Cliches Became Cliches For A Reason (Neuromancer D.A.R.E Review Part 4: Evaluate)

 

Yeah, I ran out of Funk memes. Creativity at midnight is like catching a firefly in a summer day.

         Hello and welcome back to likely the only blog still active at the close of the schoolyear. I am your constantly tired host, and tonight at the Reader in Yellow, we're going at it with The Neuromancer again. If you haven't been keeping up, this is the part where I get to dunk on one of the fathers of classic cyberpunk with an E V A L U A T I O N ! Without further adieu, let's make Funk proud...

        It's a little hard to criticize the Neuromancer, given it IS one of the original cyberpunk stories. It ties into William Gibson's extended fictional universe of The Sprawl, and yet is a wonderful entry point. Unlike, say, a Marvel film, you needn't have read Gibson's other works, although having watched Johnny Mneumonic's rather horrifying film adaptation (sorry Keanu, but I felt like you probably just wanted your paycheck more than "Room Service" in that film), it was almost hilarious seeing deuteragonist Molly Millions bring up the chap, because it just made me remember that awful monologue that happened when Keanu pretended to have a mental breakdown in the middle of the streets during that film. Also the horrible CGI hacking scene where terrifying-CGI-Keanu had to "loop it through Jones" or whatever. Really bad film adaptations starring some of my favourite actors aside, the short story that Johnny Mneumonic was adapted from actually wasn't too bad.

        Back on topic, the Neuromancer is, unfortunately, a little dated. Given how technology is a thing that's pretty difficult to predict (sidenote: speaking of which, I'm pretty sure that the thing most folks are missing with modern mecha stories, is that they're not supposed to predict the future. Mecha aren't the future of combat, they simply exist to be awesome and be used as symbolism and an engine for empathy, given it's easier to empathize with a vehicle that looks like us and all), most of the technological descriptions in the Neuromancer leaves... a bit to be desired, though it's better than most Cyberpunk stories of the era. Pondsmith's Cyberpunk 2020 RPG comes to mind (I actually played a campaign there with my D&D club a bit back. It was wild.) 

         Aside from the technology, a few cultural depictions are most certainly the product of its time, although those things are hard to pick out. It's a little bad once you notice them, but it's not the absolute worse thing. For its time, however, Neuromancer was EXTREMELY progressive, I've heard. I'm actually inclined to agree to that statement, given how it tackles plenty of societal issues, some of which are still relevant to this day. For that reason, I'd totally believe it to be complex enough to write an essay or two on. And even then, it's still quite a fun read, in spite of the era it was written. Certainly better than ScarJo's "Ghost in the Shell", for sure.