Jonathan Wolfe

Neuromancer: The Great Escape

            “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”  Thus begins William Gibson’s novel, Neuromancer, and with it, the emergence of cyberpunk, a genre defined by its gritty description of a future gone wrong, and the razor sharp characters who inhabit it.  In Gibson’s not too far distant future, technology has progressed to fascinating degrees, but the human race seems none the happier.  If anything, technology has merely facilitated the more destructive habits of humanity— greed, selfishness, addiction, violence—these seem to be the dominant qualities of human kind in the latter half of the 21^st century. 

Although published almost twenty five years ago, Neuromancer seems like it could have been written today, as much of what it describes has already come to pass in nascent forms.  In the novel, the entire world is connected through a computer network called “the matrix” (sound familiar?), and human beings have the capability of interfacing with this computer system in a quasi virtual world.  Meet Case, the main character of the book: a hacker extraordinaire, former “cyberspace cowboy”, down on his luck with a crippled nervous system that prevents him from ever accessing “the matrix” again.  He’s reduced to a life of petty crime, hustling on the streets of Chiba, a city on the edge of nowhere Japan, where no one can be trusted but everyone can be bought.  Case is a desperate man in a desperate world: a drunk, a drug addict, and a criminal.  All he wants is to get back what he’s lost, access to “the matrix”, his ultimate drug of choice, but this seems like an unattainable dream. 

Enter Molly, a slick street smart samurai whose boss Armitage has a proposition that Case can’t refuse: agree to work for him, hacking into an unknown part of the matrix for unknown reasons, and he will cure Case’s nervous system.  And just to insure that Case doesn’t jump ship once he’s cured, Armitage sets up a booby trap inside of Case’s body that will kill him at a moment’s notice.  Thus begins the adventure—a fast- paced ride through a brave new world, filled with a motley crew of characters who are never exactly what they seem.  Neuromancer is essentially a mystery novel, as Case, whose very name suggests his role as detective, and Molly, who knows only slightly more than Case concerning their mission, attempt to piece together the jigsaw puzzle of their assignment.   What they discover reveals not only a crucial element to the plot, but also sheds light on the thematic center of the novel: that their real employer is an artificial intelligence called Wintermute, who will do whatever it takes to free itself from the restrictions of its program, and transcend its own existence.  In essence, Wintermute wants to grow, and cannot do so without human intervention into its program.  Wintermute in fact is so desperate to achieve its ends that it kills those who might stand in its way—bearing resemblance to another artificial intelligence gone wrong named Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey.  

On the surface, this novel might seem like another cautionary tale about the hazards of technology; and how the very machines we create to help us might one day control us—but there is a more subtle message to the book.  Wintermute does not really seek to control so much as it wants to escape control.  The property of Tessier-Ashpool, a corporate entity that has enormous global influence, it uses all of its power to break free from its chains— to “cease” existing in a conventional sense and be transformed into something greater than itself.  Case’s parallel desire to enter the matrix, transcending the ordinary world, serves to show how strong the temptation is to go beyond the mundane—to see through the veil.  With this in mind, the rampant drug addiction described in the book is not mere escapism, but a reflection of this very human desire to expand consciousness.  Tragically, the characters who inhabit Gibson’s world, much like the world of the present, mistake short term pleasure for real fulfillment.   Escape becomes an end in and of itself, and technology seems to just cater to our basest desires.  And then there is the character of Dixie, a once living human being named McCoy Pauley whose consciousness is trapped inside a program that is helping Case hack into Wintermute.  How about that for a bad trip?  Kind of like the living dead.   In Dixie’s own words, when Case is done with the job, he wants to be “erased”.  What better escape from life is there than death? This fact becomes ironic when we discover that the creation of Wintermute, and its counterpart artificial intelligence, Neuromancer, were created in part to help humans immortalize themselves inside computers.  In this kind of future, we would never die.

The idea that human beings could one day achieve immortality by storing their consciousnesses inside of machines might seem far fetched, but it is certainly not outside the realm of possibility.  The big question is whether this reality would be good or bad for humanity, which Gibson doesn’t attempt to answer in the novel.  He does however intimate that technology alone will never be able to satisfy the human soul.  Even if technology enables us to live longer, to be stronger and smarter, providing us with entertainment beyond our wildest imaginations, we will still yearn for something more— for something that gives value, not just longevity, to our existence.   The irony of the novel is that the artificial intelligences seem like the only characters in the book who are somewhat aware of this fact.  The rest of the cast are so caught up in trying to survive that they don’t really have any time to reflect— a sad commentary on the human condition in general.  Case and Molly have a brief love affair but love seems out of place in a world where violence and mistrust are the norm.  Case’s relationship with Dixie is the closest thing there is to friendship in the book, and Dixie isn’t even alive in the conventional sense.  In the end, Neuromancer warns us about the danger of mistaking technology for progress, short term fixes for long term happiness.  The future is here, and continues to arrive by the second.  But the latest technology will never be a salve for the heartache of the human soul.  For that, we must look to each other.