Plot-wise, Neuromancer is probably one of the most convoluted books that I have ever read. Since it was difficult to stay with the story, I found myself observing how the characters related to the rich futuristic environment. What stood out to me the most was their relationship to the natural, represented both by human flesh and descriptions of the earth.

In the world of Neuromancer, there is an overall attitude of cynicism and contempt towards the natural. Human flesh is referred to as "meat" and the characters view their bodies as inferior to their minds, which can interact with cyberspace and the matrix. Case often denotes certain ideas or activities as inferior by saying "that's a meat thing" and discorporation is glorified. For example, when he learns that he is going to ride behind Molly's eyes via a simulation, Case says to himself "cowboys didn't get into simstim, he thought, because that was basically just a meat toy"(pg 55).

Two things keep the body from becoming completely useless: sex and death. The acknowledged beauty of human flesh is closely associated with women, Molly in particular. There are several passages that show Case enjoying Molly's body, focusing on different parts; he describes it as "her body was spare, neat, the muscles like a dancer's"(pg 44). However, one could say that Molly has made even the beauty of her body artificial and un-genuine by using it as a tool, part of her job as a prostitute. Death of the flesh, marked by the sight of blood, continues to be feared in the world of Neuromancer; so it is probably unlikely that anyone would actually want to lose their body, inferior as it may be to the machines.

It also seems that nature or the natural (here meaning things like trees, oceans, animals, water, plants) cannot exist apart from the artificial realm of computers and technology. All of nature has been tampered with, modified, or manipulated by some artificial force; essentially, it's all fake. There are several passages where Case describes the color or sense impression that something natural gives him by relating it back to technology. For example, the very first sentence of the book is "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel"(pg 1). Another good example of this is when trees are used to show Case's unfamiliarity with nature: "The trees were small, gnarled, impossibly old, the result of genetic engineering and chemical manipulation. Case would have been hard-pressed to distinguish a pine from an oak, but a street boy's sense of style told him that these were too cute, too entirely and definitively treelike"(pg 128).

In some ways these relationships to nature and the natural seem to be a direct comment on how we relate to nature in the real world today, or at least where we're headed. Things like oil drilling, bulldozing forests for economic gain, the presence of or denial of global warming, and the abundance of cosmetic plastic surgery suggest that our world is moving towards artificiality and the mass urbanization of the "Sprawl". People these days spend more time with their cell phones, IPods, video games, and other technology than they do out in nature or interacting face-to-face with one another, so this book could be seen as a potential look at where we might end up.