Trailer – Neuromancer (TV Series)

I was first handed a copy of Neuromancer by my dad, courtesy of his coworker who heard that I was into science fiction. I devoured it and eagerly chased down more by William Gibson, coming across other authors set in similar gritty high tech dystopic screams against corporate feudalism and submission to the invasive chrome of enhancements.

It’s been a lot of years since I last read this sci fi classic, one commonly hailed as a cyberpunk original. Certainly Neuromancer was in that first wave depending on your definitions, and if nothing else framed the future seen through the haze of of mirror shades and neon kanji that not found in precursors like Stand on Zanzibar‘s fragmented future and hip-crime rebellion. These books laid out a blueprint for a future that inspired the innovations of the 21st century, most notably the many computer scientists saying that the imagery of Neuromancer’s cyberspace influenced how they engineered the internet as we know it today. A lot of other things didn’t come to pass quite the same way, but much of it rhymes with current social and technological trends with corporate oligarchs, rogue AIs, and the ever-present intrusion of electronics into personal lives.

With Neuromancer serving as an Ur text of the cyberpunk genre, there’s a wide amount of media – movies, video games, TRPGs, other novels – that have some debt to what William Gibson established in his Sprawl. Will it be like watching Wild One or Rebel Without a Cause and feeling how tired the tropes are even though these are the wellspring from which they poured? Consider how much Dune echoes in science fiction – where would Star Wars and Warhammer 40k be without Dune, and how adaptations of Dune have had to struggle to be distinct from those that drew inspiration from it. At least it’s got a mini series to play out in rather than shoving all that world building and character arcs and plot into 2 hours 40 minutes (or worse, split across two to three films to tell the tale).

Keanu Reeves has gone full circle, from a movie adaptation of a Gibson short story to voice acting in a videogame based on a TTRPG.

My first impressions, I squeed at the flash of rippers unsheathed by what I have to hope is Molly Millions if not some other heavy hitting cyber-ronin. Then I sighed at just how bright and sunny some of the scenes are for Neuromancer, owing much to noir and the heist genre, soaked in acid rain and corporate pollution with the only light from the hypnotic flashes of monitors and a kaleidoscope of ads burning into the night, reflected off chrome and mirror shades.

How flashy cyberspace will be remains to be seen (so far might be a slightly glitchy holodeck of an interface, sparing us Lawnmower Man or even the uncanny Ready Player One rendering). I’m going to hold the adaptation of Altered Carbon (namely season 1) up as a baseline for my expectations.

Guess we’ll find out together in 2027 as a sci fi generation wait, muttering a mantra against it sucking …