Deadpool director is collaborating on a Neuromancer film.
(But, don’t expect it any time in the near future)

It is official retro-lovers – Tim Miller has plans for William Gibson’s genre defining novel Neuromancer. He will be collaborating with Simon Kinberg.  Unfortunately, he is currently set to direct the new and generally unasked for Terminator film or films being produced by James Cameron; heaven help us.

Neuromancer is a 1984 science fiction novel by William Gibson and is regarded by many to be the genesis of the Cyberpunk genre. It is the recipient of the Hugo Award, Nebula Award and the Philip K. Dick. This is the first novel by Gibson and first in the Sprawl trilogy.

The story is set in a dystopian future where the global eco-structure has restricted itself in the wake of geopolitical warfare and the evolution of the megacorporation that has their tentacles in every part of the world affairs and trade. The main protagonist or anti-hero is a drug addicted former computer hacker named Case who’s ability to tap into cyberspace had been damaged after crossing the wrong people. He lives in and inhabits the underworld of Chiba City, Japan. Case is offered a job by the mysterious Armitage after being rescued by his cybernetic augmented “Razorgirl”, Molly Millions. Armitage is offering Case not only a monetary reward but, the repair of his neural jack and access back into cyberspace again.

In 1989, Epic Comics published a 48-page graphic novel version by Tom de Haven and Bruce Jensen. It only covers the first two chapters, “Chiba City Blues” and “The Shopping Expedition”, and was never continued.

The BBC World Service Drama production of Neuromancer aired in two one-hour parts, on 8 and 15 September 2002. In 2009, The New Museum in NYC hosted a six hour reading of Neuromancer  directed by Brody Condon with former adult star turned Hollywood actress, DJ and author Sasha Grey reading the part of Molly Millions.

There have been several proposed film adaptations of Neuromancer, with drafts of scripts written by British director Chris Cunningham and Chuck Russell, with Aphex Twin providing the soundtrack. After that project fell through the cracks, Neuromancer as a live-action film has jumped into pre-production after pre-production and so on; with names such as Joseph Kahn, Vincenzo Natali and Chuck Russell.

So let’s be optimistic about this one. Hopefully James Cameron doesn’t infect him with the Douche malware that he downloaded from George Lucas on some dickbag TOR site. I also highly recommend yous all watch MR. ROBOT if you need a good cyberpunk fix.

[source: http://www.joblo.com/movie-news/cast-this-case-in-neuromancer-from-deadpool-director-tim-miller-206 ]

On November 25th 1970 the most prominent Japanese novelist, Yukio Mishima, committed ritual seppuku after staging a theatrical protest/coup in favor of restoring the imperial system to power.  That event sent shockwaves throughout Japan and the Western literary world.  How could this writer, who was enthralled by many aspects of Western culture, take leadership in what the majority of the Japanese populace viewed as a farce of restoring the emperor’s authority?  The Japanese, who were trying to reconcile themselves to modernity and the West years after the tragedy of the Pacific War, now had to face the scrutiny resulting from that shocking event.  Is it any wonder that the country’s leading contemporary writer, Haruki Murakami, used that date as the starting point of his first three novels?

When Murakami published A Wild Sheep Chase in 1982, he already had two slim acclaimed novels to his name, Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973.  Today, they are known as the “The Rat Trilogy” as all three narratives feature a person nicknamed “The Rat,” who has a friendship with the unnamed protagonist of the novels.  Although the preceding novels received notice by a number of critics, Murakami truly reached critical success with A Wild Sheep Chase.  Still, the road to his now-unrivaled status as the premier writer in Japan and a leading contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature was not without barriers.  Many leading Japanese critics viewed Murakami as inauthentic in regards to his Japanese writing style and his surreal subject matter that hinted at magical realism.  It was a different world from Mishima’s realistic fiction.  This didn’t bother Murakami as he disliked many aspects of Mishima’s character and views.

So why did he choose November 25th 1970 as a focal date for his early novels?  The legacy of Mishima was still lurking in the background.  The question lingered and still lingers for many Japanese thinkers and citizens: what does it mean to be both Japanese and Western?  It’s thus interesting that some critics believe that Murakami used one of Mishimas’s more obscure novels Natsuko’s Adventure (it hasn’t even been translated into English) as the basis for A Wild Sheep Chase.  While in Natsuko’s Adventure, a girl and a man seek to find a deadly bear, in Murakami’s work, the unnamed protagonist and his girlfriend seek to find a strange sheep.

What’s so strange about the sheep is that it has a star-shaped birthmark and it might have connections to the flow of 20th century Japanese history, particularly the rise of Japan as prosperous state post-World War II.  Thus, the protagonist journeys to discover the truth about the mystery, and weird events continue to mount along the way.  Eventually, he even encounters a sheep man, as well as his friend, “The Rat,” who has disappeared at the beginning of the narrative.

As in the majority of Murakami’s novels, the protagonist starts out as an unwilling, almost unmotivated figure.  It’s fitting that with the exception of his most-realistic novel, Norwegian Wood, all of his novels for the first decade of his writing career had an unnamed narrator.  The action falls on the character, and he is drawn away from his bored and depressing existence into a journey that he resists slightly at first, but then accepts for one reason or another.  In A Wild Sheep Chase, the protagonist is divorced, in a lackluster job with an even more mediocre partner, and spends his nights smoking and drinking.  He’s obviously in a rut, and the reader is glad that something fantastical has disturbed his “peace,” even if it’s something as strange as a woman with extraordinarily alluring ears.  Yes, his girlfriend who pushes him to accept the strange offer to search for the fantastic sheep has ears that makes people’s jaws drop; they’re that hot!

Why are sheep central to the narrative?  Sheep aren’t usually considered interesting creatures.  However, as brought out in the novel, sheep have an interesting history in Japan.  Sheep weren’t native to the country due to the climate.  However, in the nineteenth century, after the country opened up to the world, the government started importing sheep for farmers to raise as livestock.  The program was a disaster as the farmers didn’t know how to care for them, and the government failed to provide suitable information for the farmers to be successful.  Thus, the program was eventually canceled.  What does that have to do with Murakami’s view of modern Japan?  The special sheep the narrator is searching for is able to give power to even insignificant individuals by incubating in them; however, the individual is not in control, and once the sheep is done, the person is cast aside.  I believe that Murakami feels that there is some measure of incongruence between Western culture and Japanese society.  It’s not that he is anti-Western, as he has stated in interviews that Western literature has influenced him as much if not more so than Japanese literature.  Looking at his corpus of work, it’s apparent that American popular culture influenced his tastes.  However, he seems to hint that there they might be a feeling of uneasiness in the way that Japanese feel they are being viewed by Westerners.

Despite its strange elements, A Wild Sheep Chase is more grounded than his following novel, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World, which was discussed back in April.  Its narrative is a bit more straightforward, and the length is not as daunting as that of some of his later works.  Even if you don’t want to search for meanings in the symbols Murakami uses, reading this work provides an enjoyable experience.  Honestly, much of contemporary serious literature can be a chore to plow through.  Perhaps, some of the writers feel similarly when writing their books.  Murakami, however, seems to enjoy what he is doing, and I hope he continues while the readers of his continue to see what he puts out next.        

Written by Christopher Fried

http://www.christopherfried.com/

As both a reader and a writer, I enjoy diverse genres of literature.  I however would have to choose mid-20th century British comic fiction as one of my favorites.  Besides various batches of metrical poetry, there is no other genre that brings such a grin to my face.  Whether it is works of Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Burgess, Anthony Powell, or this review’s featured writer, Kingsley Amis, I just can’t get enough.  I think this is due to the combination of familiarity and slight estrangement between American and British cultures.  An American reader delving into the British cultural world has journeyed to foreign milieu, but does not feel completely like a stranger in a strange land.  There is a notion of difference, but generally, not a feeling of bewilderment as when one picks up a Japanese or Russian novel without cultural context.

 When compared with other comic writers that emerged during the interbellum and post-World War II period, Kingsley Amis is probably the most accessible to an American reader, or really any English language speaker.  Although British class tension is present in a number of his works, it does not hover like a shadow over the themes as it does in other writers of the same period such as Waugh or Powell.  For one thing, Amis seemed to always fight against the biases of the British establishment, whether when he was a left-leaning basher of posh pretension during the Angry Young Man period of the fifties, or when he became a pro-American conservative in the post-Vietnam era, when it was fashionable for the British literati to declare American power as anathema.  Even in his non-fiction book on grammar, The King’s English, he readily prefers American English to that of his own countrymen as more natural and less stuffy.  Throughout his life he believed that things should be said straight forward and without a lot of bollocks as he might say.

The Old Devils, though written in his later years, shows that Amis had not lost his wit.  In addition, the novel is not just a comic gem, but it shows his most heart since his original masterpiece, Lucky Jim.  He doesn’t hesitate to laugh at the foibles of his characters, but his presentation shows that he cares for them as individual creations.  The story focuses on Welsh couples in their sixties in the mid-1980s as they handle the indignity of old age.  Interestingly, Amis set a number of his novels in Wales.  For some reason, it seems Wales gets a bit of short shrift in terms of British settings chosen by writers; perhaps, the locales of England and Scotland are both more romantic and familiar, but Amis’s prose shows that Wales shouldn’t be forgotten.

 The couples, and other locals, are in a stir because Alun and Rhiannon Weaver have returned home to South Wales after years of celebrity in London.  The Welsh have developed a complex view of Alun: he is both praised and viewed as somewhat of a phony.  Alun is a popular poet, but much of that popularity is based off his living off the legacy of the late, more critically-acclaimed poet Brydan, and his presentation of himself as the prototypical Welshman.  Basically, if a Welsh topic needs a Welsh viewpoint, the London establishment turns to Alun to pontificate on what it means to be Welsh, especially in the modern age.  Though his friends and neighbors are glad that a local son has made it professionally, they are somewhat embarrassed by the bloviating of his subject matter.  It doesn’t help that he is a selfish scoundrel who had affairs with the majority of his friends’ wives, and who begins to commence his bad habits again when he settles back in Wales.

His friends are a loveable but seemingly hopeless lot.  They spend the majority of their day hitting up establishments to indulge their alcoholic tendencies.  They are definitely not picture of good health.  Charles Norris and Peter Thomas are obese, and getting fatter.  Malcolm Cellan-Davies has stomach and teeth issues that are at a point of precariousness.  Their wives seem to have lost whatever love they had for them; it doesn’t help that the seducer Alun is back in town.  The saddest character would definitely be Peter. Fortunately, he gets somewhat of a happy ending at the conclusion of the novel; however, throughout the majority of the story, he is at the critical whims of his wife, who hasn’t been physically attracted to him in years and is at a similar emotional distance.  Some critics say that Amis modeled this portrait on himself, though Amis’s personal traits are found in aspects of all the major male characters. 

The characters try to come to terms with what has been largely wasted years.   They seem to have stopped growing emotionally since the time of their college years.  After an incident in a pub that gets the gang of old friends thrown out, the owner remarks, “You’d think [men that age] have learnt how to behave by this time.”  Looking at the shenanigans that they get themselves in, it is obvious that they haven’t (and neither have their selfish wives), and it costs one of the friends his life near the end of the novel, though you’re not surprised who dies, and it’s quite satisfactory despite your feeling somewhat attached to him by the end.  The story implies that even famous Alun has wasted much of his life.  He is a successful poet, but there is a feeling that his fame rests on being the court jester to a condescending English audience and dull Welsh public.  Does he truly embody the Welsh spirit just as Brydan, and is that something to which he should have tried to attain?  Like many of the other characters, Alun runs toward his Welsh identity and tries running away from it.  This crisis leads him to almost become a stereotype that he wishes to avoid, rather than becoming an individual, who happens to have Welsh heritage.

 This 1986 Man Booker Prize winner is considered to be the prime achievement of Kingsley’s career by his son, the also-acclaimed novelist, Martin Amis.  Though I didn’t bust out laughing as I did with his earlier works like Lucky Jim or One Fat Englishman, I don’t believe that the narrative is any less humorous.  What concerns one in old age is much different than in youth, so there should be no surprise that the style differs somewhat as well.  Reading his earlier works, it can be reasoned that Amis sympathized only slightly with his targets at that time.  Perhaps reflecting on mortality during his older years caused him however to enshroud even the most ridiculous and foolish characters with dignity in this novel.  To me, this increases the novel’s merit as a comic work, as recognition of one’s past regrets are easily more reflected upon as we age, especially when we laugh with each other rather than just at each other.    

Cyberspace; the World Wide Web; the internet.  Whatever you would like to call the now ubiquitous technology, it’s hard for many to remember a time when humanity wasn’t plugged in and online.  I remember the days of dial-up AOL and Netzero in the mid-to-late nineties, when I was a middle-school student, and technology has advanced much since those days.  What though helped transplant the idea of cyberspace into the public consciousness during a time when most people did not have computers and the internet was almost exclusively for military or governmental use?

 When William Gibson’s Neuromancer dropped into the science fiction book world in 1984, science fiction fans and critics alike knew immediately that it was a seminal work in the genre.  It was the first novel to win the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Philip K. Dick awards—a hat trick in the science fiction publishing.  By the 21st century, millions of copies had been sold, and the novel is still selling well, which is phenomenal, since most people today would likely rather surf the web than read a novel from three decades ago predicting what cyberspace (a term which the novel popularized) would entail for the general populace. Here was a work that married the fashion and attitude of 80s punk culture with the sweep of technological advancement, and we are still being influenced by it today.  Look at the popularity of The Matrix films (or at least, the first one), and try to say that cyberpunk, as Neuromancer heralded, is dead.

As important as the novel is, not only in science fiction, but also in literature in general, does it hold up?  People have been on the internet for years, and what takes place seems more fantasy than reality at times, especially the virtual reality, which is something people have strived for, but still is unsatisfactory in practical application.  I say yes; not due to the description of future technology, which science fiction authors will never get completely correct (though Gibson is a better futurist than most writers), but because of the engaging plot and the intriguing characters.  The host of characters includes regular humans, modified humans, clones, computer constructs of people, and AI (artificial technology).  Unless you’re paying strict attention, you may not know what each character is until the end of the novel.  It can also be confusing at times, especially for readers not used to hard-science fiction, as Gibson uses many technical terms revolving around hardware and software throughout the text.  Moreover, the plot is fast moving, and as we join the main protagonist Case on his mission following the murder of his girlfriend, he gains and drops allies, friends, and enemies, like a person’s weight on a yo-yo diet.  At times, I had to go back over a previous paragraph or page to make sure that I wasn’t lost.  I however believe that the pace/style was deliberate, and thus meshed with the punk sensibility that Gibson was trying to express. 

While most people still focus on the cyberspace/cyberpunk elements, I believe there is another aspect more relevant in the novel.  Without getting into too many spoilers, the nature of AI is one of the principal themes on which Gibson focuses.  Can a machine or a computer have a personality?  Should people allow it to increase in power and intelligence?  Will we continue to manipulate computers? Or will the computers learn to use us for their own ends?  Neuromancer grapples with these questions.  Scientists, military strategists, and philosophers are wrestling with these questions right now as technology advances, especially in the field of developing AI.  This month, Google’s AlphaGo defeated Lee Sedol, one of the top players in Go, which is considered by many to be the most complex game devised by humans.  Before the match, most experts believed that such a feat was at least a decade away.  So, will machines in the near future think, and if they do, will their thoughts lead to actions that benefit or harm humankind?

Is Neuromancer for the general reader?  It depends.  Those who do not touch science fiction literature at all probably will not have their opinion changed about the genre.  The book is not a casual read for those unfamiliar with technical terminology, and it will demand concentration from you even though it’s of moderate length.  Because it’s a novel that is often featured on reading lists, many likely purchased the book because “it’s one of those books you have to read in your lifetime.”  Thus, of the millions of copies bought, one can’t be sure how many were read to completion.  I do encourage you to try the book, even if it’s just to see how a previous generation tried to make sense of the dawn of the computer age.  If Gibson’s work is not for you, then so be it, but you should still acknowledge his effort in science fiction of shifting attention away from interstellar travel and grand space battles to look at near-future technology and how it would affect the public.

Written by Christopher Fried

http://www.christopherfried.com/