I had typed up most of my blog on Friday, but when I noticed the email with the blog prompt about why Neuromancer is difficult, I figured I could change my blog to focus more on that question.
William Gibson is arguably the father of the Sci-fi sub-genre Cyberpunk. But, what is Cyberpunk? Since this may be the first of its kind, Neuromancer might be a hard cyberpunk novel to understand. The first three paragraphs of the novel Neuromancer might shed some light on what the genre is all about. The first paragraph consists of only one infamous sentence: “The sky above the port was the color of television tuned to a dead channel” (3). What does that mean? That description evokes a number of ideas about the general setting of the Neuromancer world. One, the world could be very cloudy, the type of world often described in a dark mystery/noir novel. Or, is it something new? Is Gibson describing his setting as being encased under an enormous TV dome that displays static?
The next paragraph begins with someone saying, “It’s not like I’m using.” Drugs immediately play a role in the narrative. In this paragraph, we also get a closer look at Gibson’s world. The characters are in a bar in Japan where “expatriates” go. In the third paragraph we get a description of Ratz, the bartender who has a prosthetic arm and metal teeth. And, we get a description of the main character Case sitting next to “a Lonely Zone whore” and “a tall African.” These three paragraphs alone give readers a kind of foreshadowing of what a cyberpunk world really is. It is a world more dependent machines than the present real world could ever know. The sky could very well be plugged into a machine. The characters consist of sleazy whores and junkies. Other characters have mechanical body parts rotting with “brown decay.” They are filthy and crooked people.
The characters are addicts. They are addicted to drugs, and sex, and technology. Technology is all over this book. The book often seems to intertwine technology into the descriptions of its characters. For instance, when the narrator describes Case’s memory of his ex-girlfriend Linda Lee, her features are combined with the descriptions of the arcade video games that she plays.
“And now he remembered her that way, her face bathed in restless laser light, features reduced to a code: her cheekbones flaring scarlet as Wizard’s Castle burned, forehead drenched with hot gold as a gliding cursor struck sparks from the wall of a skyscraper canyon” (8).
Does this imagery come off confusing? I think at first, it does. A lot of Gibson’s imagery is dependent on the technology he created in the story. The problem is that most of the readers have never heard of some the words in the book. Words describing places and pieces of technology such as “Ninsei” and “simstim” and “Ono-Sendai” and “dermatrodes” will often be used as if they were as common as anything else in our real world.
Another reason why this book can appear to be difficult is the way the scenes progress. For instance, when Case undergoes his surgery, it occurs on the pages so fast you might actually miss it. One moment the narrator says, “[Case] waited in the coffin for Armitage’s call. Now this quiet courtyard, Sunday afternoon, this girl with a gymnast’s body and conjurer’s hands” (31). How did the narrator go from talking about what Case was doing to a description of a girl, probably Molly? Then, the next paragraph begins: “If you’ll come in now, sir, the anesthetist is waiting to meet you” (31). Gibson often throws important events at you really quickly and usually doesn’t give you much of a warning:
“He was walking toward the stalls, in the shadows. He looked down, expecting to see that needle of ruby emerge from his chest. Nothing. He found [Linda Lee]. She was thrown down at the foot of a concrete pillar, eyes closed.” (38).
This is the description of when Case finds out that his ex-girlfriend has been killed for equipment that she stole from Case. Once again, it is mentioned so quickly and vaguely that an important event like this can be missed very easily. One thing that should also be taken into account is that Gibson loves to use fragments. Often he will just use a phrase to evoke a feeling or description of something else:
“Molly’s fletchettes, at twenty rounds per second” (38).
“Follow the wall. Curve of concrete. Hands in pockets. Keep walking. Past unseen faces, every eye raised to the victor’s image above the ring. Once a seamed European face danced in the glare of a match, lips pursed around the short stem of a metal pipe. Tang of hashish. Case walked on, feeling nothing. (38).
Notice there are at least a few fragmented sentences here. Gibson can be very punchy with his words. And he mashes up different images to give you this kind of juxtaposition of feelings and images in your mind.
I also want to point out that Chapter 4, or the scene where Molly goes into Sense/net building to get the Dixie Flatline construct, can be confusing to read because we the readers are seeing what Molly is seeing through Case’s eyes (I find it difficult to explain this, myself). Gibson is intertwining two different perspectives into one (Case is jacked into cyberspace and is witnessing events through Molly’s body). This scene and idea is very similar to the idea in the movie Being John Malkovich. Whatever Molly feels, Case feels it through her body. Again this scene jumps in time. The narrator says, “The cutting of Sense/Net’s ice took a total of nine days” (59). Then the narrator jumps to Armitage saying, “I said a week.” It is a little odd how readers don’t really get to see much of Case’s work:
“Ice patterns formed and reformed on the screen as he probed for gaps, skirted the most obvious traps, and mapped the route he’d take through Sense/Net’s ice. It was good ice. Wonderful ice. Its patterns burned there while he lay with his arm under Molly’s shoulders, watching the red dawn through the steel grid of the skylight. Its rainbow pixel maze was the first thing he saw when he woke. He’d go straight to the deck, not bothering to dress, and jack in. He was cutting it. He was working it. He lost track for days” (59).
Case is definitely hacking through security perimeters in cyberspace, but I don’t think we’re actually told how that is done. And, that may be the most difficult thing about Neuromancer. We are reading a book about hacking into and navigating through cyberspace, yet the book was written before the idea of cyberspace or the internet was even really established.
