[daremon]

I had the opposite experience with Neuromancer. I read it too many times! Sorry for the long post (translated by GPT as it was originally in Greek).

In September 1993, I started my final year of high school in Greece, aiming to study Computer Science. A girl I barely knew heard I was into computers and handed me Neuromancer, the 1989 Greek edition. I still have it.

I already loved science fiction, though my reading had mostly been Asimov, Dick, and Clarke — robots and space, not so much computers. Neuromancer hit differently. I devoured it. Then I read it again. And again.

That whole year because of the enormous pressure of final exams (I can't explain how important they make you feel these exams are) I didn't touch any other book. I just kept re-reading Neuromancer. It became like a comfort food — familiar but exciting. I must have read it over 100 times.

At some point, I realized I had memorized it. Someone would open it randomly, read a sentence, and I could continue reciting from memory. A real-life Fahrenheit 451 moment.

To this day, I still re-read it every year or two, and it never loses its magic. And I can still describe what's happening on any given page although this has faded a lot.

P.S. I did go on to study Computer Science, and I still love programming.

P.P.S. I married the girl who gave me the book, we had kids but eventually we divorced 29 years later. Still friends.

[Bluestein]

> I married the girl who gave me the book

Neu-romance-er :)

[IgorPartola]

I barely knew her!

[NikolaNovak]

Fascinating story :-).Neuromancer is a book I reread often - like Dune, it has a rich tapestry of background world building. There is nothing surprising about plot anymore, but it is like a place I like to return to.

[more_corn]

Dosadi Experiment is better than Dune. Just sayin.

[NikolaNovak]

I will check it out ; in which manner is it superior?

[Kon5ole]

>To this day, I still re-read it every year or two, and it never loses its magic. And I can still describe what's happening on any given page although this has faded a lot.

That's interesting! I have a similar experience but for the opposite reason. I like the book and have enjoyed reading it several times, and listened to the audiobook just before the pandemic.

I know I like it and consider it to be a good book, but every time it's like I'm reading it for the first time. I can only remember thew "mood" so to speak, nothing about when, where, who, what. Even now, just 5 years after the last time.

I think it is related to Gibson's prose, but I remember Pattern Recognition quite well despite having read that only once.

Neuromancer is just a complete blank, except I know I like it. Wonder if anyone else has had a similar experience with a book?

[gknoy]

> every time it's like I'm reading it for the first time. I can only remember thew "mood" so to speak,

I am like this with a lot of books. I'll remember a very high level overview ("The Historian is about a modern day hunt for Dracula, and it's really cool, and I liked how the story was told, but I can't remember why or any of what happened."), but can't remember much about plot details.

It makes re-reading things fun, but also is frustrating because I can't explain why something was good, and I also remember just enough that plot twists don't surprise me the second time. It also means that I completely forget about the "bad" parts of the book, or the parts that didn't resonate with me.

[daremon]

It gets better: I could not finish Pattern Recognition, it was a struggle and I cannot remember anything from it!

[themadturk]

Ah, this pains me, because I think PR is his best book!

[mercer]

I have the same experience, but with Snow Crash...

[slim]

I read it in 1996. and it was a t-file from a bbs. I had to sit in front of my 386sx everyday to read the text in dos edit. it took weeks. because it was in english and I was learning english at the same time. you gave me the urge to reread it now :)

[metroholografix]

Great story! I also read Neuromancer for the first time in Greek translation (Αίολος), around 1995, knowing nothing about the book otherwise. It was a blind buy in a bookstore solely because I liked the cover and the short synopsis on the back. It was a book that changed my life. I remember being drenched in sweat when I finished it, and I immediately re-read it without a break. I was already at age 14 hopelessly hooked on computers, but Neuromancer completely rewired how I thought about technology (it was the first book I came across that put forth a non-anthropocentric point of view, with Technology being presented as both an addictive drug and a force in itself, bringing about its own teleology).

That book was the main impetus for me connecting to the Internet, installing Linux and getting involved with the European hacking underground of the mid to late 90s. I also periodically re-read it (now in English): the prose still seems razor-sharp and the divergent feelings are still being evoked. Plus, it's an insanely hyperstitional book: one gets the feeling that Gibson (whose non-Sprawl work pales in comparison and who has never again reached these heights) didn't just write a heist-story filled with countercultural sensibilities but channeled something greater, something that has been intricately involved with how the world we experience has evolved.

Looking back on those days, I now wish I'd read it in English for the first time. The Greek translation is not bad but it feels kind of archaic and doesn't do justice to the brilliance of Gibson's dystopian vision.

[daremon]

So many common things! It also inspired my love for Linux (I installed Slackware back then), for "hacking" and also pushed me into the demoscene which I much enjoyed!

PS I read the one by AQUARIUS

[VladVladikoff]

>I married the girl who gave me the book, we had kids

:)

>but eventually we divorced 29 years later.

:(

>Still friends.

:)

[bmacho]

>A girl I barely knew

:(

>handed me Neuromancer

:)

[theli0nheart]

This is a lovely story. Thanks for sharing.

[ilamont]

Wow. What a great story. An in translation, no less. The Greek translator must have been very talented.

(Kind of curious now ... were the other translated editions in non-English languages as powerful? Do readers of science fiction in other languages seek out works by specific translators or publishers known to have great translations?)

[SonOfLilit]

Russian culture considers translated (I think) Shakespeare to surpass the original. We Israelis also had one of our more famous poets (Alterman) translate some Shakespeare but I'm not aware of the translation being considered a masterpiece on its own (personally it felt too archaic to appreciate).

We have two translations of Lord of the Rings (Tolkien fans being one of the more picky bunches of book geeks here, I'll refer to it in depth.) The older one, by Lavnit, is considered more beautiful and poetic and flowing (my nick comes from it though I was never much of a Tolkien geek, just hung out with them - Elves were translated into the Sons of Lillith from Hebrew mythology, and my mother's name is Lillith...). It's also long out of print and goes for (lowish I believe) collector prices. The newer one by Dr Emanuel Lotem is more... I don't know, academic maybe would be the word? Anyway, the Tolkien community hates him so much that he's one of their main memes. He also translated Dragonlance, which I grew up with, so I had no ill will towards him myself, and at some point I realized he's the one who managed to translate the Illuminatus! trilogy, which is... quite a feat. I wouldn't expect it to be translatable. So now I hold a deep appreciation for him.

The local Harry Potter geeks treated the translator as a minor celeb.

Off the top of my head, I'm not aware of any other translators that are held in special regard.

[felipeerias]

Translations are a very subjective matter because the emotional punch of a story is far greater when it is speaking to you in your mother tongue.

Shakespeare is perhaps impossible to translate properly to Spanish, just like Don Quijote to English, and yet we keep doing it because even the small glimpse afforded by the translation gives you an idea of the greatness behind it.

Funnily, I’ve always found the Spanish translation of the Lord of the Rings significantly more readable than the original, perhaps because Tolkien went out of his way to write in an old form of English that is a bit too distant for me. Or maybe it is because I read the story in my youth and re-reading it is a way to recapture some of the wonder that I felt then.

[bmacho]

Translations can easily be just better than the 'original'. The translator is a better artist. Has better music inside him, knows better words (or: better words exist in the target language), maybe even shifts focus/tone, although that's the job of an editor. It is not very common to reedit books and call it a translation, but those happen too.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

> Russian culture considers translated (I think) Shakespeare to surpass the original.

Can't say about Shakespeare, there are many translations, and in my eyes all of them lack something that the original has, but Russian translations of such writers as O'Henry, F.S. Fitzgerald and Jack London have some irresistible charm and familiarity that is completely absent in original English texts.

I attribute it to censorship: many talented writers couldn't actually write because of it in soviet times, and to provide for themselves they took jobs as translators.

[GauntletWizard]

I only read Shakespeare in the original Klingon

[shagie]

I recall getting that book...

One of the challenges with Khamlet is that Klingon originally had no state of being verb - it was part of the word itself rather than a bare "I am {something}". Thus "to be or not to be" was never something that was translatable in the original Klingon language and it had to be updated.

Glancing at Amazon, there appears to be a release of Sunzi's Art of War from 2018.

[mikhailfranco]

I only read Shakespeare in C:

   Ox2b | ~0x2B

[unsigner]

The Bulgarian translation I read was a valiant effort by a guy who ran the Bulgarian "science fiction and fantasy BBS".

(Yes, that kind of BBS, with the dial-up modems, XMODEM/YMODEM/ZMODEM etc.)

(Yes, it was mostly for pirating books in the form of badly OCR-ed TXT files, and occasionally discussing them.)

Apparently at some point he decided he needs to bring Gibson to the non-English speaking part of the population and... I don't remember the translation as being "good", but it definitely was "bold".

[gessha]

Is there a place that has stories about Bulgarian BBS?

[Bluestein]

Heck, I'll take BBSs in general.-

[astrolx]

In French, I find that translations of Edgard Allan Poe by Baudelaire are really nice. I enjoy them as much as the original version. Sci-fi translations of US science fiction classics (Orwell, Bradbury etc..) are usually excellent too. I find myself re-reading these books in French and/or English according to mood.

On the other hans, I find that French translators usually utterly fail to capture the dry kind humor from British authors. From Jane Austen to Lord of the Rings, it reads so serious in French translations!!

[daremon]

He really tried IMO. Actually I wrote this story to him, the translator of the Greek edition when I happened to find him on Facebook. He told me he felt he didn't do justice to the original work and always felt a bit bad.

[MonkeyClub]

Γεια σου, πατριώτη! (Hello, compariot!)

I think I read the same text in a 1996 reprint some years later, in 1999 - coincidentally also during my last year of highschool with impending doom^Wexams afoot.

Definitely mind-expanding, and helped shape my early cyberpunk tastes, though it didn't get me hitched :)

I do think the translation was excellent, he definitely must have put hard work and passion into it!

[daremon]

Generally I don't like translations. After the Internet became a thing and Amazon started shipping to Greece (probably after 2000) I never read Greek translations of English literature again.

[chrisweekly]

"translated by GPT"

[grujicd]

I believe parent was talking about translated book, not about the comment.

[mortos]

I'm fairly certain their post is translated, they said the received the book in 1993 which predates GPT by at least a couple years

[olddustytrail]

I think they're talking about both the comment being translated by ChatGPT and that the book was a Greek translation of Neuromancer.

[chrisweekly]

Respectfully, they wrote,

"Sorry for the long post (translated by GPT as it was originally in Greek)."

It seems unambiguous to me, they were referring to their own posted comment.

Edited to add: they also confirmed same in this thread.

[daremon]

Yes exactly, I had this story written in Greek and used GPT to translate it. The Greek edition I read was from 1989.

[snthpy]

Lovely story. Thanks for sharing.

[silenced_trope]

Nice!

Did you read the rest of the Sprawl Trilogy too? What do you think of the other books?

[daremon]

Yes I read them and I loved them. Not the same effect of course, as Gibson's futuristic world was already described, but good nonetheless.