William Gibson - thirty years of Neuromancer

Neuromancer

Thirty years old. Published July 1984.

William Gibson's novel. Suggested the future prevalence of the Internet. Invented the term cyberspace. Kickstarted the cyberpunk genre.

I doubt whether Michael Gove's read it. Reading it should be compulsory. Particularly for anyone who thinks science fiction is just warp-drives, Captain Kirks, and seven-armed, ten-eyed aliens from the planet Zog.

Sport is sport and gambling is gambling. People will play sport whether or not the gamblers are betting on it.

Science fiction novels are novels, just that. They don't stand or fall on how well they predict, or fail to predict the future. Gibson's art is pulling the cultural, political and technological threads from the now, and weaving them into increasingly near futures that sparkle with their characters, locations and narratives.

Neuromancer is the first in the Sprawl trilogy, written in the eighties, and set, probably, just a few years from now. A hi-tec future, stories of the lower-life inhabitants of that future. The Bridge trilogy was more determinedly low-tech. A nearer future where some financial or political or atomic meltdowns have left people having to cope with things long left behind. Sourcing their own clean water and responsibility for their own shelters. The Blue Ant trilogy was set in the near-near future. As in tomorrow.

I don't think Neuromancer was an instant hit, at least not in the UK.

I picked up my paperback copy from a bargain bin, the cover didn't do much to recommend it. It was a Time Out review that made me even think about reading it.

It's probably the book I've reread most times over those years.

Gibson understands that most cultural changes are technology-driven.

Cave painting. Primitive drums. The printing press. When musical instruments are prohibitively expensive, you need to be dead wealthy or have a rich benefactor to succeed. When almost anyone can afford a guitar, there's less chance of genius going undiscovered. (Arguably, economics, politics, all those supposedly independent inventions of man's imagination are technology-dependent). A few years ago there were staggering arrays of subtly different and expensive effects pedals. Now you can hook up the pc and download a free app giving any effect you could ever want.

I picked up a second hand Kobo e-reader, because it has a backlight, in order to read without having to turn on the bedside lamp.

The Kobo tagline is “Read More”.

Although essentially an e-reader, it has wi-fi, it runs on the Android operating system, and unless I exercise some discipline, it makes me read less, as I find myself hitting the SkyGo app and watching the test match highlights instead of getting on with The Sirens of Titan.

If there's ever any doubt that escape into novels is needed to maintain santiy, try this from the real world:

There's research going on that will be critical to the future of bees, threatened by intensive farming taking away their habitat, and pesticides.

The reaserch is being funded by...

...the companies that manufacture the pesticides and undertake the intensive farming.

Reality? I'll take Neuromancer any day.