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by jon6 5113 days ago
Ok, I'll bite. No I have not read any other cyberpunk books, but necromancer was recommended to me. Anyway (unlike the implication from ynniv) I had no problem with the metaverse. Here are the issues I can think of at the moment

1. no character development

2. "hiro protagonist" 10/10 on the lame scale

3. no explanation for why delivering pizzas is so important. there is one paragraph that attempts to explain it but fails miserably.

4. the girl only serves as a plot vehicle and does so incredibly poorly

5. hiro's dad and raven's dad were captured together? absurd

6. love of the rat thing for the girl is disney-level goofy

7. the "magic spell" juanita reads at the end is a little too convenient

I did like the fighting scenes, though. There was one very good paragraph in the whole book -- the bit about how computers never seem to do the right thing and to get any modicum of productivity out of them the tools one uses must be transparent, meaning the user must have a deep understanding of their tools. That is a pretty deep insight that can be incorporated into daily life.

3 comments

Well, there is no accounting for taste I suppose. I rather suspect you would not like Neuromancer.
My suspicion is that the rat-thing was inserted after-the-fact to facilitate the book's ending. It's been a while since I read it, and I remember enjoying it, but the rat-thing always seemed like a cheat to me.

Also, snow crash? LCDs don't do that.

I'm not sure the book ever mentioned LCDs specifically? It was written in 1992 before LCDs became prevalent; perhaps he imagined some other (analog) technology being used instead.
It was very sad when I realized Gibson's great line "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." had been completely lost on me because I assumed he meant bright blue instead of gray.
That's my point. The title dates the story. It's supposed to take place in the near future, but for the title to make sense it will have to take place in the recent past.
If that is a hangup for you, then the entire genre of near future fiction is probably out for you.
Yeah, a lot of people feel like its an action movie level parody of the genre.