Reviews

Neuromancer by William Gibson

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oozakazoo's review

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Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

hirvimaki's review against another edition

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4.0

Like cyberpunk? Gibson coined the term cyberspace (in his novelette "Burning Chrome") and it was through its use in Neuromancer that it gained recognition to become the de facto term for the World Wide Web during the 90s. And we wouldn't have ever seen Neo take that little red pill if it were not for Neuromancer. Reading Neuromancer to understand cyberpunk is like reading Lovecraft to understand horror; you realise how many seeds were planted in this early work that we now take for granted. And although Gibson's vision of future technology was imperfect - no cellphones! - he got a lot of things right, almost eerily so. In fact, author Jack Womack (in the afterword to the 2000 re-issue) suggests that Gibson's vision of cyberspace may have inspired the way in which the Internet, particularly the WWW, developed asking, "[w]hat if the act of writing it down, in fact, brought it about?".

farktronix's review against another edition

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2.0

I listened to the unabridged audiobook version of this book and it lost me. I really wanted to like this book, but Gibson gets far too into descriptions of scenery (which doesn't really hold my attention), and he jumps right into characters with no introductions. I couldn't keep track of the different characters and I only had a vague grasp on the plot.
Maybe listening to it as an audiobook makes it harder to follow. I might give reading the book a try in the future to see if it goes any better.