It is very well written, though.
Is it primarily about the ideas and technology then? If it’s about characters, then the regurgitation of tropes feeling shouldn’t matter too much. But if it’s only about presenting the reader with ideas, then I guess it won’t have aged well.
I think the Matrix (original only) is a good comparison. The action and the characters hold up okay and someone viewing it today for the first time could appreciate that. But it also had some really interesting and intriguing idea about VR and computers (re)defining reality in it that definitely added to the impact for first time viewers. It would be impossibly for a new viewer seeing the Matrix now might appreciate the action and characters, but those concepts are humdrum and un-exciting and everywhere now so they can’t recapture the magic of experiencing Matrix upon release.
Characters and action hold up well. Some plot twists a modern reader might be able to see coming now that they have been done to death.
But the prose is beautiful. The rhythm, the ellipsis, the jumping around. It really works imho, and it’s still worthwhile.
Saying it hasn’t hold up is like saying The Big Sleep hasn’t hold up because everybody knows detective stories.
All of this. It is really a beautifully written book. And no, it isn’t really about the tech- Gibson was actually pretty uninterested in that (hell, I understand he wrote the thing on a manual typewriter). The setting, characters, and especially prose are aces, and he never attained that level again. It absolutely holds up.
Count Zero is actually a pretty great version of what a world-spanning Cyberpunk RPG would be like. Nothing great, but it is fun. And the stories in Burning Chrome are still solid, especially the title story.
Snow Crash is terrible and its focus on the tech means it really hasn’t aged well. Altered Carbon is still solid, but sometimes the copius sex and violence can get in the way.
On that note (of good cyberpunk novels) Stand on Zanzibar and the Shockwave Rider are pretty spectacular too.
I think the problem is finding stories that are really ‘cyberpunk’, this is, that they don’t forget the punk part. Several of them are more ‘cyber-noir’ than anything, focusing on a detective figure or whatever.
And many works (specially contemporary) are post-cyberpunk, keeping the world building, but not the dystopian/countercultural ethos. That’s a different way of losing the punk in cyberpunk.
So which novels would best immerse you in the world in which Cyberpunk 2077 places you?
How about These?
Both of these novels were made into sourcebooks for 2020 by R. Talsorian. Walter Jon Williams wrote the first novel, as well as the sourcebook based on it. He also play tested Cyberpunk.
It’s not the reading, it’s the remembering :/
Snow Crash is not terrible. It is the 90s rolled up into a phat mondo burrito.
I can still remember that the Deliverator’s tires have a contact patch the size of a fat woman’s thighs.
Agreed. Snow Crash is still quite a ride. It moves fast and has attitude.
Diamond Age is another interesting one from Stephenson, and has a very different tone.
But I also strongly disagree with those who say things like Neuronancer don’t hold up because technology has changed and evolved in different ways. Does Blade Runner not hold up because Atari went bust? Is Back to the Future now terrible since we don’t have flying cars? How about Star Trek not forseeing cell phones, so having clunky tricorders seems rather quaint?
Nah, a great work is a great work. Even if some of the futurist elements don’t pan out. Accept it on the terms the work sets and don’t bring your modern expectations into it. The problem isn’t that the work doesn’t hold up, its that the reader is not engaging it on fair terms.
I think that’s just a thing that is going to matter to some people and not others. The way our technology has developed did not impact my reading of either Snow Crash or Neuromancer (both of which I read for the first time in the aughts). But that’s just me.
I will also jump on the Neuromancer train. It is still a fantastic book.
I love authors/books that use language as the writer is in that world and you already know what the hell they are talking about. E.g. What the hell is a bene gesserite? Gibson is great at this.
I would also plug his next triology (Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrow’s Parties) as cyberpunk-ish. More near future dystopia but still on topic with the descriptions of Tokyo and the Bridge.
The short story book has two of my all time favorite short stories 1) Johnny Mnemonic (on-topic) 2) Hinterlands which is not cyberpunk but just the coolest story.
What’s really interesting to me is that Cyberpunk is now an alternate timeline anachronistic view of the future. It’s a lot of 80’s aesthetics and politics that have little bearing on how 2020 actually turned out. It’s basically Fallout’s faux 50’s sci-fi future but replace Leave it to Beaver with punk rock as the defining sentiment.
I just took Burning Chrome off the shelf behind me for probably the first time in 30 years to see which one Hinterlands was… and I have no recollection of it :)
It’s not just the reading, it’s the remembering :/
2020 has a lot more in common with 80’s politics than it looks at first, unfortunately. And the basic assumption of Cyberpunk - capitalism taken to its extremes, with a handful of corporations in control of nearly everything, minimal (if any) states, and huge social and economical inequality pressuring part of society into chaos and anger, is much more real now than it was back then.
Sure, but the tech and language are way off.
Maybe once 2077 comes we will have something closer in reality, just with Chinese instead of Japanese… ;)