Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

OntLawyer t1_iya0k72 wrote

Reply to comment by SpecificAstronaut69 in Neuromancer isn’t as hard as I’ve heard… by mikeyboi2567

I agree with this, but it also understates Gibson's writing ability. There is a lot of science and tech in Neuromancer that it seems like he just mentions offhand, as part of the world-building, but a lot of those casual mentions involved a decent amount of underlying research. My favorite example is the casual reference to "annealing" algorithms in Neuromancer. Everyone has heard of simulated annealing these days, but the actual math paper that introduced the concept was only published in Science in 1983. Given the publication date of Neuromancer, he would have had to have picked up that reference directly from that Science article. Apparently he also used to wander around the UBC campus and sit in random science talks, just as a kind of sponge activity for background material. It shows through in the book, even though it never, ever stands out or calls attention to itself.

3

SpecificAstronaut69 t1_iyak7vg wrote

If they think you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical, go crude. I'm a very technical boy.

- Johnny Mnemonic

Very good point - I did not know about where he'd have gotten the annealing algorithm from! That would've been near the end of him finishing the manuscript, surely, given how publishing works.

But again, that shows his restraint - and his respect for his audience (eg, he knows his audience doesn't need everything spelled out for them and they don't need to be talked down to).

Those "casual references" were another criticism - that Gibson was a STEM poseur, and thus unworthy to be even thinking of this stuff, let alone writing about it. He's just some normie appropriating and invading their subculture.

And that was the part of the split /u/supercalifragilism mentions: Gibson put humanity, not science, first in his science fiction. A lot of people don't think Gibson was bending the knee enough.

2