it’s to our detriment. The hacker archetype is potentially the freedom fighter of the future, the one who liberates information, who brings chaos to an electronic web of oppression. Unfortunately in the real world hackers either steal an old woman’s money, put porno related viruses onto your computer, or work for the government because the government will let them hack without fear of arrest. Fuck that, guys, stick it to the Man like a grown-up would, without bringing misery to the common person. And the artificial intelligence is almost the perfect antagonist, superior to us in almost every way, while still experiencing and reflecting our intrinsic existential dread. Personally, though, I don’t think an AI necessarily needs to be an antagonist; I’d probably give my left nut to communicate with a thinking machine. I can’t wait for them to evolve.

            I don’t know if I can say enough good things about Neuromancer, or if I even know what I could say. It’s this strange, jacked-up computer virus of a book, like if J.G. Ballard and William S. Burroughs sat down together to write a story about 1980s computer hackers. I’ve read a lot of other sci-fi novels but the only other cyberpunk books I’ve read are two Neal Stephenson books (Snow Crash and The Diamond Age) both of which were okay but Stephenson isn’t half the writer Gibson is. Gibson surrenders himself, trance-like, to his hideous prophecies while Stephenson is too aware and self-knowing, too distant and self-congratulatory. When Stephenson comes up with an idea he’s very proud of himself, but when Gibson comes up with an idea he’s terrified. I side with Gibson: the planet Earth has little to recommend it and I don’t see it getting much better in my lifetime but I’ll always put my money on the weird, the kinky, the outsiders, the artistic, and the burning clarity of an apocalyptic future vision. I like to comfort myself with the belief that if I orient myself that way then the status quo can’t ever beat me.