Neuromancer – back to the beginning….
So I got around to starting the Sprawl Trilogy from William Gibson again. I’m pretty sure it was at least 10-20 years ago when I last read them – and I was likely 10 years late then (I can remember people in high school talking about the books but I was still reading very old-school sci fi at the time, Heinlein, Clarke, some PKD, etc.)
What’s interesting in reading Neuromancer again is of course seeing where the predictions went (yes, no or TBD) as well as how well it holds up generally. On the one hand, there are some things in there that sort of came true – the rise of the Internet and computer networks being completely pervasive in our society is certainly true, even if the execution is less Lawnmower Man and more Amazon.com (sadly). But the widespread use of body modification is still far from as frequent as described here, The Sprawl is still yet to happen (although I’m sure there are plenty of pockets already formed) and the world isn’t run surreptitiously by AI’s – yet. Nor are there ‘orbital nations’ either run by fringe ethnic groups or covert/eccentric large family corporations (again – yet). Certainly between these books, movies like TRON and shows like Max Headroom – there were a number of entertaining, predictive thinkers back then. And to some degree, there’s still fear out there of AI’s taking over (see The Matrix series, The Teriminator series – there are others) – but at present the bigger risk seems to be from our own species, a la Orwell. It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out for better or worse in the coming years.
For me, however – back to the second book, Count Zero. Stay tuned!
candybowl
Tags: 80s, books, computers, fantasy, malevolence, military, sci-fi, technology