Guardian Newspaper 1000 Novels discussion

December 2015 read- science fiction and fantasy

I picked up the audiobook CDs of this yesterday. I need to finish another audiobook first but should get to this in a week or so.

I am also listening to this one! I just started and only got about 30 minutes in. So far, pretty sci fi...i don't usually love this genre, so we'll see!

I started this morning. I ended up having to listen to the beginning of Chapter 1 twice before I got hooked (too distracted the first time to pay proper attention).

I'm only in Chapter 2 but am wondering if it would have been better to read this rather than listen to it. What do you think Kaycie?

Leslie wrote: "I started this morning. I ended up having to listen to the beginning of Chapter 1 twice before I got hooked (too distracted the first time to pay proper attention).

I'm only in Chapter 2 but am wo..."

I also listened to chapter 1 twice and never got into it. I ended up listening instead of reading because my paper book to-read list is longer and from the First chapter I sort of assumed this wouldn't be my book no matter what form i read it in.

I think if You think you'll like this type of book, try The paper copy, but I don't think it would have helped me.

Anyways, so I finished. My brother actually recommended this book to me as he loves cyberpunk, and I guess this is THE BOOK in that genre. What this book ended up teaching me, however, is that cyberpunk is not my genre.


I'll discuss more when you are either finished or quit. :-)

I'm up to Chapter 7 now -- not loving it but not hating it either. I am glad I watched the movie "The Matrix" as it helps me visualize what is being described. Apparently that film title was taken from this novel, though the movie itself is supposedly more like Philip K. Dick's sci fi.

I'm intrigued enough that I don't see quitting as an option -- I'll let you know when I finish & we can compare notes.

Sounds great! Can't wait to hear more thoughts!

I was also glad i watched The matrix and also googled the title because of that! Funny!

I finished this morning -- I definitely should have read it in print as I found some parts extremely hard to follow in the audio, especially the end.

I can see why this was a ground-breaking novel but I think that cyberpunk is something I prefer in films over books.

I agree about cyberpunk, but don't think I would have enjoyed it or payed more attention as a paper book. I know i don't particularly enjoy this genre, movie or book, but thought this one might be different because of it's popularity. I found I had a very hard time getting into The book or caring at all by about halfway, so just tried to finish. I can appreciate the genre and groundbreaking nature of what Gibson did here (my brother loves this stuff so we've Had this conversation before), but it's really not for me.

Has anyone here read and enjoyed Neuromancer? We'd love to hear your thoughts!

I finished my planned monthly books early, so thought I'd do a spot of back-dated reading. This was on my Kindle, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.

Okay - I quite liked it, although it's strange to try and disentangle its qualities as a book and its influence in all sorts of fields outside literature. Here's my review

******

It's difficult to overstate, 30 years on, how influential this book was. It's not particularly well (or badly) written, and the sci-fi take on the "pulp noir style" is interesting and easy to read. But it's the millieu, the setting, that's so fascinating. You can heavily feel the influence of Ridley Scott's Bladerunner in the world-building, but the interaction of humans and computers in "cyberspace" (a term created by Gibson in an earlier short story, but expanded hugely in this novel), the nowhere world of The Matrix (again, a term used in this context first by Gibson and stolen by the film) and utterly prescient thirty years later.

Like much (perhaps most) science fiction, this wasn't really about the future, it was about the 1980s. The splitting of rich and poor, the domination of capital, the rise of the machines, was about the economic and social fractures of the Thatcher / Reagan years, not a prediction of the 22nd century, but this novel is uncanny in the way that it has anticipated the direction our relations with computers and the internet (which didn't exist in the form we now know it then).

Another reviewer here has suggested that rather than predicting the future, this book instead *shaped* the future. In that the people developing what became cyberspace and the internet of things had taken this book and the works it influenced so much to heart that they created a world to match it.

So, while the pace is a touch too hectic and the description a touch too breathless at times. I can't give this less than 4 stars, simply because it's so damned influential (and Mollie is a fantastic character).