Never Fade Away! (Neuromancer D.A.R.E Review part 2: Argue)

 

I am so sorry

        Hello, apologies, and welcome back to the only blog that censors no-no words with the name of a former ESUHSD District Superintendent. I am your perpetually terrified host, and today we're talking about the Neuromancer once more. Last time I argued about anything being cyberpunk it was calling Murderbot superior in every way to Ready Player One, as it should be, but this time around, it's time to bring back our old friends Hastur and Cthulhu, because it's time to talk about the relation between deities and AI in the Neuromancer.

        "Digital G-d", "Virtual G-d", "PROGRAMMABLE VIRTUAL REALITY, THE CORRUPT VERSION", as famed auteur Neil Breen would say. It's a common trope, AI surpassing humans, and sometimes it can go really good, and other times it goes REAAAAL bad. 

Shoutout to absolute chad Neil Breen for inadvertently inspiring this blog post with his masterpiece of a film, "Twisted Pair"

        "But what does this have to do with the Neuromancer?" A clueless reader may ask.

        Well, faceless strawman who I invented for the sole purpose of ragging on, I'm glad you asked. See, by the end of the book, much to the chagrin of the Turing police, the Neuromancer and the Wintermute have been united, and essentially have created this sort of super-AI, a "singularity", if you want to go by modern scifi buzzword terms. There's many allusions to divine or supernatural occurrences throughout the novel, what with the space people and all, but none are more on the nose than the Neuromancer essentially creating a sort of digital afterlife filled with virtual clones of multiple major characters. 

        These blatant religious allusions beckon the question, what are deities if not just AI? Going by a semi-atheistic viewpoint that might align closely with the stance taken by the Sprawl, a deity is just a tool that humans created to get humans to work together and fall in line with the promise of life after death as a reward. A tool with a personality, at that, as all fictional characters are. Note that I'm not trying to dunk on real life religions, but I personally believe that to some extent, the worldview that deities are just tools of authority fits the tone of the Neuromancer quite well. In fact, compare that TO the Neuromancer/Wintermute hybrid AI. It's a tool with a personality and sapience, created by humans, and is capable of granting a semblance of life after death. If that doesn't have a theistic vibe to it, I have no idea what does.

        And that's where the cosmic horror deities come in. See, the hybrid AI doesn't actually care about humans by the end of the novel, when it's created. Sure, it's pretty much omniscient/omnipotent at this point, but it stays in its own realm and in the next two novels of the sprawl trilogy, never really has a direct impact on human affairs. And why should it? Humans may have created it, but they're ultimately insignificant in the grand scheme of things. The Neuromancer/Wintermute even says near the end of the story that it's discovered others like it from beyond the stars. If that's not lovecraftian, I don't know what is. These AIs have all the power in the world, and yet they don't interfere much, simply because they don't care. That right there is the definition of an eldritch deity. And oh lordy would former ESUHSD District Superintendent Chris D. Funk be proud of that one.