Review of Neuromancer by Rachel Alexander

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel" (1). This is the opening line of William Gibson’s Neuromancer, a groundbreaking novel that provides a rare glance into an eerie future world. The image of the television screen sets the scene for the reader, and the action takes us rushing forward, with an aesthetic reminiscent of a video game. Considered the forerunner of the cyberpunk literary genre, Gibson writes of advanced technology’s vast effect on everyone and everything, from individuals to societal infrastructure.

The story opens on our main character, Case, deteriorating in a seedy bar in Chiba City, part of the Sprawl, a massive metropolis spanning from Boston to Atlanta. Case was previously a cowboy, a masterful manipulator of cyberspace, stealing corporate secrets for his employers, until he stole from them and lost his job. To punish him, they altered his nervous system, which ensured that Case could never again enter cyberspace.

The ruin of his life’s purpose leads Case to retreat to Night City, an off the grid stretch of neon and crime, where locals and tourists seek pleasures from bars, arcades, prostitutes, and drugs. Case’s new existence is to hustle these visitors and residents as a middleman for Night City’s black market. Currently he is running from a pimp who may want to kill him, being tailed by an unidentified assailant, and questioning his girlfriend Linda Lee’s motives. As this new life is wearing thin, Case is approached by a Razorgirl named Molly, and eventually led to her boss, Armitage. He is a military type who is completely lacking of any true personality. Armitage offers to correct Case’s neural damage if he will help him to complete a mysterious mission. And here the game begins.

Case accepts Armitage’s mission, but not because of some moral directive. In fact he does not even know what the job will entail until well after he has agreed to do it. He does not take the job because of some personal interest in Molly or Armitage. Though he is intimate with Molly, this act is devoid of any real attachment and is essentially meaningless. Case joins the group because to him, being able to jack into cyberspace is immeasurably important.

Personal relationships are not revered in Gibson’s vision of a future world. Instead, people focus on material gain, technological interaction, and altered states of mood through continuous drug use. The residents of the Sprawl are described almost as cattle, as in the following passage: "Summer in the Sprawl, the mall crowds swaying like windblown grass, a field of flesh shot through with sudden eddies of need and gratification" (46). Case is no exception to this mentality, and it is reinforced in Gibson’s constant references to environmental chaos and artificiality: blinking neon lights, loud pulsing music, drifts of packing foam and everything made of brightly colored plastics.

In the world of Neuromancer, drug use has become an integral part of everyday life. Excluding Molly, who experiences her kicks through violent combat, almost every other character in the novel is dependent on at least one drug. Describing Case’s history with Linda Lee, Gibson wrote, "He’d watched her personality fragment, calving like an iceberg, splinters drifting away, and finally he’d seen the raw need, the hungry armature of addiction" (9).Drugs in their world serve to further distance them from the need for personal interaction, while at the same time providing temporary relief from their constant state of numbness, by allowing them to feel something, synthetic as it may be.

So much of this world is artificial in fact, that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish reality from fantasy. This idea is explored through the use of technology for genetic engineering and constant self-improvement surgeries. As Gibson describes Case’s impressions of Molly, he writes, "He realized that the glasses were surgically inset, sealing her sockets. The silver lenses seemed to grow from smooth pale skin above her cheekbones…" (25). This type of physical enhancement is commonplace among Sprawl residents, so that it is rare to encounter people who have not been beautified or made more efficient through science and hardware. An intriguing character and eventual recruit of Armitage’s group is Peter Riviera, a drug addict who can create lifelike holographic images, many of which are sadistic and disturbing, further blurring the line between reality and apparition.

Sexuality is a recurring theme in Neuromancer, and it again touches on the concept of human detachment. Julius Deane, an ancient and questionable importer/exporter friend of Case’s, who’s only purpose in continuing his life is to wear fashionable clothes from the previous century, is described as sexless, likely due to his artificial state of prolonged life. We learn of prostitutes who undergo surgery so that they can perform their duties with no sensation or recollection of what has occurred. "The girl sat up in bed and said something in German. Her eyes were soft and unblinking. Automatic pilot. A neural cutout" (141). Sex in Neuromancer, like every other form of human connection, has evolved and become twisted into an individualistic act of immediate sensory fulfillment.

All of Neuromancer’s rapidly advancing technology functions in an environment of economic zaibatsus, or a few enormously powerful corporate conglomerates. Case’s mission involves a subversive coup against one of these groups known as Tessier-Ashpool, S.A., which is a literal family, as described here: "You’re looking at a very quiet, very eccentric first-generation high-orbit family, run like a corporation" (73). In order to ensure the family’s longevity and position of power, members are cloned and spend long spans of time in cryogenic states, frozen and essentially dead, until they are needed to handle business matters. One such family member is Lady 3Jane, who is essentially guarding the family’s compound, known as the Villa Straylight, and is another key character in Neuromancer.

The Tessier-Ashpool family has managed to maintain economic power largely due to the influence of an artificial intelligence, which their matriarch created long ago. Case is contacted early on by one of these entities, Wintermute, who is an independent portion of a larger system and is actually orchestrating their entire mission. Wintermute’s continuing presence throughout Neuromancer serves to reinforce the notion of reality versus fantasy, and the sanctity, or lack thereof, of the human soul. Why Wintermute would cast off his loyalties to the Tessier-Ashpool family, and what the artificial intelligence hopes to achieve, is open to interpretation. Determining Wintermute’s motivations is one of the most interesting and challenging aspects of Neuromancer for the reader.

Though Neuromancer explores a future bereft of genuine personal interactions, there are glimpses of hope for this obsolete form of expression. Ironically, one of the most touching relationships in the book is between Case and a shadow of a former friend and mentor of his, McCoy Pauley. He is no longer alive, but is instead a construct created from Pauley’s thoughts and memories, known as Dixie Flatline. He communicates with Case and advises him in his mission through cyberspace. Though Case has a kinship with ‘Dix’ and depends heavily upon his assistance, he can never escape the fact that he is not actually human.

             "Wait a sec." Case said. "Are you sentient, or not?"

Neuromancer alludes to many philosophical questions, and causes the reader to ponder the nature of man and science. Though it was written in 1984, Gibson’s vision has proven to be prophetic, in that some of the technological devices and terms he described now exist in our modern world. Readers may feel very much removed from William Gibson’s image of the future, but the book compels us to seek out parallels between Case’s existence and our own.