We spent a large part of our in-class discussion on Lilith’s talking about the morality of the Oankali’s actions toward humanity. They were described as immoral, amoral, devious. What I think Lilith’s Brood shows us is that what we, as humans, think of as absolute morals are actually incredibly slippery and ephemeral things.

Although Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is often described as a work of feminist literature there are no heroic, or even admirable female characters. Instead, the cast of female characters serves as an inventory of all the ways a woman can fail in the context of oppression.

So, did anyone else notice the little bits of synesthesia that popped up throughout neuromancer? There's an "aching taste of blue" on page 257, Molly's pain as "neon worms in her thigh, the touch of burlap, smell of frying krill" on 217. I'm pretty sure there was something else as well, but now I can't find it. If its significant in any way, I'm sure it has to do with the whole mind-body problem, but mostly its just a random observation.
Did anyone pick up on any others?

We talked a fair bit in class about the troubled mind-body relationship present in Neuromancer. Many of the characters make us question our assumptions of what it means to be alive, from the unembodied mind of Wintermute to the mindless body of Armitage, with multiple characters straddling the line between life and death at any given point. Case is the one character who we are really allowed to connect with on any psychological level (though even that hold is tenuous, given the somewhat schizophrenic style of postmodern/cyberpunk writing).

On a certain level, this novel seems to extol the virtue of the military. All of the characters who we are supposed to respect do at some point come to the conclusion that all real men are military men, that it makes sense that one can only be a citizen after completing a term of service. Dubois believes this from the beginning. He drills the idea of the importance of civic duty, and of violence into his students during History and Moral Philosophy: “breeds that forget this basic truth [that violence settles most anything] have always paid for it with their lives and freedom” (27).