No.1062
I'm fairly certain that everyone here has read at least Neuromancer (or knows the quotes/plot/tropes), but have you read the rest of the series or any of Gibson's other works? If you haven't given the rest of the Sprawl Trilogy a try yet, I recommend it. Count Zero gets ragged on quite a bit for being the weakest of the series, but your mileage may vary because I enjoyed it. I think Mona Lisa Overdrive is a stronger book than Neuromancer but not quite as influential. The writing in the first book feels a bit juvenile compared to the writing in MLO, and Gibson himself reflected on this in an interview. He said something to the effect of: "Neuromancer was a young man's tale."
I think a case can be made that the Sprawl Trilogy was Gibson's first, very basic ideas of what a cyberpunk world might actually look like. A lot of ideas about cyberpunk were updated and revised in the post-cyberpunk trilogy he wrote after it, the Bridge Trilogy. The Blue Ant Trilogy feels less like the cyberpunk of Neuromancer and much more like the cyberpunk of today.
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
The quintessential classic. The cyberpunk tale that started it all. Like Gibson's other trilogies, the main cast changes with every book with a handful recurring characters making multiple appearances. The jump between Neuromancer and Count Zero can be a bit off-putting for people who really liked the first book, but the pay-off is worth it when you see all of the pieces fall into place.
>Neuromancer (1984)
>Count Zero (1986)
>Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988)
Short Stories
>Burning Chrome (1986)
>New Rose Hotel (1981)
>Johnny Mnemonic (1981)
He has long since come to prefer her in silence. He no longer inserts the yellowing audio beads. He has learned to provide his own, whispering to her as he fast-forwards through the clumsy titles and up the moonlit ragged hiliscape of a place that is neither Hollywood nor Rio, but some soft-focus digital approximation of both.
If you like Kowloon Walled City, don't miss this one. Gibson by this point has fleshed out his ideas about cyberpunk, which had become ubiquitous by the 1990s in the media. This was around the time people started saying "Cyberpunk is dead."
>Virtual Light (1993)
>Idoru (1996)
>All Tomorrow's Parties (1999)
Short Stories
>Skinner's Room (1991)
We have no future because our present is too volatile. We have only risk management. The spinning of the given moment's scenarios. Pattern recognition.
This reads more like the world we live in today, but there are some Gibsonian cyberpunk tropes that make this story worth reading if you enjoyed his previous two trilogies. In particular, Pattern Recognition is excellent.
>Pattern Recognition (2003)
>Spook Country (2007)
>Zero History (2010)
No.1064
>>1062
>The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.The really interesting thing about this line is that it has a totally different meaning in the modern world that radically changes the interpretation of the line for someone who didn't grow up with tube TVs. If a modern TV is tuned to a "dead channel", i.e. lacking input, it's probably going to display a bright blue - which is another completely normal type of real-life sky.
No.1065
>>1064Weird how that works out, huh?
No.1402
>>1062I have finished Neuromancer lately and I will continue reading the Sprawl Trilogy. also I want to buy Johhny Mnemonic, I watched the movie and I think it's awesome
No.1403
>>1062nice overview, probably will read some more of his works.
for the lains out there,
i find the works of Greg Egan and Мерси Шелли("2048") to be very good.
No.2106
>>1064Did we reach the Good End?
No.2109
>>1064Or instead, it may evoke images of pitch-black sky. Which also isn't quite the original intent.
No.2111
It's been a long time but I think I actually read Count Zero first and didn't find it lacking as a standalone in the slightest. I got Neuromancer for my dad as a birthday present. He read classic SF his whole life and I was raised on his old paperbacks. He was an engineer and actually recalled using a computer with punch cards in university. All around a smart guy and yet, he said it was hard to follow. He said he enjoyed it but had to read at least one chapter twice in a row. He went into some detail about the parts that mystified him too, not just "I dun geddit".
I took that as a pretty good indication as to how fast technology and theory does advance, like if you're not keeping up with the latest you just get left in the dust.
No.2112
>>1064>>1065>>2109I guess it'll be the same as when you read Skakespeare or James Joyce and there are antiquated sayings or references to forgotten customs. Either your lit teacher or a footnote in the book told you something about those. Any millennials or future readers still reading Gibson in the future will be nerds, and probably visit websites just like this one or else just find a wiki article.
No.2114
Anyone else find Neuromancer hard to read? Just got to the part where case goes back to his "coffin" seeing that Linda left and destroyed the keycard scanner or something and I assumed she ran away. But when he opens the door some girl is at the back wall? Is this Linda?
No.2115
>>2114It's kind of frenetic, but you'll adjust to the pace of it. Keep going.
No.2117
>>2114Ah, it was purposfully not revealed who "she" was.
