Reading response to Neuromancer

Neuromancer. How did it make me feel? I felt alternatively disgusted and thrilled. I felt interested, and bored. Some things seemed exotic and some things seemed far too normal. The book seemed a paradox of extremes at times.

Neuromancer’s main character is very complicated. At the start of the novel he is just like any other druggie with a life that’s falling apart. I didn’t want anything to do with him, and barely felt any sympathy, as I saw how ratty and paranoid he was. When he rented a weapon by the hour to make him feel safer, that is when I knew that he has hit rock bottom. Someone paranoid enough to rent a gun like that is not right in the head. What could he have done with it? Had anyone actually wanted to kill him, hey would have just done it. And Had Case actually killed one or more of the hired guns he thought were after him, he would have been in worse shape, because more would have been sent, this time with orders to make his death very painful. Case wasn’t only a druggie though. At points in the book, he was an impressive cyberspace cowboy. He did computer/things that I can’t even imagine. He hacked things like they were nothing, though really complicated hacking just gave him pause enough to make him seem more impressive, because he had to fight over an obstacle. His last cyberspace battle, with Straylight’s ice and protection, was no harder than anything else he had done in the novel, and almost easier. The only difference was that it took a fair amount of time, which made us able to emotionally connect with his conquest. But in the end, I felt disgusted again. Case learned almost nothing from his experiences, and an argument can be made that he learned absolutely nothing. He replaced his liver and pancreas so that he could become a druggie again, got a cheap woman, and went back to doing cheap illegal labor. He was not someone I look up to, and I was sad that his end was so ignominious.

Molly had her contradictions too. She was thrilling, a street samurai with her nails, her heightened reflexes and her exotic glasses. She seemed impressive from the first time that Case saw her and ran. She became Case’s bodyguard and protector, and saved him from death a few times. All these things combined to make me more and more interested in her. She seemed so cool, so powerful, and then Case discovered her in a Freeside whorehouse. I was so disappointed. This amazing character that seemed so impressive had such inauspicious beginnings. The flaw (though you can’t really call it a flaw) made her more human, and less of a street samurai. She came back down to earth for me, and at times I was bored with her. She was nothing more than a common whore. And now, even as a street samurai, I saw her in a different light. She was still selling her body for money; just now she was doing it slightly differently. That put a different spin on her employment, and I was disappointed.

Neuromancer was an awesome look at a dystopian future. And while I have a second, I’d like to say something about Blade Runner. (Pardon the non sequiter) That movie made absolutely no sense. If I had not gotten so much more background from reading the book, I don’t know if I would have gotten it. What the hell was up with the naked robot with a dove in the end!? Neuromancer had many emotions all rolled up into one, which is part of the reason it was such an interesting book. But it was also part of the reason that I disliked some of the characters more than I thought I would.