Score: 8
Spoiler Free
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
So begins the novel that, dense and interwoven as it may be, is in essence a heist story set in a future where megacorporations control a world in which the neon lights shinjuku meet the controlled anarchy of kowloon. Written by someone who had never even used a computer, yet revolutionary in its treatises on technology Neuromancer is no easy read and certainly benefits tremendously from a reread. The prose, noisy and ladden much like Cyberspace itself, weaves plot with philosophical notions in a masterful tone. A book that was so mind-bending for its contemporaries and holds up superbly to the technology of our time is a must read for any fan of the genre.
The matrix has its roots in primitive arcade games. … Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts. … A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.
Spoilers
The heist is ultimate just a backdrop to an AIs attempt to merge with its other half. One holds the feelings, the consciousness if you will, the other the information and the procressing power. the alpha centauri message at the end is quite special, hinting at the fact that ai is, in fact, the next step for humanity. the themes of the book are some we battle with today. it will be interesting to see where we go from here