Ep 681 - Neuromancer, by William Gibson

Summary

Overdue Podcast Episode 681: Exploring William Gibson's Neuromancer

Released on December 16, 2024, "Overdue" is a Headgum podcast hosted by Andrew and Craig, dedicated to delving into books that listeners have been meaning to read. In Episode 681, titled "Neuromancer," the hosts embark on an in-depth exploration of William Gibson's seminal cyberpunk novel.

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Introduction to Neuromancer

The episode begins with Andrew introducing Neuromancer as William Gibson’s groundbreaking 1984 cyberpunk novel, a work that has profoundly influenced the genre yet remains unreleased on the screen despite numerous adaptation attempts. Craig notes the ongoing efforts to bring the story to life, mentioning an Apple TV+ series that was greenlit in early 2024, highlighting significant casting announcements. Andrew adds, "It seems like it will happen. It will cost a lot of money" (05:46).

William Gibson and the Birth of Cyberpunk

The discussion shifts to William Gibson’s background, painting him as a pivotal figure in cyberpunk. Craig outlines Gibson’s early life, noting his move from Virginia to Whiteville after his father’s sudden death and his subsequent immersion into counterculture. This background, according to Craig, influences his portrayal of rebellious individuals in a technologically oppressive society.

Andrew elaborates on Gibson’s academic journey, mentioning his time at the University of British Columbia and his initial foray into writing with short stories like Johnny Mnemonic (08:05). Craig humorously compares Gibson’s reluctance to write a book to his own hesitation, emphasizing the novel's critical acclaim—it uniquely won the Nebula, Philip K. Dick, and Hugo Awards.

Defining Cyberpunk

Craig and Andrew delve into the essence of cyberpunk, referencing definitions from various sources. Craig summarizes cyberpunk as a genre portraying technology as a tool for oppression rather than improvement, with protagonists who are hackers and cultural rebels battling corporate domination (06:25). Andrew agrees, adding that cyberpunk often intertwines with themes of class disparity and the malleability of identity in a tech-saturated world.

Andrew cites Henry Jenkins, who describes cyberpunk’s protagonists as "hackers, rockers, and other cultural rebels clinging to a cult of individualism in a culture characterized by corporate control and mass conformity" (22:48). Furthermore, they discuss how cyberpunk reflects a gritty, unromantic view of technology's role in society, contrasting sharply with more utopian sci-fi narratives.

Plot Overview and Character Analysis

Andrew provides a concise summary of Neuromancer, focusing on Case, a talented hacker who becomes entangled in a complex heist orchestrated by mysterious employers. Craig questions whether the characters, such as Molly Millions, get overshadowed by the rich world-building. Andrew counters that the characters enhance the narrative, offering unique perspectives and depth to the cyberpunk setting.

They explore key characters:

• Case: The protagonist, a hacker corrupted and seeking redemption.
• Molly Millions: A "razor girl" with cybernetic enhancements, known for her formidable combat skills.
• Wintermute: An AI striving to merge with its counterpart, Neuromancer, to achieve greater sentience.
• Peter Riviera: A sadistic hologram operative.
• Tank and Dozer: Space Rastafarians assisting the main characters.

Craig muses on Gibson's creativity, humorously suggesting, "Imagine Smash Brothers were like. But, like, what if the Scream guy and the Mona Lisa fought? Like, who would win?" (10:52), highlighting the novel's inventive character and setting designs.

Themes and Insights

The hosts dissect Neuromancer’s exploration of artificial intelligence, corporate power, and human identity. Andrew points out the novel’s portrayal of AI as entities with limited sentience, bound by corporate-imposed constraints: "Wintermute is the AI trying to merge with Neuromancer to become a superintelligence free from those shackles" (37:13).

Craig reflects on Gibson’s critique of rampant commercialism and corporate dominance, noting how large corporations in the novel wield immense power, overshadowing individual agency. This ties back to their earlier discussion on cyberpunk's essential themes of resistance against oppressive systems.

Andrew shares insights from Gibson’s interviews, emphasizing the author’s ambivalence towards technology: “He has never been interested in computers themselves. I don't watch them. I watch how people behave around them” (16:01). This perspective influences the novel’s focus on the societal impacts of technology rather than the technology itself.

Narrative Structure and World-Building

The conversation highlights Gibson’s sophisticated world-building, which intertwines technological advancements with cultural and social dynamics. Andrew describes the novel’s setting—a dystopian future with a mélange of real-world brands and invented elements—creating a rich, immersive environment: "The sky above the port was the color of television tuned to a dead channel" (41:07), a famous opening line reflecting the novel's atmospheric tone.

Craig and Andrew discuss the novel’s use of jargon and slang, likening it to A Clockwork Orange in its complexity. Andrew notes, "Most of the language in Neuromancer and Count Zero that people think is futuristic, is probably just 1969 Toronto dope dealers slang or biker talk" (15:17), highlighting Gibson’s use of authentic subcultural language to enhance realism.

Technical and Thematic Devices

Andrew praises Gibson's innovative concepts, such as the Sim Stim rig—a device allowing characters to share sensory experiences. He explains, "It's a full body twitch stream setup where when he is in the Matrix, he can flip a switch. And he now has access to whatever this rig is, has access to her senses so he can see what she sees" (47:01). This device not only serves as a technological marvel within the story but also as a narrative tool to deepen character interactions and perspectives.

They also discuss the novel's depiction of virtual reality and cyberspace, drawing parallels to The Matrix: "The spaces in the novel where it is more akin to what the movie calls the Matrix, where AIs interact with you, they can project a level of reality that you can mistake for the real world" (39:25). This comparison underscores the novel's visionary portrayal of digital landscapes and consciousness.

Cultural Impact and Legacy

Andrew reflects on Neuromancer’s enduring relevance, noting its influence on contemporary media and technology. He observes, "Because it's for far, far enough ahead of my current understanding of how the Internet and cyberspace and things like that work, it can function on its own and resonate thematically without being sanded down" (63:22). This sentiment highlights the novel’s ability to remain fresh and thought-provoking, even decades after its publication.

Craig adds that Neuromancer feels less derivative compared to other works that have built upon or riffed on its concepts. Andrew concurs, appreciating how Gibson’s early portrayal of AI and cybernetic enhancements hasn't been overrun by later technological advancements, allowing the novel to stand as a unique exploration of its themes.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

As the episode wraps up, Craig and Andrew compare Neuromancer to other seminal works like The Matrix, discussing the nuanced portrayal of AI and the protagonist’s internal struggles. Andrew acknowledges that while Wintermute serves as a catalyst for the plot, the AI's complex motives leave listeners with lingering questions about technology’s role and consciousness.

Craig summarizes the episode by emphasizing the novel’s multifaceted approach to cyberpunk, combining deep philosophical questions with thrilling narrative elements. Andrew concludes by expressing his anticipation to delve into the next book in their reading list, ensuring listeners that the exploration of Neuromancer provided a rich and engaging discussion.

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Notable Quotes:

• Andrew (05:46): "It seems like it will happen. It will cost a lot of money."

• Craig (08:05): "As a child, his father died abruptly on a business trip, and his mother moved him suddenly from North Norfolk, Virginia, back to a small town called Whiteville."

• Andrew (22:48): "Cyberpunk’s protagonists are hackers, rockers, and other cultural rebels clinging to a cult of individualism in a culture characterized by corporate control and mass conformity."

• Andrew (37:13): "Wintermute is the AI trying to merge with Neuromancer to become a superintelligence free from those shackles."

• Andrew (41:07): "The sky above the port was the color of television tuned to a dead channel."

• Andrew (47:01): "It's a full body twitch stream setup where when he is in the Matrix, he can flip a switch. And he now has access to whatever this rig is, has access to her senses so he can see what she sees."

• Andrew (63:22): "Because it's for far, far enough ahead of my current understanding of how the Internet and cyberspace and things like that work, it can function on its own and resonate thematically without being sanded down."

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For listeners interested in exploring Neuromancer further, visit overduepodcast.com for links to the discussed books and information on supporting the show through Patreon.

Transcript

[Craig]

This is a headgun podcast.

[Andrew]

Andrew. Did you know that there's a new thing?

[Craig]

A new thing? Tell me more about it.

[Andrew]

A specifically a new book box subscription. And it's focused on supporting independent authors and small businesses. That sounds like a new thing we're paying attention to.

[Craig]

Independent businesses.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

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[Andrew]

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[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

I'm a like a guy, but, like, my eyes are robot eyes and I have like, goggles and a cape and I like, ride on a motorcycle, but it is a future motorcycle, so it has like neon, like, RGB lighting and it floats. It hovers, I love, over the top of the street. And that's what I am.

[Andrew]

You created a cooler, like, character design than I did.

[Craig]

Well, you took the. You. You took the technology role, so I had to take the iconoclast. Like, what, delivery boy? Like, what are the people?

[Andrew]

Oh, that's from Snow Crash.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Huh? Those pizza delivery assassins or whatever. Yes.

[Craig]

I guess I was thinking, like, what if Fry from Futurama was, like, cool and competent? So what if he was a totally different character?

[Andrew]

Basically, there are episodes where he's cool and confident and it's like a whole thing.

[Craig]

Yeah, but that's not. But you got reset to this quo by the end of the. Yeah, true.

[Andrew]

That's true. Welcome to our book podcast, where, of course, each week one of us reads a book and tells the other person about it. And we are not generally AI or AI powered. That's not usually our thing.

[Craig]

But this, no, though I think all the time about how many hours of us talking there are on the Internet and how easily some stupid AI could make a bunch of fake podcasts of us.

[Andrew]

Here's what I would prefer that are that our fans make fun turn of the millennium era soundboards of us. That's what I want. I don't. I want like fun interactive clips, pages. I don't.

[Craig]

You want that. Do you want that to be things we've actually said or AI imitations of our voice?

[Andrew]

No, no, no. I want people to have had to clip it out of the show and like map it to a very low res jpeg, like arranged on a web page so that like, like Morning Zoo crew style. They can have me be like, hey, everybody. Hey everybody. Hey everybody.

[Craig]

And you don't, you don't want them to have an AI make a recording of you saying like, hi, I'm a pee pee diaper boy.

[Andrew]

No, I don't want that. I really don't.

[Craig]

Okay, nobody do that.

[Andrew]

If they are gonna do that, Andrew, they need to manually splice like syllables out of my words. Put in the work, please.

[Craig]

Yeah, anyway, I'm a pee pee purr boy.

[Andrew]

Had a baby, eats a pee.

[Craig]

Pee diaper boy had a baby, eats a boy. Okay, so what did you read?

[Andrew]

Neuromancer. I read Neuromancer by William Gibson, the seminal 1984 cyberpunk novel that has, to my knowledge never been successfully adapted to the screen, despite its incredible influence on all sorts of things.

[Craig]

People are trying. Craig, this is a thing you asked me to research and still have a lot on it. Great.

[Andrew]

We'll get there.

[Craig]

I think the short. So. So people have been trying to adapt it for many years, including an effort in the late 2000s and then another, more recent one by Deadpool director Tim Miller. You know, our favorite movie, Deadpool, our favorite scene. It is that that movie has not been mentioned in any on any news site even one time since it was originally announced that he was attached to direct in August of 2017. So I don't think it's probably going anywhere. But there is an Apple TV plus series in production. It was greenlit in early 2024 and they have gotten as far as making like a few major casting announcements. So that does seem to be rolling.

[Andrew]

That seems like it will happen. It will cost a lot of money.

[Craig]

Oh yeah, because it's Apple TV plus, it'll cost a lot of money.

[Andrew]

It'll probably be a hundred people will.

[Craig]

See it above average, like a solid B plus and nobody will watch it.

[Andrew]

And there will be Four years between seasons.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Is how it will go.

[Craig]

But, yeah, I do wonder. And we'll get into, like, the definition of cyberpunk and what it all means. I think.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

I think the official answer for why it hasn't been adapted is that the cyberpunk vibe, as defined by Gibson and this book became so associated with the genre that maybe a neuromancer adaptation reads kind of as generic cyberpunk.

[Andrew]

We've encountered books like this before where the, like, progenitor of the genre or the book that really, like, captured what people were already working on and really packaged it well. Which is sort of what this is. Yeah. Then when it becomes the urtext for a lot of other more visibly popular things or visibly commercially successful things. Not to say this book wasn't successful, but you get what I'm saying. Then. Yeah, it becomes the, like. I don't. Okay.

[Craig]

Yeah. This is a quote from a guy named Bruce Bethke, who literally invented the word for a 1983 short story of the same name. And Bethke says what happened to cyberpunk fiction was what happens to every successful new thing in any branch of pop culture. It went from being something unexpected, fresh, and original, to being a trendy fashion statement, to being the flavor of the month, to being a repeatable commercial formula, to being a hori trope.

[Andrew]

Is he?

[Craig]

Yeah. By the time people got around to wanting to adapt it, everyone was just like, oh, we can't do any more of the cyberpunk stuff. We're sick of it.

[Andrew]

Is he, though he may have been the one, or it might have been Gibson who made a comment about, like, seeing cyberpunk jeans in a store and, like, hating it.

[Craig]

I don't know. I never got to that.

[Andrew]

And we live in a world now where there's, like, a very successful video game, Cyberpunk 2077, based on a whole series of RPG material that's influenced by all this fiction. Like, it's been out most of my.

[Craig]

Most of my Google's researching for this all had to include the -2077 string so that I would not get results that were exclusively about the video game.

[Andrew]

Well, let's talk about Gibson.

[Craig]

Yes. William Gibson, born 1948, an American Canadian novelist. An essayist. He is considered a pioneer in the field of cyberpunk, the originator. Of course, any new genre has a bunch of different sources that it springs from, but this book's generally held to be a milestone in the formation of the genre and kind of solidified a lot of what the elements are.

[Andrew]

Yep.

[Craig]

As a child, his father died abruptly on a business trip, and his mother moved him suddenly from North Norfolk, Virginia, back to a small town called Whiteville. And Gibson has said that the feeling of abrupt exile. That's his quote that came from this move, has been a consistent theme in his work. He seems like a big, like, counterculture hippie type. Like, late 60s.

[Andrew]

Yes.

[Craig]

A hippie guy, which I'm sure also has something to do with writing fiction about, like, rebellious individuals who are trying to buck a system.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

So he gets married and, like, has a kid, and only after that does he decide, okay, I'm going to go to college. Like, a. Get an English degree because it's easier to get good grades and get grant money than it is to have a job.

[Andrew]

But that was after he had moved to Canada, in part to avoid the Vietnam War draft. But he said that that was like a.

[Craig]

So he. I believe he. He made a point of it at the time, like, thinking of himself as a draft dodger. But then later on in interviews, he was like, well, I never actually got drafted, so it's not. It's not a. It's kind of moot. But this is the kind of image he's trying to cultivate of himself. But, yeah, he goes to the University of British Columbia in the early 70s, and this exposes him to more authors and exposes him to a course on science fiction. That helped. After he takes this course, he writes Fragments of a Hologram Rose, which is his first short story from 1977. He publishes around half a dozen short stories in the late 70s and early 80s, including a few that laid the foundations for, like, the World. And some of the characters in Neuromancer, including Johnny mnemonic in 1981 and then burning chrome in 1982. And then. Yeah. So people noticed those stories, and somebody was like, hey, you want to write a book? And he was like, sure. And then he was like, oh, no, I have to write a book.

[Andrew]

Which.

[Craig]

Which would be exactly my, like, sequence of reactions if anybody ever asked me to write a book about anything. So he writes this book. Neuromancer comes out in 1984. It's the first part of the Sprawl trilogy.

[Andrew]

Sure.

[Craig]

Sometimes called the Neuromancer trilogy, along with the books Count Zero in 1986 and Mona Lisa Overdrive in 1988.

[Andrew]

Did you know that that is the name of. Sorry, make your joke.

[Craig]

No, just. No, sorry. No. I'm just gonna say it sounds like a fighting game where, like, different characters from works of art fight Each other.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Imagine Smash Brothers were like. But, like, what if the Scream guy and the Mona Lisa fought? Like, who would win?

[Andrew]

What if you could go to the Salvador Dali level?

[Craig]

Oh, wow. And like, melting clock.

[Andrew]

This is good.

[Craig]

This is good. Oh, the. The, you know, the painting with all the stairs and the different perspectives. You know, you know that one. What am I talking about?

[Andrew]

MC Escher.

[Craig]

Yeah, him.

[Andrew]

That would be a real fun level.

[Craig]

That would be a sick level.

[Andrew]

What if you could get an assist trophy? That's the dogs playing poker.

[Craig]

That would be very funny. This is our second best Smash Brothers clone themed idea after Public Domain Smash Brothers, which is another one that we.

[Andrew]

Mona Lisa. Overdrive is the name of the track from the Matrix Reloaded soundtrack for the highway sequence, which is the best part of that movie. Best part of all the Matrix movies, I think.

[Craig]

But that's a bold statement. I'm going to just let you.

[Andrew]

I will say. I will say the whole. The first movie is better than all the other movies. Not. Not arguing that. But in terms of, like, straight 10 minutes of action, the highway sequence is unparalleled, I think in terms of, like.

[Craig]

Movies, for me, it goes one, four. Four rules. Yeah, four is good.

[Andrew]

Yeah, four is good.

[Craig]

Pretty much. But, yeah, like, if you were going to take out individual action sequences, then, I mean, obviously number one is the one where he fights all the different agents and the Agent Smith just keeps cloning himself over and over again and he says, me, me, me.

[Andrew]

Well, that's number two.

[Craig]

Then another clone comes out and says, me too. No, I'm just saying.

[Andrew]

Oh, that's the top scene. Yes.

[Craig]

If you're breaking all the movies into the component parts, the action sequences, like, obviously, that's the best action scene.

[Andrew]

Yeah. And there's a bit in that fight where a bunch of Smiths hit each other and there's a bowling ball sound effect.

[Craig]

Anyway, Neuromance.

[Andrew]

Yeah, go ahead. Irrelevant, because this book very much informed the Matrix.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Yeah. So this is the only novel to win the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award and the Hugo Award. A real hat trick for dorks. But he. So he. This is his first book and he's terrified of it. And Blade Runner comes out in 1982, and he looks at the movie Blade Runner and he's like, well, I'm cooked. Because people are just gonna assume that my book, that I'm like a third done with, is imitating Blade Runner and I've got nothing left. So he says he rewrote the first two thirds of the book like 12 times. And then also that he added the. I'm curious to know what the last sentence is, because he says that he added the last sentence at like, the last possible second in order to close the door on a sequel, which obviously didn't work because then there were two other sequels after this.

[Andrew]

Do you want to know what it is right now?

[Craig]

Is it. I mean, if I don't need a bunch of context to understand it.

[Andrew]

Don't really. The last sentence is he never saw Molly again. And that.

[Craig]

Oh, okay.

[Andrew]

And that is.

[Craig]

And that's. This is one of the characters in the book.

[Andrew]

The main character case is the he and Molly is Molly Millions, who is in both Johnny Mnemonic and this book. I don't know if she reappears in other books. But yes, he apparently added that as a way to foreclose some sort of sequel, but then, of course did it anyway. I don't know how much these characters factor into close zero or count zero, rather. So I don't know. Sure, that's what I got.

[Craig]

But yeah, this book was a big hit culturally and commercially. He's not really continued exclusively in a cyberpunk vein since the Sprawl trilogy ended of all of his other stuff. And there's a ton, ton, ton of other books that he's written, including two other trilogies. The only one I really wanted to mention because of it's also kind of a pioneering work in a weird genre is 1990s the difference engine, which is considered to be like a foundational text in the steampunk genre. I've done a lot of research on, like, the definition of cyberpunk, which we can talk about. But my summary of steampunk just off the cuff is like, what if robots but powered by steam. And everyone dresses like it's either Victorian England or the Wild West. And that's. That's steampunk.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

The other thing. The other thing to know about this book before we dive into it is it's got a lot of slang in it. You did compare it to. To Clockwork Orange in terms of, like, how kind of disorienting all the slang can be. He Gibson says in an interview. I don't invent most of what seems like exotic or strange in the dialogue. That's just more collage. There are so many cultures and subcultures today that if you're willing to listen, you can pick up different phrases, inflections and metaphors everywhere. A lot of the language in Neuromancer and Count Zero that people think is futuristic, is probably just 1969 Toronto dope dealers slang or biker talk. This is an interview that he did in the 80s. Like, I think. Oh, was the most recent book that had come out.

[Andrew]

That's so funny.

[Craig]

He's just saying, yeah, like, I didn't invent most of this. Most of it I'm just like, relaying from a weird subculture you've probably not heard of.

[Andrew]

And every interview I read with him, even the ones that were like, you know, I read some when the giant mnemonic movie was made in the 90s, also with Keanu Reeves, where he's like, listen, man, I don't really know computers. Like the. Like, I think it's from 95 until last week, he had never logged onto a computer network to witness firsthand the cyberspace realms he so evocatively described. Like, Sony made him get on a webpage to interact with fans, and it was like, horrifying to him. And he says later in 2020 that cyberspace is nothing at all like the Internet that we live with, which consists mostly of utterly banal and silly stuff. And in 2007, he's like, yeah, I've never really used computers that much. I kind of have to now. But I've never been interested in computers themselves. I don't watch them. I watch how people behave around them, which is becoming more difficult to do because everything is around them now.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah. And kind of similarly, like, you know, has had a lot of thoughts about tech, but doesn't actually use a lot of tech himself. Like, I could not find. You asked me to look and see if he'd gone on the record anywhere about any of the, like, generative AI stuff that's been happening in the last couple of years and hasn't really. Wasn't really anything like he kind of. He's commented ever on like, the broad concept of like, general AI.

[Andrew]

Sure.

[Craig]

But not like the, you know, generative chat bot image generation.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

That is. That is called AI currently.

[Andrew]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, Well, I think I was. I'm looking at the clock. Andrew, let's take a quick break and then you can explain Cyberpunk to me and then I'll explain Neuromancer to you.

[Craig]

Okay. And that'll be the episode.

[Andrew]

I'll be in Scotland a four year. Yeah.

[Craig]

Okay. Craig, Being a punk is a lot. It's about like, not conforming. Right. Even. Even the punkiest punk would admit that you probably need a website.

[Andrew]

Well, how are else are you going to hack into the mainframe you got to start somewhere.

[Craig]

Yes. So this podcast episode everyone is brought to you by Squarespace. It's the website that helps you make websites so you can be a cyberpunk online in your own little space that you created and design with help from the people at Squarespace. They have Easy to use templates, 24, 7 customer support, all kinds of other stuff that helps you make a website without having to be a doctor of websites. Here's some things that we like about Squarespace Design intelligence. Using two decades of industry leading design expertise, you can unlock your strongest creative potential. Design intelligence empowers anyone to build a beautiful, more personalized website tailored to their unique needs and craft a bespoke digital identity to use across one's entire online presence. Whoa, you got SEO tools, Craig?

[Andrew]

Whoa.

[Craig]

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[Andrew]

I do love it.

[Craig]

Maybe you love it so much that you want to give some of it as a gift to somebody.

[Andrew]

Join me in cyberspace.

[Craig]

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[Andrew]

Yes.

[Craig]

Technology.

[Andrew]

You know, you're given a good one. Yeah.

[Craig]

And they have. I don't know. One of the things that I like is you can like tap on the frame and it adds a little heart to the picture. And then the people on the app can see that somebody in the real world tapped on the frame to make a little heart.

[Andrew]

That's nice.

[Craig]

So that's cute.

[Andrew]

I like that.

[Craig]

You can upload photos from your phone with just one click. And if there are multiple kids or grandkids in the family, you can give everyone access so they can add new photos easily. There's no memory cards or USBs required. There's a reason Wirecutter named it the 1 Best Digital photo frame. For a limited time, you can visit auraframes.com and get $45 off Aura's best selling Carver matte frames by using promo code overdue at checkout. That's auraframes.com promo code overdue. This exclusive Black Friday Cyber Monday deal is their best of the year, so don't miss out Terms and conditions app.

[Andrew]

All right, Andrew, I'm jacking in.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

I'm loading up my ice.

[Craig]

You said in.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Okay, good.

[Andrew]

And I got my deck out and the troads are on. And I got my razor girl protecting me while I'm in the matrix.

[Craig]

Do we have to add the explicit tag to this show? Like, what are these things that.

[Andrew]

These are all things that are that happen in the book Neuromancer as part of cyberspace, which is a term that Gibson, I guess is the. Maybe the first like, published fiction author to popularize it, though he credits other people with use with coming up with it first, I think. But I'm ready. I'm plugged in here. Yes. Before I explain the book Neuromancer to you, explain cyberpunk to me.

[Craig]

Yeah, Cyberpunk is interesting because I think, I feel like a lot of people have like a general idea of what it is, but there are some, like, specific definitions I found that helped, like, form my, like, sure thoughts of what.

[Andrew]

Your unified theory of cyberpunk.

[Craig]

Yes. Right. So formative works in the genre before it really gelled and had a name were blade runner in 1982, which we mentioned, which is itself an adaptation of Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? That came out in 1968. You read that for the show overdue, episode 611. I'm ready. I'm ready. Buddy. And then like Judge Dread comics from the late 70s are also about just like a cool robot man who like, blows stuff up. Grimdark Magazine. Here's a. Here I've got a few definitions. In its raw essence, cyberpunk is a view of the world, which means that technology will not make life better for humanity, but only give the oppressor a different means of brutalizing the underclasses. It's not necessarily a technophobic genre, far from it. But it's an unromantic view of the technology's power. This is an author called Henry Jenkins who is writing on an ancient MIT website about science fiction. He says cyberpunk's protagonists are hackers, rockers, and other cultural rebels clinging to a cult of individualism in a culture characterized by corporate control and. And mass conformity. And then one last definition from the video game and movie trailer recap site Polygon, quoting Mike Pondsmith, who created a tabletop RPG called Cyberpunk that is the source material for the game Cyberpunk 2077. This says street level life crushed under overwhelming political and social forces, but which uses a combination of found, slash, scavenge, repurposed technology to fight back and achieve personal freedom. That, that piece in Polygon is, is called what is Cyberpunk? By Alex Spencer. And it's actually a really solid read for like, a background on the genre and its arc and how it became like, cool and then not cool.

[Andrew]

Okay, that's good.

[Craig]

Yeah, go, go read that if you're. If you're curious about. About more. But yeah, that's. That's the basic definition is it's got. It's just the punk part is like rugged individualist fighting against a system. The cyber part is like, what if everything was glowy and like, screens were everywhere?

[Andrew]

Yeah. And there I was kind of impressed by my entire life has happened post the publication of this novel. I was born a few years after the publication of this novel. So, like, it was kind of neat to encounter almost all of the tropes that I might think are cyberpunk in one place and have it feel pretty coherent as a story and not just kind of a shaggy dog of stuff that would get used by other people to better means. You know, stuff like body modification ranging from kind of robotic cybernetic limbs to lots of talk of people just being prettier because of, you know, various face grafts to people with, you know, proto Google Glass eyes to Google Glass was.

[Craig]

A proto Google Glass.

[Andrew]

Yeah, fair enough. To stuff like, you know, there's one Guy in this book, Peter Rivera, who has like implants that allow him to project holograms out into the world, but also not just holograms. He can just like project them into your mind. He's just hacking your mind. He's mind freaking you. Yeah, there's people with like razor blade fingernails, just all sorts of stuff. There's clones, all sorts of stuff. And like all of it is run through. And this is, I think is like the cyberpunk thing for me. It's run through a lens of class and like haves and have nots. So there's. For every iteration of technology that you encounter, every type of technology you encounter, there's usually a comment on, well, this is the version someone could get in an alley and this is the version that someone got from a well, like a secret doctor that will never talk about it ever again because they got paid so much money.

[Craig]

Yeah. A big, like another big theme that I don't think any of those definitions that I read quite hit is like I always associate cyberpunk with one of the big like Blade Runner things, which is just like this rampant like universal commercialism and like the capture of many like institutions and elements of society by like hyper gigantic corporations that are so impossibly huge and evil that you can never hope to like push back against them in any meaningful way. But you try anyway. Yeah.

[Andrew]

So there's some of that in this book and here's a quote from the foreword or the introduction by Gibson that gets to some of that. It's a lengthy quote, but it'll cover a lot. Okay. I suspect that Neuromancer owes much of its shelf life to almost my almost perfect ignorance of the technology. I was extrapolating from where I made things up from whole cloth, the colors remain bright. Where I was unlucky enough to actually have some small bit of real knowledge. The reader finds things like the rattling keys of a mechanical printer or cases puzzlingly urgent demand for a modem. Unlike the absence of cell phones. Those are sins of commission. Another vast omission is my failure to have quietly collapsed the Soviet Union and swept the rubble off stage when nobody was looking. He did do that with the United States, he goes on to say, which quote which cannot be proven to exist in the world of Neuromancer. It's never mentioned as such, but it has gone sideways in a puff of what we today would call globalization to be replaced by some less dangerous combine of large corporations and city states having disappeared. The usa. I thought I'd better have The USSR in there for the sake of continuity. So there is, there are multiple references to all sorts of countries in this book. But there are also a lot of real world brand names which goes all the way from like, Toshiba and Sony and Honda to like. And then he drank some Carlsberg beer and I'm like, it really struck me when he drank a pint of Carlsberg until I thought about the. Yes. This is a world where, you know, corporations and businesses have way more power than they've ever had. Sort of.

[Craig]

Yeah. Well, some, some of the stuff that I really like about. About when they actually use real brand names in very old, like movies and TV and books and stuff is you really get a snapshot of.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

How big a specific company that may or may not still exist today was at the exact moment that the, the work was created.

[Andrew]

Yes. And he also says that he wrote Neurom, Neuromancer with, quote, absolutely no expectation that it would be in print 20 years later. Which is a, you know, part of that anxiety you mentioned of him, you know, writing the book in the first place.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And then it like a lot of things that have this kind of larger pop culture and societal impact. The. The original author wasn't always setting out to do that or be that.

[Craig]

Yeah. It's just interesting to me that he, like, really seems like he was panicking so much about this because I just feel like every sci fi guy had to be like, carefully timing his entire life so he could write a formative work of science fiction in the year 1984. Like, it just seems really important that you get that you get your thing out in like a very like, symbolically significant year for the genre of like dystopia and sci fi.

[Andrew]

Maybe, maybe that for Gibson, that's because this book was commissioned. So the guy who was writing the check was like, need this book in 1984.

[Craig]

Well, this book by December 30th. Yeah.

[Andrew]

So I think, Andrew, we can. Let's go through a character list here.

[Craig]

Because this character list, this book is.

[Andrew]

You know, it's a cyber heist. Like there. There's one. There's a couple of what they call runs where they. The. The whole last half of the book is the, like, main job that they're being that they're working on Ocean's Eleven style kind of thing. And then there's a smaller one early in the book that really shows off a lot of the tech and the type of stuff that you're going to encounter in the back half of the novel. And everything else in between is kind of moving pieces around on the board, introducing you to characters and giving you the flavor of the world. So I feel like you can quickly. I could quickly summarize the plot as like, they gotta hack some stuff to. Ultimately, they learn they're gonna help this AI merge with another AI. That is ultimately what the job they're being hired to do or being forced to do is. But throughout the novel, part of our main character's journey is even discovering what they're doing in the first place.

[Craig]

Okay. Yeah. So before you start listing characters, I am curious to know. Oh, because, I mean, people talk about cyberpunk as, like, a genre and, like, flavor all the time, but nobody's out here talking about, like, Molly Millions or whatever her name is. Like, do you find that the characters kind of get eaten up by the. The world building and the aesthetics of it, or is it.

[Andrew]

No, I think they're additive to it, actually. I think, like, they are. They. I'm watching. I'm not watching. I'm reading. I'm not watching this book. I'm reading it.

[Craig]

I mean, you do kind of watch it with your eyes.

[Andrew]

With my cyber eyes.

[Craig]

I mean, I.

[Andrew]

Glasses.

[Craig]

I do the same thing when I'm looking at a book as I do when I'm looking at the tv. I am just using my eyes to absorb information.

[Andrew]

You're right. That's true. It's the exact same thing.

[Craig]

You can watch a book.

[Andrew]

It counts. When you're counting your books. At the end of the year, Molly Millions has big trinity energy from, like, the Matrix. Like, she is. When I said Razor Girl earlier, that is a, like, a character class from this book. Basically, like, you are tough. You are, you know, cybernetically enhanced to beat people up and kill them.

[Craig]

And tight black leather pants, I'm sure.

[Andrew]

Leather jeans. Yes, she has the razor leather jeans. Yeah, that she has. She wears leather jeans at one point.

[Craig]

I associate jeans so strongly with denim that I had not considered that you could make them out of a means.

[Andrew]

This is the future. Who know, I guess she has the Google glass eyes. She has these, like, sunglass things that are basically molded to her face, and they work like some sort of, you know, robot vision. More on that in a little bit. But she's the one who's also from the Johnny Mnemonic story. And yeah, she is a real. A good quick. She has her own personality. And I like her character is. Is compelling and has an interesting backstory, but you can also see the decades of characters modeled after her. Late later, like the cool kung fu chick from the sci fi story is Molly Millions. Right. Okay. Case does not. The. Our main character, who is the like drug addict hacker guy, he is not quite an analog, you know, if you're just doing a matrix comparison. He doesn't match Neo pretty easily though. He is a like, super talented hacker, which is something, but he doesn't turn into a kung fu, like, fighter man himself. And then you know, stuff like the hologram guy who can put stuff in your brain. Like he is an evil sadist guy that they bring on to the heist crew for reasons unknown. And then he causes problems.

[Craig]

Who are the Tank and Dozer?

[Andrew]

There. There is a Tank and Dozer. Listen. Okay, let's just do it. The, the hologram guy is sort of your cipher in that you know, you shouldn't trust him, but you don't know why, and then he proves you right.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

There is a Tank and Dozer team, Malcolm and Erol. They are space Rastafarians who live in a space colony named Zion.

[Craig]

What?

[Andrew]

And, and fly a ship called the Marcus Garvey of all things.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And they speak in a patois that I was initially incredibly suspicious of and remain suspicious of, but that's fine.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And they kind of, they, they're not, you know, they're not Tank and Dozer analogs one to one, but they are the, like, we never go in the Matrix. We don't go into cyberspace. We're here to drive the ships and like help you on your, on your, you know, mission guys. Which is very Tank and Dozer.

[Craig]

Yes, sure.

[Andrew]

The, the thing that is interesting if you compare this to something like the Matrix specifically, is that AI and the whatever, whatever version of that in your, in your sci Fi story is just positioned differently in terms of like, its power in the world at this. In this story. So in this story, AI is, It exists. It's out there. There. There are beings that are artificial intelligence.

[Craig]

And again, when you, when you say AI in this, in this, you don't mean large language models badly summarizes something that a real person wrote and then takes their job. You mean a, like a computer that can think and reason and a program is sentient? Yes.

[Andrew]

Yeah. And it's, and it's got. The, the thing that this book is interested in is that at the dawn of the plot of this book that AIs have like, limited forms of sentience.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

They might want to have more, but there is something called like Turing Control or there are basically AI cops that will show up and bring the hammer down on any hackers that get involved with AI stuff to prevent any AI from actually becoming like Skynet or becoming too powerful. And most AIs that are known have some sort of shackles on them in. In some way to keep them from achieving true independence. And the plot of the book, as I, as I mentioned before, is that this AI named, who is revealed to be called Winter Mute, I think is his name. Okay, I'm making sure I don't get that wrong. Sure is. He wants to merge with his like sibling AI, who we later learn is called Neuromancer, and to become some sort of super intelligence that is free from those shackles and will, you know, probably change the world somehow. And they can do a lot of things that you might expect from other sci fi. There's a really cool scene where after Winter Mute has revealed itself to Case, our main character, like, calls him on the phone and like, you know, talks to him on a payphone and Case hangs up. And then as he walks down the street, every payphone that he walks by rings once, like as he's in line with it, like trying to get. It's just cool stuff like that.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

You know, the Turing cops show up to get Case at one point and Winter Mute just like hacks stuff to kill them for him. It's. It's cool stuff like that.

[Craig]

It's all very. All of it very Matrixy.

[Andrew]

Very matrixy. Except that they are like the AI are not in charge like that. That is the point I was trying to get to, I think, is that like they are at this point, this is like Animatrix territory where.

[Craig]

Right, sure.

[Andrew]

Explaining how we got there.

[Craig]

I just meant that the, like the set pieces all feel very like of. Of a piece with the Matrix stuff.

[Andrew]

Okay, so. Okay, so the setup for Case, our. Our anti hero, as it were, he is in Japan. And I do think there is something about cyberpunk having like having this kind of obsession with being in Japan.

[Craig]

Because at the time, if you're Talking about the 80s, like this is when they are ascended completely. Yeah. Dominant ascendant. Like they. They've got all these electronics coming out and supplanting like US based companies. They've got all the cars coming out and beating the US auto industry and like with this little tiny land mass and smallish population are like the number. Were they. They were like the number two economy in the world.

[Andrew]

I think so. Yeah. Yeah. And it's.

[Craig]

Yeah, it just felt very like not gonna say invasion because that has negative connotations when it comes to Japan and America that I don't really want to.

[Andrew]

Get, but it is.

[Craig]

Yeah, they are just everywhere and in this case, capable.

[Andrew]

And it is also then playing into these multinational corporations that are then on the rise. And that's kind of what we would get to. But yeah, a lot of cyberpunk has this, like, now we're in, you know, made up Japanese city or, you know, whatever.

[Craig]

Well, and also, don't, like, underestimate the. No matter how, like, cool and counterculture he is, never underestimate the ability of a white guy to, like, just be. Get really obsessed with elements of Japanese culture.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Nope, you're not wrong. You're not wrong. Mm. And so there's this. What is the opening sentence that is, like, apparently famous of this novel?

[Craig]

I bet if you looked at the beginning of the book, you would find it. Yeah, that's my. It's.

[Andrew]

It's probably at the beginning there. The sky above. The sky above the port was the color of television tuned to a dead channel. Think about it.

[Craig]

Okay, so like TV static, a thing that people don't know what it is anymore.

[Andrew]

Yeah. He has. There's interviews with Gibson where he's like, oh, people don't know what this means, but it is this kind of like, you know, dismal, grayed out, but electronic sky over Chiba city.

[Craig]

The sky says no Internet connectivity in it. Like, what are you. What.

[Andrew]

And case is there kind of wasting away because he was this hotshot hacker guy who wound up stealing from his bosses on a job and got his neural system injected with a Russian mycotoxin. That means he can no longer jack into cyberspace, which has really just like, messed up his whole.

[Craig]

I'm sure, crams his style a lot. Yeah. As a guy living in a cyberpunk society and.

[Andrew]

And like, he is particularly gifted. Like, he really needs to be in there or else why is life worth, you know, why would you even live kind of thing. So he's in a bit of a spiral where he is doing these, like, low level crime jobs, basically daring people to kill him for making mistakes. The rap on him in the city is that he's got a death wish and he's got like a. A lady named Linda Lee who he's not really in love with, but he is infatuated with and values. She is also a drug addict and steals from him and then gets killed. He is recruited by a guy named Armitage who is the boss of Molly, and she kind of brings him in on Armitage's behalf. And he's this kind of mysterious guy who doesn't really have a personality and plucks Case out of his bad situation after Case thinks all these people are trying to kill him and is like, hey, I had doctors fix your pancreas so you can't have any effects of the drugs you like anymore. And I fixed the mycotoxin thing, but you have, like, a week and a half until these toxic sacks in your blood go off, and then that. That the fix goes away.

[Craig]

Okay?

[Andrew]

So you need to work for me. And then if you do it, I'll. I'll make those toxic sacks go away.

[Craig]

Huh?

[Andrew]

Okay, so he's got, like, a ticking clock for, I guess I have to do this job that. That this guy makes wants me to do, and then maybe I can stay in cyberspace. Like I want to stay in cyberspace.

[Craig]

As you were describing the plot of this book to me, the book I'm thinking the most about is Ready Player One. So just, like, can you imagine a version of Neuromancer where, like, the exact same stuff happened, but everybody was talking about, like, Dragon Ball Z the whole time? Could we do that?

[Andrew]

We could do that. It's not the book I read, though.

[Craig]

Okay, that's fine. I'm just in my head canon. I am doing a Neuromancer. Ready, Player One.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Kind of combination, like, fanfic story where I mean, the exact same. Where it's the exact same. But then Chase turns to Molly, Millions is like. And is like, wow, this is like the Megazord from Mighty Morphin. Power Rangers.

[Andrew]

No, just, disturbingly, not too many pop culture references in the. In the book. Way more corporate brand references.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

So he's gonna work for this guy Armitage. He doesn't really know what the ultimate goal is. Nor does Molly, really. They know they're gonna recruit this, you know, Cipher esque guy, Peter Riviera, and Armitage, they do learn that Armitage used to be this guy, this colonel in the U.S. army. Now, the book, as Gibson said, never uses the words United States, but does make multiple references to the Cold War and to places in the United States. Case is from Bama, which is the Boston Atlanta Metropolitan Annex or something.

[Craig]

Okay, so Handmaid's Tale takes a similar approach to, like, how it kind of something has happened, discontinues America. Yeah.

[Andrew]

Armitage was this guy who. There was a Green Beret mission where they basically sent a bunch of guys to die in Operation Screaming Fist to test Russian defenses that they knew existed. And then they used Armitage, his original identity, to like, give a congressional testimony to that protected some congressmen. And he found out about the false testimony they made him give, and he killed somebody. And now he's on the run. And he has been kind of reconstructed by this AI Wintermute to. With a new identity. And over the course of the book, Armitage kind of falls apart into two different identities and ultimately does not survive the story. Okay. But he is kind of moving things along. He has Molly and Case go on this initial mission to. This I really liked. Okay. This is. This is a thing that I really liked. They have to hack into this facility in Atlanta called Sensenet and get out a construct of a hacker who has died.

[Craig]

Okay. This company, I'm assuming a construct is like a. Like a robot with his, like, brain.

[Andrew]

It's a hard drive.

[Craig]

Okay. Yes.

[Andrew]

So you can plug it into the Matrix and it is that person's personality and memories, and it can never. I don't think it can really accrue new memories in a real way.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

But it can. You know, it's this, like, famous hacker named Dixie Flatline who taught Case everything he knows. His nickname is Flatline because he tried to hack an AI three times. And you go brain dead when you, like, try to hack an AI. And he came back every time until he ultimately died. Okay, so that character is then with us through the rest of the book, especially in the second half when Case is, like, doing the big hacking job and he's using this, like, ghost of his old mentor to do the hacking with him. Which is pretty cool. They. That that whole sequence introduces you to something called SIM stimulus. Did you hear about SIM stim, Andrew?

[Craig]

No. It. It does sound like something that your. Your sims need a lot.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

So they don't get too sleepy.

[Andrew]

Molly is wearing a SIM stim rig. That then is.

[Craig]

Sounds uncomfortable.

[Andrew]

The other side of it is put into Cases hacking deck. It's basically like a full body twitch stream setup where when he is in the Matrix, he can flip a switch. And he now has access to whatever this rig is, has access to her senses so he can see what she sees. He has limited but, you know, pretty good information on, like, other senses of hers. Smell, taste, touch. Sure. And it's a clever way for the book to give you non Case perspectives because, like, when they're doing the whole big hacking job in the second half of the novel, he is constantly flipping from cyberspace to Molly's perspective, like through her cybernetic. Eyes and then also like jacking out to talk to the Tank and Dozer characters. And it's just a really. It is a cool imagination of what you might do with this technology. But also I found a pretty clever storytelling like device to give you access to this other character.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

And the, the, this, this Dixie Flatline job that they do gives you a chance to see all of that in action. So then when it's like part of the rest of the book, like you've been introduced to how it works and he can subvert it as there's a really cool subversion of it later in the book was really neat. I like made a whole highlight in my Kindle about it where the Dixie Flatline construct character who's in cyberspace needs to talk to Case while he's watching stuff through Molly's robot eyes. And he sends messages to Molly's robot eyes that appear like as text in the bottom of her vision so that Case can see them because Molly and Case can't talk to each other through the sim stim. It's just like really like neat kind of hula hoop jumping that, that Gibson gets into, which I was pretty impressed by. And then there's some other characters that we meet along the way. Most of them are from the early part of the novel that then you know the people that Case knows. And then when he is ever talking to the AI Wintermute, Winter Mute will appear to him as people he knows.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Because Winter Mute, one of his limitations is that he doesn't really have a personality and he cannot.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Manifest one.

[Craig]

Choose to, to appear as anybody who actually exists but doesn't have.

[Andrew]

Yes, he looks specifically, he has access to like your memories when he's like jacked into your brain. So he will pull out imagery that you have. And it's like a whole sequence where Cases, like, I don't think I could describe this room to you that you claim is from my memories. And he's like, no, that's just the limitations of your brain. Like you perceived all this information. And I'm a computer, so I can see it too. Sure. And so they get the construct, they get this sadistic holographic Peter Rivera guy and they go up into this kind of low Earth orbit archipelago where they meet the space Rastafarians and then they go to the rich people casino commune called the Free side. I like this because it's sort of like a halo. Like it's, it's a unique way to do space gravity. It's like a Big tube. And everybody is. Everybody like lives on the inside of the tube so that there's centrifugal gravity, which is kind of fun.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah, I think that. I think that's. That's a. That's a setup I've seen before, but maybe it's inspired by this.

[Andrew]

The Ender's game version of it is like. It's a wheel. Yeah, I'm not. I can't remember one that I've read that's like a big tube, but a big tube.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

It's, you know, sort of. You know, Halo is a. Is the first thing that came to mind.

[Craig]

But yeah, I mean, I think there. There's a. There's one in like. Remember that like Space Hotel on. Yes.

[Andrew]

Like the Space Hotel. Yeah, sort of like that.

[Craig]

There are definitely other movies where I feel like I've seen like a rotating tube or wheel used as a. But anyway, cool.

[Andrew]

This. This whole, like. Okay, this whole setup up here is from this company called Tessier Ashpool. That is the unique thing about them is that they are not like all of the. I guess one of the words in cyberpunk, the Zaibatsu or these like kind of larger corporations that. These like financial conglomerates and that's the kind of. It's a real thing, but it's also kind of the. The trope of the genre. The. The T. T.N.A. which just. It's just hyphenated T.A. a lot. Which. Okay, you read the book. It's kind of funny. They are more of like a family clan and operate a little more eccentrically and like kind of closed off from traditional a. A Stock of this company has not been traded in over a hundred years. Like that.

[Craig]

Okay, but I mean, I can't encounter any like company with two names in a sci fi work without immediately going to like Waylon Yutani.

[Andrew]

Yeah, sure.

[Craig]

Well, just the evil corporation from the alien.

[Andrew]

Yes, they.

[Craig]

I know. You know, I'm just.

[Andrew]

For like the TNA is also interested. They've got like a lot of cloning going on. Like their family clones itself and they cryogenically freeze themselves to live longer. And they are like just kind of interested and behaving in this like, what if we lived forever mode. What if we.

[Craig]

Honestly, freezing yourself seems less amoral than like whatever Peeled Peter Thiel does with like the blood of 20 years.

[Andrew]

Yeah, no, I agree, I agree.

[Craig]

Like there's some Silicon Valley freaks who are easily doing worse stuff than this in the real world.

[Andrew]

What if you just went in a fridge for a while, come out later it's fine. And I think there's a matriarch in that family who has some big ideas about AI and what they could do with it as a. As a business clan. Quote. She. She imagined us in a symbiotic relationship with the AIs, our corporate decisions made for us, our conscious decisions. I should say, say T tessier Ashpool would be immortal, a hive, each of us units of a larger entity. And the. There's an interesting thematic resonance between the, as you've mentioned, kind of countercultural, rugged individualism of our hacker characters with this company that wants to play by its own rules and like, not subs. On the one hand, someone envisioned a way in which this company would become more of a corporation and a computer program. And then the individuals within the family kind of rebelled against her to stop that. But the AIs did get created and Wintermute is one of them. So they have to hack into this family's whole final boss level to, like, get the code and case working with the construct. And the space. Rastafarians is hacking into the mainframe with this experimental Chinese supercomputer virus that he got in the mail from someone. And so the. The sequences in cyberspace where he is doing this hacking, like, look like mostly him, like floating around a giant digital city while this giant cloud attacks the. The city. It's deliberately not like anything that we would imagine. I think, given the way that the Internet has gone. It's a. It's kind of an interesting envisioning of how that would work, but it certainly does not. Like, it doesn't look like when the girl in Jurassic park hacks the computer system. It doesn't look like that. You know, it's not a Unix system. And it. There are spaces in the novel where it's more akin to what the movie calls the Matrix, where when the AIs interact with you, they are able to project a level of reality that you can mistake for the real world. And that is when it gets really. Some of it even feels a little like the movie Inception in terms of like, do you know it's real or not Type moments. Sure. But there's a bit where the neuromancer AI, as an attempt to save itself, basically tries to lure Case into staying in its virtual world rather than going back and continuing the hack. Okay. And that kind of stuff is. Is interesting, but they are, like, dealing with this. I don't know. This is the part of the book where it's like, it is set up this heist, and then it Also is like doing a lot of world building on this weird freakazoid rich family that I don't fully understand. And I kind of had. Kind of had to let that part wash over me a little bit with all the clones and the intra clone politics and why this guy pulled a cipher on them, which is a little under explained.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

But it's all of that is mostly to deliver Case and Molly kind of fighting for one another, even though they rarely ever fight in the same room. And yes, Winter Mute is bad, but we do wind up helping him achieve his goals. And then the book is like, and now he's out there and is that.

[Craig]

Like considered less bad than the alternative? Or like, no, it's going on before.

[Andrew]

Or no, it's just like. And then that happened.

[Craig]

And then are the characters just like, this is not my business.

[Andrew]

Yes, exactly. The, the like this key moment that happens at the end of the fourth chapter, the fourth like section before the coda section is Case is like doing the hack. And he is just somebody who has been motivated by this like unreal level of self loathing. Who he does, I think at this point.

[Craig]

Let me, let me be the judge of how realistic any given level of self loathing is, friend.

[Andrew]

He does, I think, love Molly in a way, but he is still motivated by like a desire to destroy himself. And as he's doing the hack and like, kind of has this barbaric yawp like life scream kind of thing. The clone girl, who is the remaining like head of the. Of the rich people family, gives up the code that they need to open it up to Winter Mute kind of in response to him having this like big moment where he's like. Earlier in that scene, he says something to her like, you need to give us the password. Because like, I don't know what will happen if we help him, but at least the world will change. And it's this like, I don't know, it's a vaguely accelerationist in a way I'm uncomfortable with. But is a. This guy. Nothing is working for this guy in existence.

[Craig]

And like, like something, whatever happens, it's got to be like, nothing can be worse than this.

[Andrew]

Nothing can be worse than this.

[Craig]

There's a level, a thing that people famously think right before things get much worse.

[Andrew]

Yep, yep. There's a level of alienation that his life is defined by that he has a purpose here. And, and he can realize something. It does not have the straightforward heroism of something like the Matrix where it's like, and now we are free. Ish from the, you know, mental bonds that. That held us down before. There's not an easy victory here. They get paid off by the AI after they've achieved its ends. They've, you know, killed the cipher character Riviera, and, like, he's a fun little villain. He's not the main villain by any means. He's just a guy that you like seeing get killed later. Yeah. And the stuff with the AI is really, like, I was not sure how I felt about any of them throughout the. I know that you're supposed to feel that Winter Mute is this, like, evil killer computer. And it is, but also it's the only thing moving the plot along. So I do kind of want to see what it was.

[Craig]

Okay, sure.

[Andrew]

And I'm Neuromancer. Is this like, hey, I have a personality. I'm an AI, and I don't want to be part of another AI, and I'm kind of fascinated by humans. And his whole deal is that he can kind of, like, clone and perpetuate little human consciousness constructs in his world, and he's, like, interested in them. And that's kind of neat. And it's kind of sad to know that maybe that guy got destroyed.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

But also, what was that I going to do with that ability? I have no idea. He's going to trap case in forever virtual world. I don't know.

[Craig]

Asking a lot of questions.

[Andrew]

That's what I'm left with. I'm left with a lot of questions. So. Yes, I don't know.

[Craig]

I don't know. Did you come away with a straw? Many times when you read a book that has become a genre since it was published or, like, become, like, emblematic of a genre since it was published, it still feels fresh in the book because the person who was writing it knew it was fresh or was just, like, looking at it with eyes that were fresh. Like, is that. I assume that's kind of how you encountered this.

[Andrew]

Yeah, it is. Because, like.

[Craig]

Because you definitely had, like, a million billion, like, subsequent works to relate it to. But.

[Andrew]

Yes, but it hasn't been sanded down in the way that all of those, like, I think so many of the. I don't mean derivative in a pejorative way, but works that have, you know, built upon this, I guess, or riffed on it. This is not a super long book, but it does have a lot in it. A lot of different types of encounters and characters exploring different aspects of what this world would be.

[Craig]

Yeah, maybe. I imagine other books feel like some elements of that are more streamlined or something.

[Andrew]

Yes. Yeah, yeah. Some of it is like. Some of it's the jargon. Like, I had to look up what ICE meant, which he is largely credited with, even though he says another guy, Tom Maddox, came up with it. Intrusion, countermeasures, electronics. But the book just throws around the term ICE as like, any sort of software defense mechanism.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And when you're in cyberspace, it can look like literal, like, ice or other sort of protective material. But it wasn't until like, a quarter of the way through the book that I fully understood what was happening there, you know? But that's kind of, like, neat. And it was fun to understand what that meant. The hacking eye stuff was really cool. The sim stim stuff felt really neat. Like, other stories have done versions of that, but it felt very specific to these characters. I think that gives it some strength as well. And because it was written 20 to 30 years prior to stuff like streaming, it doesn't feel like it's. I didn't have a level of cognitive dissonance where, like, you know, when you read a book that has a social media. And it's basically like the fart book, and it's like, it's. It's like they just. It's. They. They sanded off the serial numbers of Facebook and pretended that it's something different. Like, this feels far enough removed from my current understanding of how the Internet and cyberspace and things like that work that it can kind of function on its own and resonate thematically without there being the same. Oh, what's the. Oh, what's the trope for? Like, if it looks the uncanny valley. It did not have an uncanny valley feeling to me because it felt so, like, because he's not a computer guy. And because it's for far, far enough ahead of a lot of my experience with the Internet, it just felt like an interesting sci fi fantasy adventure that had things to say about, like, corporate power and what are we giving ourselves over to for our own interests? Sure. How do we form connection within this world where our identities are incredibly malleable? Who are. What are we actually connecting with? All sorts of cool stuff in this book that is just like, I don't know, they go to space, they're doing zero G stuff. I didn't expect zero G stuff.

[Craig]

Can you have an uncanny valley in a written work? Like, I thought uncanny valley was just about how stuff looked I.

[Andrew]

To me. Well, maybe not literally, Andrew. I'm just using it as a. Like, in the sense that, like, it's Not, I'm not reading it going, well, this isn't how the Internet works. It's not like so close that it's bugging me that it's okay.

[Craig]

Sure. Okay, sure.

[Andrew]

It's. It's sort of doing its own thing, but it is communicating some interesting ideas about like our relationship to technology.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And how technology does and does not like contribute to our sense of self.

[Craig]

Yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

I think there's probably good writing out there connecting a lot of the body modification and cyber tech stuff that people have in the first half of the book to the like clones who all have like the number in their name of the PER, like 38 John and 3 Jane or whatever. Like because they are XYZ clone of, you know, the person who came before them. So. Okay. Yeah, that's Neuromance.

[Craig]

Neuromancer. Yeah.

[Andrew]

I'm probably just gonna go watch the Matrix soon and then watch.

[Craig]

It's about. It's about time.

[Andrew]

I might just go watch the Highway Fight first because it's right there on YouTube for me.

[Craig]

Yeah, you should do that. I think you'll have fun.

[Andrew]

Go into Mona Lisa overdrive. Unlock my special thanks for letting me tell you about cyberspace, Andrew.

[Craig]

You're welcome. I. I'm just glad I can look at the Highway Fight without having to understand why any of who any of the people are or why they're there or anything like that. Like, as soon as you start thinking about that, that movie falls apart. But if you're just doing like a cool fight on a road, like, that's cool.

[Andrew]

The, the stuff in this book that is similar to what I like about the Matrix that doesn't necessarily hang together like a plot, but is interesting, is like computer programs having a sense of identity. And what would that actually mean if that were true and what would we do with it? Or not. Like there's some of that in here, which is kind of cool.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

And there's a lot of that in the Matrix, which is cool to think about even when the plot stinks in the third movie about that. So that's Neuromancer. Thanks for being my cyberpunk, Andrew. If you, the listener at home, want to tell me about your coolest hacker tech, send us a very secure email, overdupodmail.com. don't send us any of your, you know, what is it called? Quang 11 viruses. From Neuromancer to our. That's the name of the super virus. Don't send us Quang 11. Just send us a cool story over to potmo.com hit us up on social media. Verdupod, bluesky, Instagram. You know the drill. Cyberspace. Thanks to Rabia, Megan, Jamie, Richard, Becky, Maria, Desiree, Madeline, Kathy, Luke and a whole bunch of other hackers for reaching out this past week to us. Thanks to Nick Laurengis who composed our theme music. Andrew if folks want to know more about the show, where do they go?

[Craig]

Overdue podcast.com is our website. We have links to the books that we have read and the ones we are going to read. We've also got a patreon [e-mail] overduepod if you support the show financially, you get bonus episodes early and a bunch of other stuff. Yeah, check it out. Patreon.com overduepod the book that we are both reading next week. It's about to get sexy in here. Craig. This is called A Mafia Mistress for Christmas and it's by Brooke Harper. And I just can't wait to find out new things about myself and about each other.

[Andrew]

That is always how that goes for Christmas. You know, they give the gift of vulnerability and growth and learning that will. Odds are that one will have an explicit tag.

[Craig]

Probably.

[Andrew]

We joked about this one.

[Craig]

It's a lot tamer than it seems. We'll see. I don't know. All right. Anything else? We good?

[Andrew]

No, that's it.

[Craig]

All right. Cyberpunks and cyberpunk Etsy. Until we talk to you next week, please try to be happy. That was a headgum podcast.