I first attempted to read Neuromancer early on in my "reading career" – around 2015. It was incomprehensible, made me feel stupid, and I hated it. I am so glad I gave it another chance. Neuromancer is a trippy, fast-paced, genre-defining cyberpunk novel.
Written in 1984, Neuromancer is a fascinating vision of what cybersecurity and AI would look like in the future. Gibson’s take is remarkably prescient – though it’s interesting to see that he underestimated some aspects of general computing power (e.g. referring to megabytes as a lot), while overestimating the capabilities of AI. The novel gives me strong PKD vibes: the setting is similar to Bladerunner (gritty, Tokyo-inspired nights) and the plot reminds me of Ubik. The novel’s antihero, Case, is far more interesting than the average PKD protagonist, though as is typical for scifi, some character development is sacrificed for the sake of interesting concepts.
The amusing thing is that in some ways, Neuromancer’s dystopia is more enlightened than the world we live in. All AIs have to be registered on the Turing registry and law enforcement aggressively tries to prevent modifications that would allow an AI to reach the singularity. Despite the pleas of AI safety researchers, our world has no such protocol. For-profit companies and military agencies deploy AI with minimal safeguards, knowing frighteningly little about the long term consequences (discussed in The Precipice).
Neuromancer remains a relatively difficult read. The writing is snappy to the point of being hard to follow, with short, disjointed sentences and broken dialogue. It’s sometimes difficult to know what’s going on (similar to A Clockwork Orange). But if you’re willing to yield control and just go with the flow, you’re in for a treat.
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