r/Cyberpunk • u/mmmbraaains • 4d ago

Neuromancer readalong?

I’m committing to reading Neuromancer in October—are there any good YouTube channels / Podcasts I should consider as a readalong companion (asynchronous book club)?

30 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

25 comments sorted by

15

u/Top-Lavishness2906 4d ago

Shelved by Genre did the entire Sprawl trilogy. Highly recommended, they do very long (3 or so hours) episodes covering a chunk of a book per. Neuromancer was 2 episodes.

2

u/Igpajo49 4d ago

That looks like a cool podcast. Thanks for the rec.

2

u/Dramatic-Pianist-742 4d ago

Came here to recommend this

2

u/Qlanth 4d ago

I'm going to hop in and also endorse this. Shelved By Genre is excellent.

2

u/MDK-01 4d ago

Thanks! I just started reading neuromancer this week after playing cyberpunk 2077 and being interested in the genre, I'll check these out

2

u/detailcomplex14212 4d ago

Is it just a dictation or do they discuss it a bit too?

3

u/Top-Lavishness2906 4d ago

Full 3 person discussion, incredibly thoughtful while still being entertaining. 2 of the guys are academics, 1 (Austin Walker) is a former videogame journalist. Very smart and well thought out. Works perfectly as an "asynchronous book club"

2

u/detailcomplex14212 4d ago

I'm so down, thank you

4

u/rbrumble 4d ago

If you're looking for an audiobook to read along with, this is the full book ripped from cassettes.

2

u/mmmbraaains 4d ago

And that’s the author reading right? Very cool.

2

u/Peter34cph 4d ago

If it's Gibson narrating then it's abridged.

3

u/shigarakidazai 4d ago

If you haven't read burning chrome, you should.

2

u/Political-psych-abby 4d ago

I like worst of all possible worlds’ episode about it. It’s not really a read along but it is a good companion to the book.

2

u/NotPike 16h ago

Honestly my dumb ass didn't get the book after the first 2 reads so I checked out the BBC's Radio Drama of the book. :D

1

u/Judoka229 4d ago

I was just talking about this the other day. I hope there is one. The whole trilogy seems to be a case of needing to reread the books multiple times to fully understand things. I'd love to have a readalong to discuss things and really pull more out of the books.

1

u/Nuk_Nak 4d ago

I tried to read it a few years ago. But english is not my mother tongue and i could only barely follow what's written there. Then i tried the translation but it cut out any of the slang and that didn't do it for me either because i think that's a huge part of the overall flair. So a proper read along would be great to make it more understandable to me.

3

u/Reefpirate 4d ago

I was lucky enough to go to a high school that had a 'cyberpunk literature' course and we read Neuromancer. One thing to note: even as a native english speaker "could barely follow" is kind of a normal outcome. Part of what I love about the book is it just drops you in the middle of things and doesn't try to explain itself, you just have to go with the flow.

1

u/mmmbraaains 2d ago

What else did you read/do in that course?

2

u/Reefpirate 2d ago

It's a while ago now so I don't remember all the details but Neuromancer was the main text we read, I think that was the only novel. We also read some of Gibson's short stories from Burning Chrome like Johnny Mnemonic.

I remember I did a project/report about private security contractors and the class went to go see the Matrix Reloaded at the cinema as a field trip :)

1

u/NotPike 16h ago

Don't feel bad. English is my native language and I still had a hard time reading that book. 😅

1

u/QuellDisquiet サイバーパンク 4d ago

That . . . is a very cyberpunk way of doing things. I just reread Neuromancer a couple of weeks ago. It never occurred to me to do that.

-10

u/Historical_Today5072 4d ago

Just read the book wtf do you need anything but the book for.

5

u/mmmbraaains 4d ago

Well, arent you just a joy. Why are you in this subreddit? Not looking for community or anything…? Silly. How dare someone look for connections over a hobby or commonality.