tuned to a dead channel

Despite the large and ever-growing number of unread books in my collection, whenever I'm at a loss about what to read next I invariably gravitate to something chosen from a short list of well-loved favorites. The criteria for being part of that elect group of books isn't so much a matter of importance or literary merit, but rather stems from my personal and empirical experience as a reader. To put it simply, they are books I never tire of re-reading.

The list includes The Great Gatsby, The Loved One, Kidnapped, Raymond Chandler's "Phillip Marlowe" novels, Len Deighton's "Spy With No Name" books, Roddy Doyle's Barrytown Trilogy -- all read and re-read many times over with no signs of diminishing returns on their entertainment value. Also high up on the list is a novel I recently had the pleasure of revisiting and plan on discussing a little in today's post, William Gibson's Neuromancer.

The 1984 novel codified, if not created, the template for the "cyberpunk" genre, a hyper-stylized blending of noir and hard-sci elements with an emphasis on technology -- particularly cybernetics, computer/information science, and genetic engineering -- fraying the boundaries between man and machine. Many of the concepts and constructs presented in Neuromancer have since been appropriated into the popcultural fabric (and in the case of the virtual realm of the cyberspace, into reality), imitated and replicated to point of cliche. The novel's astonishing degree of influence makes it difficult to discuss properly in the space of a couple-hundred word blog post (or even a doctoral thesis), so in keeping with the micro-subjective spirit of Armagideon Time, I'm just going to indulge in some personal musings on the subject.

Like all works of sci-fi, Neuromancer is a product of its time, in this instance, the early 1980's, when the dying gasps of consensus-driven progress where drowned out by rushing sound of upwardly concentrating wealth and power and a the bleep-bloop din of revolutions in personal electronics and computing. It was a time when style was knowingly but unironically embraced over substance, which is reflected in the techno-lyricism of Gibson's prose, in passages such as this one...

Night City was like a deranged experiment in social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast forward button. Stop hustling and you sank without a trace, but move too quickly and you'd break the fragile surface tension of the black market...

...which make me despair over my own limitations as a writer. Chrome and surgically-fitted mirrorshades, the radiant geometric purity of cyberspace and the entropic grime of the east coast Sprawl -- the world of Neuromancer took its stylistic cues from both edges of the zeitgeist's blade.

That's not to say that the novel is a disposable exercise in superficiality. It is, at its core, an entertaining sci-fi take on the classic heist story, with Case the "Console Cowboy" and razorgirl Molly drawn into a fractally complicated job with tremendous ramifications. Gibson is adept at integrating the stylistic and technical flourishes into the novel as a whole.

This, and the moral ambiguity of the protagonists allows the author to indirectly offer socio-cultural insights without tipping over into the realm of techno-parable. Entertain, then edify. A common mistake made by other writers with aspirations of following in Gibson's thematic footsteps is to simply crib the superficial trappings of the cyperpunk genre, and use them as window-dressing for formulaic sci-fi material, swapping out the bubble helmets and bug-eyed aliens for cybernetic enhancements and monolithic corporations.

I read Neuromancer (and occasionally its two sequels) once every couple of years or so, and each time I do the novel's vision of the future seems that much more quaint, a retro-futurist cul-de-sac of "could have, but didn't." (Something Gibson himself has acknowledged in the intro to Virtual Light, a more up-to-date -- yet also dated -- novelistic spin on cyberpunk themes.) Oddly enough, the novel's increasingly dated vision of the shape of things to come is one of the major reasons I've become so fond of the book -- nostalgia for an anticipated future that never came to pass.

"Too young to remember the war, aren't you, Case?" Armitage ran a large hand through close cropped brown hair. A heavy gold bracelet flashed on his wrist. "Leningrad, Kiev, Siberia. We invented you in Siberia, Case."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Screaming Fist, Case. You've heard the name."

See, I thought "Screamin' Fist" was the a-side of The Viletones' 1977 debut 7"...

The Viletones - Screamin' Fist - Somewhere around here I have a 1978 issue of Creem which covers the Sex Pistols' American tour and subsequent break-up. One of the short news blurbs in the front of the magazine mentions The Viletones, specifically the announcement by the Canadian punk band's lead singer, Nazi Dog, that he planned to kill himself on stage during an upcoming show. I wonder how that worked out for him?

Rational Youth - City of Night (from Cold War Night Life, 1982) - The "punk" aspect of cyberpunk wasn't a musical reference so much as shorthand for the genre's street-level grittiness and its "underground" sensibility, which dovetailed into the popular perception of the 80's punk subculture.

My synesthetic soundtrack when reading cyperpunk fiction runs toward the New Romantic end of the spectrum, though I admit that "cybersynthpop" lacks a certain ring to it.