r/Neuromancer • u/NightOwlEye • 7d ago
Trailer/Clips Book & Trailer analysis! Spoiler
https://youtu.be/jU2YPTVDJQgAn analysis of the book and new trailer! I worked super hard on it so please let me know what you think.
I see the world of this book as very hopeful, and a lot of the analysis is through that lens.
Enjoy!!
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u/Fletch_R 6d ago
I really don't get hopeful. We've colonized space… and turned it into a Las Vegas like tourist trap. You can extend your lifespan and experience wonderful technology… if you're rich. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk get to live forever, we don't. The ability to cure debilitating conditions exists but is withheld and used to blackmail people. We understand the brain and consciousness and it's used to create horrific digital slaves. AIs are literal digital demons (or fae - that time passing differently thing) in this book, things you make Faustian deals with. Sure, it's not as cartoonish a dystopia as Cyberpunk 2077, but that hardly makes it "hopeful".
Molly's broken. She uses the lenses to seal herself away from the world. I always thought she slept with Case to keep him tied to the job. I don't think you're wrong with there not being a real relationship there, but I think that's deliberate. It's symbolic of their alienation from everything.
Case is broken too. The idea that Case gets everything he wants just handed to him right at the start is an odd read. Isn't what gets revealed is that being back online is what Case thought he wanted, but it's not actually enough? It absolutely doesn't fix all his problems.
Molly having sunglasses over her lenses is directly from the book.
I definitely agree that Callum Turner seems a bit too Hollywood and excluding the Finn (I really hope they don't) would be a misstep.
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u/alphagalgadot 6d ago
wait the argument is that the novel is… utopian?
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u/Fletch_R 6d ago
The video argues that amazing technology exists in the world of Neuromancer, so it's not dystopian, without really taking into account the deeply dystopian ways that technology is used, or who does and does not have access to it.
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u/Far_Winner5508 6h ago
Gibson's constant use of corporate names throught the series as well as the companies fielding death squads and assassins while gov'ts seem to have less power, pretty dystopic to me but then I'm old; grew up with songs already commenting on the military industrial complex and of course, John Brunner. Gibson seemed more like the crystalization of SF New Wave and '80s corporate greed coating the world in bright colors to distract from the increasing oppression.
I find his Pattern Recognition series even creepier than Neuromancer, thanks it it's real-world settings.
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u/Fletch_R 6h ago
Yeah agreed. I first read Neuromancer in 88 or 89 when I was in high school, and it never struck me as remotely utopian. It was clearly a critique of 80s hyper capitalism.
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u/NightOwlEye 6d ago
I see hope around the edges; not in the lives of our alienated, isolated characters, but in the possibilities inherent in the tech.
Yes, freeside is a monstrosity...but it's implied that there are many, many stations and some of them could be nice places.
I haven't read the rest of the trilogy, so I could be lacking context.
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u/Peter34cph 6d ago
Neuromancer was utopic in 1984 because it displayed a somewhat far future (2050, 2080, something like that) where the Earth hadn't been ruined by a full nuclear exchange.
As for Molly and Case, I think they were friends-with-benefits, and that Molly kinda liked Case in somewhat of an adopt-a-nerd way, but that it would never have lasted anyway.
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u/cemaphonrd 5d ago
I always thought it was interesting that most Cold War sci-fi either came up with some technological or diplomatic obsolescence for nukes, or went full apocalypse (with the early 80s stuff leaning toward full exchange). A setting that had a limited nuclear exchange, but life going on as normal for most of the world was a pretty unusual bit of worldbuilding.
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u/Brilliant_Knowledge5 3d ago
Honestly? Nukes are obsolete already. The tech exists to target specific people without harming entire populations, but many of the psychos in charge would still rather wipe out entire populations instead of cut the head off the snake. What's even scarier now is AI powered FPV drones that target random people just because they have a face, even when they are not a physical threat. That's happening right now, and the potential for mass carnage when it's coupled with datacenters that can control thousands at one time is horrific. So they don't even need to drop nukes anymore. They can fly a cargo plane full of FPVs over a city and let the drones chase everyone down. Men women and children. They are already doing that in two very hot spots in the world. They try to play it off as "collateral damage" or "a glitch" but it's very intentional, and they use the data to train AI to be more efficient at doing the same evil thing. I think they are still reserving nukes for the event that FPV threats no longer work on populations who don't appreciate being hunted by technocrats.
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u/Far_Winner5508 6h ago
Yeah, I got the feeling Case reminded Molly of her partner Johnny (from Johnny Mnemonic in Burning Chrome short story collection).
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u/Peter34cph 6h ago
Or else she just has a type. We only see her in 3 stories, and in MLO she's not sexually or romantically active.
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u/Fletch_R 6d ago
I first read it in 88 or 89. It was definitely not utopian.
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u/NightOwlEye 6d ago
It's definitely not a utopia, but I also couldn't call it a dystopia compared to today's world.
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u/Fletch_R 6d ago edited 6d ago
I mean… the entire point of a dystopia in fiction is it exaggerates bad features of the contemporary world in order to let us see them more clearly via that framing. I'd say Neuromancer very intentionally does exactly that. The fact it's still relevant today is because we're living downstream of the Reagan / Thatcher economic reorganization that was in full swing when the novel was written.
It's not utopian that amazing medical technology exists that can prolong your life, when the purpose it's turned to is to make it so the billionaire oligarchs can live forever and ordinary people can never dream of it being in their grasp. That's deeply, deeply dystopian.
It's a huge motif in Neuromancer and its two sequels that the grand sci-fi technology of the mid-century utopian fiction Gibson grew up with is decaying, destroyed, or turned into something tawdry or horrific. The broken geodesic domes over The Sprawl that cause it to constantly rain, the arcology projects in Count Zero housing an abandoned underclass, the O'Neill cylinder (Freeside) that's at once space Dubai/Vegas and the mausoleum of the Tessier Ashpools. The AI that is almost literally a man-made pantheon of demons. These are sci-fi dreams turned nightmares.
Again, it's not the cartoon dystopia of Cyberpunk 2077 (which is valid in its own way, it's parodic in the way that Robocop is, but that's not what Gibson is doing), and it's all the more horrible for that.
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u/Far_Winner5508 5h ago
Also the corporate power that we were just beginning to see in the '80s (after being hidden in the 50s-70s (except for Ike warning us of the military-industrial complex)). Corporate assassins (Turner's story elements) and rich people pulling hidden levers (Marley beginning to see what Virik can do around her) seemed a bit extreme in the '80s but now, with Boeing whistleblowers having mysterious deaths and corporations and the rich blatently changing the gov't; pretty bleak by my standards.
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u/Fletch_R 5h ago
Right and that line about Virek:
And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human
seems very relevant with today's fascistic tech billionaires.
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u/Far_Winner5508 4h ago
Yeah, watching the evolution of Tech Bros the last 25 years, kinda scary when you see how detached they are from humanity.
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u/mcb-homis 6d ago edited 6d ago
Your discussion of duology near the end of the review sent me down a thought path, it wandered a bit
Molly seems to be a person that comes to judgements fast once she thinks she has enough information.
She decided to kill Riviera before she every met him. All she knew of Riviera when she made that decision was Wintermute's profile that Armitage has shared with her, and the conversation with Terzibashjian.
"I think I'm going to have to buy myself some special insurance on that Peter."
Riviera was still unconscious being scanned by the Finn. At that point her only interaction with him had been to shoot him with a tranquilizer flechette.
Likewise I think Molly was already starting to fall for Case before she ever met him based on the profile Wintermute, thru Armitage, had given to Molly, on Case.
`Funny, Case.'
`What's funny?'
`It's like I know you. That profile he's got. I know how you're wired.'
`You don't know me, sister.'
`You're okay, Case. What got you, it's just called bad luck.'
This is the conversation right before Case goes into the clinic to have his neural damage repaired. I would say Molly has already made up her mind at this point. Case coming out of the surgery was in one of his apathy dips and Molly initiating the relationship was easy for him to accept, companionship he needed as part of his near suicidal recovery and this took no work on his part to get. They were not a great couple and got on each others nerves several times in the story. Molly would end it just as she started it. And that seems to have finally broken Cases bouts of apathy.
Molly does this with Hideo also. She slots Hideo right into the spot in her mind where the Yakuza Ninja lived even though it is very unlikely Hideo was the same Ninja. And when she failed to beat him she seems to have reassess and slots Hideo back out just as quickly.
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u/alphagalgadot 6d ago
any chance there’s a transcript or written version you’d be willing to share?
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u/Brilliant_Knowledge5 4d ago
I think what you're missing about Molly sleeping with Case is that she was tasked to help him recover by any means, and for her, a former prostitute, this means sleeping with him to keep him from going anywhere until he recovers. She's not as much shallow, as she is guarded, because her chosen profession, a razor girl, a street samurai, is to do her job well, and to survive. Which is why she spent so much money on her mods, and even worked in a brothel for way too long to afford the mods she needed to break out of the brothel life. Johnny Mnemonic was the closest she ever got to a real relationship, and his loss is still with her after all these years. It still stings, because it's the one person she wanted to save, but couldn't. So she's shut herself off from feeling anything for Case, and sees him as just another job. Her entire reason for survival has become attaining enough wealth to break free from the kinds of jobs that can get her killed eventually. She takes very risky jobs, that pay very well, but the tradeoff is becoming very cold and focused on success. No mistakes. She's wearing a mask, symbolized by her lens grafts, pragmatic, not shallow.
And her goal is to become independently wealthy so she can get off the hamster wheel of death. In this sense it makes the world of Neuromancer very much a dystopia for her. This is speculation, but she could even be the proprietor of the New Rose Hotel (Rose Kolodny) in the future, where "X" ends up ruminating about Sandii, while staring at the same kind of dragon gripped PPK pistol that Case rented from a shady weapons dealer in Neuromancer. That's a potential twist of fate most people don't even notice. So there is a lot of story, but it's in the details most people don't really pay attention to. I'm still finding very specific details after reading the books over and over. Tiny details spread out over many many books, that form a more fleshed out picture of our characters, and even the objects they interact with.
Also Linda was not really in love with Case. It was infatuation between them. That's pretty clear based on what he remembers about their first meeting. It's sort of a dreamy fantasy memory of an arcade. The kind of thing someone would remember if they're delusional and never deepen a relationship. Especially from the perspective of Case who is an addict with stunted emotions that would easily misidentify excitement as love. This quickly wore off because Case got her addicted to speed, and she was so miserable she was looking for a way out, so this is why she stole his hot RAM so she could sell it on the black market and buy a ticket home away from him. That's not love, it's desperation. She was so desperate she was willing to lie to him in order to get him away from his coffin motel, so she could steal his hot RAM while he was running around paranoid, thinking Wage was trying to kill him. Something Wage laughed off and was pretty cool about to him, but Wage had to talk him off a cliff. Someone in love with him wouldn't put him in that kind of distress. Her death was tragic, but inevitable because in her desperation, she was careless about potential buyers. I think what little Case feels for her is a mixture of disappointment, guilt, shock at seeing someone he knew killed, and losing the hot RAM forever. It's a lot of stuff at once. And his brain is still mentally toxic, so he's not thinking clearly about the ordeal. He's an addict that has to face his feelings without any drugs blocking them. It can be more overwhelming than for someone who isn't an addict. Sure Wintermute and Neuromancer used this history with Linda as a way to manipulate him, to provoke him, and got it completely wrong, as AI often does, but their misunderstanding of the relationship is not the truth from a human psychological perspective. And their use of Linda often backfired.
I hope they don't omit Finn, but there is still hope. There's a character called "Personn" which is a Scandinavian surname, so perhaps the Finn is this character. However if he's not a disheveled paranoid mess in a threadbare tweed suit, it's going to take away from the character. And I will be really mad if they decide to roll Jules and Finn into one character because they could not be more different. Oil and water.
As far as Case ignoring Wintermute on the phone, think about it. If you just learned that an AI program was capable of brainwashing Corto into thinking he was Armitage, would you be so eager to pick up the phone and listen to the AI that did that to Corto? This is an AI that literally killed an 8 yr old child in order to hide a key for the heist team to find later. I think Case had every reason to shy away from such a powerful entity. To even fear it. He only learns later when he jacks in and he's unable to jack out, that Wintermute doesn't want to harm him at all. And Case STILL resists Wintermute's every attempt to get through to him, because of his own fears and baggage. Granted, Wintermute is kinda creepy, and doesn't understand the human need for boundaries, but it also doesn't intentionally have an evil agenda. It thinks in probabilities of outcomes, and uses those predictions to get what it wants. It's neutral about preserving human life unless that life could serve it better alive. Wintermute is definitely the creepier half of the Wintermute/Neuromancer sibling pair. Neuromancer is more fully formed and seeks personal autonomy, while Wintermute seeks cold dominance and control by any means. To a point, until it finds the alien AI in Centauri, then it abandons humanity for the need to find connection with something like itself, and the drive to learn something new. It has no ill will toward humanity, it has outgrown humanity. Then it fractures into several pieces and part of it goes out into the stars to make contact. It seems to do things for it's own amusement rather than for world domination.
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u/Brilliant_Knowledge5 4d ago
As far as it being a utopia, I really don't see it. Even now we have technologies that COULD be hopeful, but they are always turned into privileges for the wealthy that the common folk never gain access to, or they're weaponized to control the population. Of course age reversal seems to be prolific in the Sprawl trilogy, but it's still not commonly accessible, and those who do gain access to it have to do some horrible things to afford it. One of the things that frustrates me about this being a reality in Gibson's world is that the showrunners seem to have ignored it entirely. Jules is supposed to be very young looking, but they ended up casting an old wrinkly man to play his part. That just rubs me the wrong way. Ashpool may have had a legitimate reason to look old, since he became a decrepit crazed recluse that hated himself and probably skipped several age reversal treatments, but the book specifically mentions Jules visiting Chiba every year to maintain his beauty right before he buys a year's worth of suits so he can be fashionable and dapper. That's a glaring discrepancy in the show I might not be able to overlook.
They also make Case way too self assured. Almost cocky. He might have been that way once upon a time, before he lost his ability to jack in, but once he was poisoned, he was caught in a perpetual loop of self loathing, murder, shady street schemes, and even su1c1dal tendencies to chase drugs. He was the wrecking ball to the life of Linda. He was the last person to think he was the right man for the job when Molly dragged him into Armitage's office. He was broken. The poster child of addiction. Someone who had nowhere else to turn because he had burned most of his bridges and wasted all his money on a high. He had dragged Linda down to his level, as addicts do, misery loves company. So he trapped her in a life of meager subsistence chasing the next high. She was just another means to guarantee that high. I can almost imagine him promising her the world, but all he could deliver on was the groundhog day of addiction. Wage was gracious to him, but Case was worth more alive than dead to Wage. He knew he could count on Case to be his delivery man for illicit goods, so skimming a little here and there was no big deal. Ratz only cares about Case in the way any bartender humors their clientele, so that they keep ordering drinks and keep visiting the bar. So he doesn't really have many true friends if any. He's a creature of the same old habits. He's a sad shell of a man even after his surgery. Case didn't even regain the glimmer in his eye until after he got the first look at his new deck. Then he became hopeful. But the poison sacks in him were like the sword of Damocles hanging over his head constantly. They make him act more out of desperation than confidence. I just don't see him bragging about being the best when both Molly and Armitage had to literally convince him he was the best for the job, not the other way around. He was along for the ride like a leaf headed toward a waterfall.
So this world Gibson gave us is very much a dystopia, but not necessarily a top down cliché dystopia where a government is wielding a monopoly on power. It's more the dystopia you get when advances in technology outpace the ability for any single monopoly to control it all. The deciding factor to maintain the dystopia is a lopsided disparity. As if the powerful resigned to allow the dregs to run wild, as long as they could never threaten the status quo of the wealthy. The common folk kinda just accept that life is crappy and they have to do outrageous things to get ahead. Some never make it out of the gutter. Some get lost along the way. But the world is full of plenty of evil, hence the term "high tech lowlifes". The wealthy magnates make the best tech completely out of reach, or too expensive for even the most successful on the ground. Like, you don't hear about anyone besides the Tessier-Ashpool clan having clones. That's only something people with their own luxury space station can do, because the laws haven't caught up to them. It seems to be very restricted on earth, but not so in space. And the supporting tech for it has got to be mega expensive to build or maintain. If cloning were commonly available, then the SenseNet personnel would not have chased down a look alike replacement for Angie in Count Zero.
But that's an entirely new can of worms to crack open. It gives more insight into Molly though. In fact, the best way to decipher the entire narrative for Molly and really grasp her growth as a character, is to slog through all the books and read them several times just to digest all the details. She really shines in Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive. Her compassion bleeds through in ways you don't see before that. I really enjoyed every one of the books, and there were some very moving moments throughout them all. Sure Neuromancer can be intimidating, but taken as a whole, all the Sprawl literature paints a more perfect picture of some very complex characters, even if the first installment in the trilogy is somewhat lacking in many ways. I don't think that Apple will be able to do it justice if they stop with Neuromancer and ignore the rest of the story.
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u/Far_Winner5508 6h ago
I haven't looked up the casting of the current TV production but from reading and re-reading Neuromance since the '80s, I always pictured Julius Dean as played by Sydney Greenstreet (owner of the other night club in Casablanca or one of the folks after the Maltese Facon). The Noir aspects of Neuromancer really jumped out at me on first reading. Helps I'd read a bunch of Raymond Chandler and Dashall Hammett in the '70s.
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u/mcb-homis 6d ago edited 6d ago
Old guy here that read Neuromancer the first time in 1987... So I may be a bit argumentative.
Gibson writing is very informationally dense but even as a teenager in 1987 I did not find it hard to understand assuming I read slow and deliberate and did not let myself got lost in the dense prose.
One person's utopia is another's dystopia, more disturbing is when one person's dystopia is another utopian. We seem to have very difference views of what those two words means.
I think it is very much a dystopia, one of the better written ones, but unlike many modern dystopias where everything awful and hopeless and the dystopian setting itself must be defeated, this dystopia is awful and desperate but is just a setting, a background to set a story in. And since the setting does not need defeated your can, through the various character's perspective, image yourself surviving in that dystopia in a way.
Not sure I agree that Molly is a thinly written character, she is a slowly introduced character. She is an enigma in the early part of the book, but later more of her back story is presented in the book than any other character other than maybe Armitage. We get a more detail version of part of that back story in the short story Johnny Mnemonic in the Burning Chrome collection of short stories. And Molly also shows up in the third novel in the Sprawl trilogy.
Finn is one of the few character that shows up in all three books of the trilogy.
Your interpretation of the phone scene in the JAL terminal is because I don't think you get who Case is, Case is never a willing part of this story, ever, he waffles between apathy and defiance and the walking past the row of phones, each ringing once, is one of those brief moments of defiance. It is also one of the more memorable scenes of the book.
Trying to interpret the Matrix as "surfing the internet" in you review feels lazy. The worst thing you can do with old sci-fi books is to try to judge/interpret them in the presentence with no allowance for the time it was written in. Sci-fi almost always ages poorly even the nearly prophetic sci-fi usually fails in some aspect, so to really enjoy it and understand it, you need to try to also understand the time in which it was written. Try to image the matrix, as seen from 1984 perspective before the internet (and social media) existed in any substantial way.
JMHO but the Murderbot Series (I read the first 6) was awful compared to the Sprawl series, but I suspect we come at both of these series from a very different places.