has fragmented into tribal/corporate nation-states, but the USSR is still around. So, Case is a 'cyberspace cowboy' who used to "jack in" to the Matrix and go on 'runs' (stealing data from big corporations, governments, etc.) in a near-future where the U.S. 'Cyberspace' is mainstream now, and stripped away of the novelty that made fans back in 1984 say "This is so freaking cool!" the book is kind of a techy-tech high concept thrill ride with cardboard characters. Neuromancer was genre-defining and it blew a million little geeky minds back in the day, but reading it in 2012, I failed to be enthralled by the goshwow factor.
This is a book that, if you are approaching it for the first time, suffers from having been imitated so much that it seems derivative of its own successors. "Neuromancer" deserves a narrator as good as its story.ĥ stars for coolness, 3 stars for give-a-heckness The black characters sound like a parody of Beatniks from a Looney Tunes cartoon.I'd love to hear this book re-performed by someone like Jonathan Davis, the narrator of Snow Crash, who gave his characters authentic and unique voices. An Armenian character gets a VERY poor Russian accent. Good news - all the rest of the female characters sound like that, too.Asian characters get an unironic "chingchong"-style Chinese accent.
That's right - the narrator thought that a half-cyborg killer should sound like a teenage boy impersonating his little sister. That said, narrator Robertson Dean was utterly wrong for "Neuromancer." His voice is flat and without joy, he clearly does not understand quite a bit of the "lingo" he is reading (and thus puts emphasis on the wrong words, which makes following the dialog a trial), and - most tiresomely - this is yet another clueless dude who just CANNOT deliver dialog for female or non-white characters.Molly Millions, one of the most stone-cold women ever put to print, gets a generic, high-pitched whispery voice with just a hint of a nagging whine. "Neuromancer" is nothing less than a classic, and a story I've enjoyed re-visiting every five years - it's always a new experience.
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