If ever a book could be considered the father of Cyberpunk, Neuromancer would be it. Written in 1984 by William Gibson, Neuromancer tells the story of a punk hacker called Case who is down on his luck until a mysterious client gives him one last shot at redemption to complete a heist with a rag-tag team against an unknown wealthy entity.

This book has a couple different settings with a couple different main characters. The two main characters are Henry Dorsett Case and Molly Millions, an augmented mercenary. Case is a ‘console cowboy’ who used to be good at hacking the virtual reality dataspace called “the Matrix” until he was infected with a toxin that left him unable to access the Matrix ever again. That is, until a persuasive benefactor offers to cure him in return for one last job, which of course he is unable to turn down. The benefactor, someone name Armitage, hires him along with Molly and a couple others to complete a series of hacking and heist jobs.

This story takes place in a couple of different settings. The first is in Chiba City, Japan, in the underbelly of this dystopian world. The second is in Istanbul, Turkey. The third is in a cylindrical wealthy space habitat called Freeside.

If this all sounds pretty confusing, that’s because it is. The plot and the settings are highly confusing, as are all the character’s backstory. And Gibson makes sure to throw the reader into all of this without explaining any of it.

One of the things I loved about this book was in Gibson’s ability to describe these fantastical places, as well as his penchant for incredible gritty punk dialogue. He shines most in the Chiba City settings, so much so that it actually added to my already dying wish to visit Japan by adding Chiba City to the list. His description of the luxurious city of Freeside was also incredible, especially considering when the book was written.

The problem with Gibson’s writing, though, is that he really needed to take some more time to explain what in the blazes is going on.

It was so bad at times that I had to consult Wikipedia and different sources online to figure out what was happening in the story, where they were, what they were doing, and why it was important. In order for a book to be truly great, it should be able to stand on its own, and not confuse its reader such that they need external sources to explain what is happening.

I think I may be in the minority here in being underwhelmed by the book, even though by the end I did thoroughly enjoy it. It simply wasn’t what I was expecting. I wish the plot were a little less complicated, or explained a bit more, and I would have also liked to see a more driving plotline. Although there is a sense of urgency as Case is on a pressing timeline for finishing the job in time, the sense of urgency is diminished a bit by the confusion of the whole story.

Nonetheless, it was a great read, and the contributions the book made to the cyberpunk community can’t be stressed enough. I think if you take the book Neuromancer and combine it with the 1982 movie blade runner, you would have the seeds of all the main cyberpunk genre. While Phillip K Dick did have a lot of ideas and contributed to the genre, it didn’t exist before these two, and then when Snowcrash came along it was considered post-cyberpunk I believe. Gibson created the idea of the Matrix 15 years before the seminal 1999 movie came out, and I suspect it had a big influence on that movie. I am grateful to all that came after Neuromancer, but upon taking the book by itself at face value, there is a lot that could be improved.

Overall, I would give the book 7.5 out of 10.

P.S. The first line of the book is considered by some to be a work of art, so I figured I’d include it below so you get a small taste of Gibson’s incredible writing style.

“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

Well, it only took me about three months, but I finally finished Snowcrash (to be fair it’s long and I read slowly). Here’s my review of the novel.

Published in 1992 by Neal Stephenson, Snowcrash is considered by many to be among the perennial novels in the cyberpunk genre. It is a relatively modern favorite, written in the 90’s instead of many of its older predecessors written in the 60s and 80s, and thus has a more modern flair. The story revolves around two main characters. The first is called Hiro Protagonist (no, I’m not kidding), a hacker extraordinaire that is also a skilled katana sword-wielder. He was also one of the original coders of big parts of the online virtual world called the Metaverse. The second main character is called Y.T., and is a courier in the real world, a line of work that involves Y.T. delivering packages using an advanced form of skateboard that she “poons’ cars with (attaches a suction cup connected to a strong retractable cable) in order to weave around the traffic on the highways. The story takes place in the future, where all governments have collapsed and corporations have become the de facto countries of the world, leading their own organizations with their own areas, security, and borders with passport control.

The title “Snowcrash” refers to a new type of drug that can be transmitted via the blood, but also virtually, by looking at a specific screen online. This new scary drug is the main plot driver in the book, and the story revolves around learning more about Snowcrash, who is using it and why, how it came to be, and what it is meant to do in the future as a dangerous weapon.

In terms of Cyberpunk stories, I liked this one a little more than Neuromancer and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which were the first two cyberpunk novels I read before this one. The dialogue shines through in the story, with casual witty banter among the characters. The novel feels like a 20-something wrote it, or perhaps it was written for that age group, and with the deferential main character’s name the novel definitely feels a bit like a parody of other cyberpunk novels.

Still, though, the fact that a dangerous drug is on the streets was not compelling enough of a plot point for the story to keep me reading. In addition to the fact that the novel is quite long, I found myself putting down the book many times and picking it back up. AS you read you see that things happen, but the pace feels somewhat slow, especially with nothing really to build up to until the very end. Even then, I felt that things were just happening in the story, and I was following along.

Nonetheless, there were a lot of cool ideas that I picked up in this novel. The first is the idea of corporations ruling the world, instead of governments, as I feel the current reality is a mix of corporations and governments truly ruling. I also quite like the concept of loglo which was introduced in the book. Loglo is the lighting of logos on highways and the world in general.

Another favorite was perhaps one of the most overpowered pseudo-villain of all time, Raven. In addition to being highly skilled with spears and knives, his enemies are afraid of killing him for reasons that I can’t explain without spoiling the book.

One thing I didn’t like, however, is how much Stephenson likes to explain things to the reader. Early on Hiro explains aspects of his reality to the reader, as if he knows that you are reading. This was a stark contrast from reading Neuromancer, which read as if all the lingo was already common knowledge for the reader, which can be quite confusing. This wasn’t too bad, until I got to the artificial virtual character called the Librarian. This read like a teacher’s dream student scenario, with Hiro asking all the right questions and the Librarian happily supplying them, with me drearily reading the back and forth while never having wanted to know the questions or  answers. A good chapter and a half is dedicated to the Librarian explaining archaic mythology and ideas from old civilizations, something that I suspect Stephenson loves knowing about but that didn’t quite fit with a cyberpunk novel.

Despite its drawbacks, it’s a good read, just be prepared for a long novel and if you’re a fast reader it’ll be a quick read. I’d give it 8/10.