By Aidan O’Sullivan
Cyberspace lies between the digital and the physical: The modified body adapted to merge with a digital ecosystem – a reality overridden by technology.
This world is dominated by corporations and yet also inhabited by a society imbued with punk sensibilities: stylistically and vainly, endlessly refashioning itself with clothing and body mods, fad after fad.
This is the world of William Gibson’s science fiction classic Neuromancer. A world now identified by the genre label of Cyberpunk. Gibson’s book is seen as pivotal in sparking the rise of this genre of dystopian high-tech crime driven digital societies.
The book is a heist narrative, in which its protagonist, the hacker Case, is recruited by a powerful AI in order to commit a high-stakes virtual crime. Leading the outfit, is a military veteran along with paid help from an augmented bodyguard ‘razorgirl’ Molly. As they come face to face with AI they are forced to confront that perhaps control is now out of human hands.
However, the most interesting aspect of Neuromancer is not the AI but rather the society depicted.
In many ways the book reflects more about the time in which it was written–the late 80s–then it does the future: A period of intense globalisation as the world became more connected but also more corporate driven. Society in Neuromancer has become subordinated to technology, with crime reduced to merely a function of the larger system. While it’s characters endlessly individualise themselves with body augmentation they lack any real individual control.
Case, Gibson’s console cowboy represents an idealised version of computer programmers as vigilantes on a new digital frontier. An interesting characterisation that the two main stereotypes of programmers are that of unhygienic nerds or socially driven activists.
It is a reality wired with addiction and longing for the digital. Case, when excluded from the virtual matrix is haunted by dreams of longing:
‘The dreams came on in the Japanese night like livewire voodoo, and he’d cry for it, cry in his sleep and wake alone in the dark, curled in his capsule…. trying to reach the console that wasn’t there.’
The urban environment – the ‘real world’ contaminated by criminality wears away at Case, driving him to murder, drugs, and sex –anything to cover up his damaging need for the matrix.
In fact, this heavily urbanised environment had already begun to exist (if not as dramatically) with rising economies like Japan proving to be a consistent locus for cyberpunk aspirations.
The story is built off its own vernacular of technological crime driven subcultures. The prose is punctuated with sequences of short bursts of imagery, drawing the reader into this low life high tech world.
At times this makes the relatively simple plot structure more difficult to follow, but a highly rewarding reread as one spots and connects aspects, they hadn’t quite realised before.
A society of constant sexual gratification and abuse. The women in Gibson’s book are endlessly sexualised even as they prove to be some of the most dominant players in the book. Molly, as an augmented bodyguard is one of the most violent and dangerous characters. However, technology is still not enough to prevent her from suffering constant sexual aggression from other members of society.
The AIs featured in the novel are a result of one corporate matriarch philosophical mission, but this does not prevent her murder.
Neuromancer is key read not just for understanding the development of science fiction but also in looking at the rise of a globalised technology driven world in the 80s and 90s.