[MrWonderful]

I second Jason Snell's citation of those pay phones...
Nice piece. As John Leonard said a few years ago, what Neuromancer invented was the idea of data embodied.
I would only add that Second Life was foreseen, not by Neuromancer, but by the "Megaverse" in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.
I also seem to recall that simstim was "appropriated" in the movie Strange Days.

[echosend]

Doctor Who, "The Deadly Assasin" (1976): The Matrix on Gallifrey.

[thrillingwonder]

"If you haven't already read Neuromancer, consult the (nicely done) plot summary on the Neuromancer Wiki page..."
ugh. bad. howzabout:
"If you haven't already read Neuromancer. . .read it. Then read the article."

[echosend]

Whatever happened to the movie that was planned?

[airmanchairman]

Excellent article!
I have read the entire gamut of William Gibson's future Dystopia, with the exception of Spook County, which sits on my desk as I type this comment.
This is because I have actually started on the entire series again (I previously missed out Count Zero, which was the sequel to Neuromancer, and jumped straight to Mona Lisa Overdrive in my ignorance. I am presently on Count Zero).
I am eagerly looking forward to the emergence of safe neurological advancements described by Gibson as carried out by "unlicensed doctors in Chiba", whereby selected personal memories can be erased without significant harm.
This would enable me to enjoy my favourite Sci-Fi series all over again with duplicate pleasure, including Frank Herbert's "Dune" future-scape, Roger Zelazny's "Amber" chronicles and of course, William Gibson's Cyberpunk universe.

[Peter Cohen]

airmanchairman said:

This would enable me to enjoy my favourite Sci-Fi series all over again with duplicate pleasure, including Frank Herbert's "Dune" future-scape, Roger Zelazny's "Amber" chronicles and of course, William Gibson's Cyberpunk universe.

Yep. Then I could also forget about that unfortunate "experimentation" phase in college.

[TheFLP]

airmanchairman said:

I am eagerly looking forward to the emergence of safe neurological advancements described by Gibson as carried out by "unlicensed doctors in Chiba", whereby selected personal memories can be erased without significant harm.

No need for me to wait. I've already lost most of my childhood, and expect that my brain will continue leaking until I'm old enough to forget that I don't remember.

Not exactly selective, but it gets the job done.

[nekomatic]

I don't read much SF any more, but I seem to re-read Neuromancer every few months and I don't think I'll ever get tired of it. For all its flaws as literature - and there are a fair number - there's something about it, and Gibson's other work, that's endlessly fascinating and absorbing. I can't believe people mention it in the same breath as Snow Crash which is superficial nonsense in comparison.

I also can't believe that nobody's yet mentioned what must be the greatest anachronism in the whole novel: the fact that the deck, while capable of creating a whole world of synthetic experience by electrical stimulation of the user's brain - is controlled by a keyboard. But I don't think Gibson ever meant to accurately forecast the shape of future technology - he's much more interested in the social and the psychological, and a good thing too. The defining characteristic of cyberpunk was surely that it portrayed its world of technology neither as a gleaming utopia nor as a tool of oppressive forces but as everyday stuff - 'The Street finds its own uses for things.' In the cyberpunk world, stuff breaks, and gets patched up and salvaged and re-used and improvised by people it wasn't intended for. I'm sure Gibson wasn't the first to describe this, but Neuromancer really served notice on any other approach to technological fiction for a good number of years IMHO.

A final observation, another article on Macworld recently pointed out that the Sony Walkman has only just turned 30. That was pretty much the acme of personal technology when Gibson was writing: a (gasp) portable (wow!) cassette player!

[beltbucklestud46]

Mens Designer Belts,
Womens Designer Belts
and Designer Belt Buckles