I am rereading Neuromancer by William Gibson - which I must admit I have only read once before. It’s interesting rereading it with a good Shadowrun background - I keep thinking, Ooooh, so THAT’S why they have flechette guns in Shadowrun, et cetera.

At any rate, I am near the end of the volume, and, since I don’t remember the ending, have paused in my reading to consider my thoughts on the book as they currently stand. This next part may be rather SPOILY, so if you have not read Neuromancer, do go away. And read it.

One of the classic structures for a tale is, of course, the clash of champions. Two people are picked out, usually by two diametrically opposite sides, and they fight so that the conflict can be resolved in a microcosmic setting. Usually the fight is physical, which is jolly, because we like a good combat and there is emotional weight and consequence. The Belgariad and Malloreon of David Eddings are some of the more blatant books in this regard; for movies we have the Matrix trilogy and Highlander (the first one - I bain’t seen none o’ they sequels). Classically, the sides are Good and Evil, and the stakes are high - typically, the World! (dunh-dunh-DUH!)

I think in its own way, Neuromancer is a “clash of champions” book. The forces are represented by Wintermute and Neuromancer - and rather than Good and Evil, they represent Future and Past. Their champions are Molly and Linda Lee, and their battle is for Case, the everyman protagonist. Think about it; Wintermute says that part of it will still exist after the job is done, a sentient and independent AI, a future so inevitable that there’s a sweepingly powerful branch of government expressly to stop it. Neuromancer is a graveyard of collective memory, a land of the dead. It is explicitly of the past. This becomes clear when you consider Linda - the object and emblem of a bittersweet nostalgic liaison; the girl Case met in an arcade, for Pete’s sake, that bastion of childish joys and nostalgia. Wintermute speaks only through the living - the one time he tried to use Linda he failed - whereas Neuromancer likes best to speak through the dead. Wintermute manipulates people but admits “I am best at improvisation.” Neuromancer seems to do nothing but remind people of the past. Neuromancer chose an object; the helpless, almost passive girl from Case’s past - an emotional nexus. Wintermute chose Molly; strong, dynamic, surprising, loaded with technology, always in motion - a subject rather than an object. Molly is the future.

So by my model, the central conflict of the book comes when Case meets Neuromancer, when he is sucked into a simstim idyll with the ghost of Linda Lee. Outside, in the real world, Molly is held captive, in danger. Here, he has the last chance to live a simple life, to have Linda. Interestingly, though, he doesn’t really have to choose, as the simulation is eaten away by his friends on the outside—the past cannot survive the present. But I think he chose anyway, chose Molly.

A simulated Ratz tells Case that he is living the same story he was in Chiba, but there it was simple and clear, and now it’s cluttered with strange and outlandish props. That’s what the future is like. It isn’t predictable, understandable, or even necessarily believable. Maybe that’s what Neuromancer is really about—accepting the past and embracing the future.