#! /usr/bin/robert-seaton

archiving the works of robert seaton

Neuromancer

Life is so boring; it’s really got me snoring.

Went to Borders yesterday. Spent some time dithering in the programming section, almost bought a copy of Real World Haskell, but thought better of it. If they had anything about any LISP-like language, I probably would have purchased that. I eventually tired of looking at Borders’ hundreds of books on learning C# in 15 minutes and ended up wandering over to the science fiction section.

Now, I’m not sure why the horror genre gets such little love — maybe the likes of Dean Koontz have permenantly soured the genre — but it’s just obnoxious that bookstores refuse to recognize and properly categorize horror novels. My local Barnes and Noble, no joke, has a section for books about other books, but horror gets mixed in with science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and general fiction. It would be nice if they could at least be consistent and put all the horror novels in one section where they don’t belong instead of scattering them all throughout the store, but I guess that’s too much to ask.

So, I’m looking for a science fiction novel, right, but everywhere I look there are books about vampires. You know what? Vampries don’t belong in my goddamn science fiction, and if they are in my science fiction, they better be in goddamn space. Hint: Twilight belongs with the romance novels. I did eventually find a copy of Neuromancer which I’ve been meaning to read, considering the amount of hype it recieves from geeks everywhere.

Last night, I start reading this thing and I’m just distracted by how fucking bizarre cyberpunk is. How does this genre get away with being so absolutely insane? Take this book Neuromancer, for example. I don’t think the year is explicitly stated anywhere, but I get the impression that it’s set less than 50 years after the Cold War has ended, probably somewhere between 2000 and 2020. It’s 50 years in the future, right, and everybody’s name is extremely fucked up. The protagonist’s name is Case! He’s friends with some guy named Rat, owes money to something named Wombat or Woosh or some shit. Does the author really expect me to believe that everyone suddenly lost their goddamn minds and started naming their children during boggle? Don’t even try and tell me that these people just abandoned their perfectly good names for completely unrelated nicknames, no, fuck you.

MOST IMPORTANTLY, in the future, people don’t fight with SWORDS. Guess what cyberpunk fans: you’re fucking stupid if you think people are going to stop using guns and decide that dueling with swords is a good idea. For one thing, nobody with a gun is going to be dumb enough to go: “hey, you know what would be better than this tool that can instantly and reliably kill a man from 50 feet? a sword.” Of course not, that’s fucking suicidal. In the book, the kid buys a fucking whip. What’s he gonna do with a whip? Die, that’s what. Christ.

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