Neuromancer Movie

After years of legal hassle, they might finally be making the Movie version Gibson’s Neuromancer.

The Garden State Mall used to be an outdoor mall. There are 4 or 5 malls in that part of New Jersey within a mile or two of each other. I used to go with Erica and while she shopped I would hang out at a Science Fiction book store ( I can’t remember the name). At the time it was the only SF book store that I’ve ever seen. I bought Vernor Vinge’s novel True Names at this store. There was a trade paperback of Neuromancer. It was the one with the cool cover that is now worth several thousand dollars. I wanted to buy it, but it was $10 and I did not want to invest my cash in a book with a cool cover and a good first page that might be a dud. I bought another edition later. Ah well, I used to own spiderman #1, but my brother took it and I never thought that it would be valuable some day. I can’t predict the future.

Neuromancer changed my life. It was a very different book. I had already read “Shock Wave Rider” and “True Names”, so I wasn’t surprised by the use of computer technology in a Science Fiction novel. Gibson’s gritty style just amazed me. It was perfect. It made me want to write SF again. Luckily, I lost the cyberpunk novella that I wrote right after reading Neuromancer – it was pretty awful. I soon realized that Gibson has ruined direct man-machine interface for the rest of us. I used it in Girl with the Error Message Eyes, but I used a cell phone/spam paradigm and avoided Gibson’s incredibly rich cyberspace. Vinge’s True Names cyberspace is technically more believable, but he lacks the dangerous plot and sweaty tension of Neuromancer.

I don’t recommend Neuromancer to anyone. It and the two other books in the series are very complex. I know of few people who will be able to follow Gibson. The book is difficult, to say the least. There are a great many twists and turns in the plot that cannot be put into a movie.

Molly Millions is my favorite woman character in any book. She was totally misunderstood and turned into some kind of femme-ninja in the movie version of Johnny mnemonic, totally ignoring the lovesick sadness she feels for her doomed technical boy Johnny. In Neuromancer, she describes how she finds the love of her life murdered. She has at her heart a deep grief. She is a small lost girl hiding behind mirror shades.

Neuromancer will probably be based on the comic book version that I once saw. I can’t imagine capturing 10% of the book in a 2 hour film. It will be full of computer graphics that will try to hide the bad screenplay. The parts of Case and Molly will be played by stone faced actors doing slow motion karate moves. They’ll probably have to cut out the part of the Dixie construct. The whole point of the Neuromancer intelligence at the end will be lost without all of the supporting clues. Amitage’s dangerously ruined personality will be just a manikin used to move the plot.

I don’t go to the movies often and I prefer black and white films from the 1940s to any modern movie that I’ve ever seen. When Neuromancer comes to one of the free cable channels (within a year, no doubt), I might talk Erica into watching it, but her tolerance for crap is much lower than mine.

Read the book – if you dare!

“Neuromancer” Finally Goes Online

3 Comments

  1. Jim Shannon wrote:

    “After years of legal hassle”.

    Gibson's probably thinking, “Damn, there go the film option rights.” Film option rights can translate into many thousands of dollars a year. The way science fiction is going these days he might have made more money on film option rights then he would for an upcoming movie itself. I think any author would love to have that kind of “years of legal hassle” Gosh Poor Bill!

    Monday, May 21, 2007 at 1:38 pm | Permalink
  2. Keith wrote:

    Click on Gibson’s blog to see his take. It seems like Neuromancer has been optioned dozens of times. I remember reading that he originally had trouble getting the book published and wound up loosing the royalties on one edition and that tied up the movie rights.
    (This is all vaguely remembered) I think he then optioned it out for a movie on overly generous terms and there was some actual shooting done, but the deal fell through. This tied things up for many more years.
    I heard that Gibson did a very good treatment (a sales job for a script) and then wrote a great script and the Hollywood crowd just laughed at the idea of a good writer producing the script for his own novel.

    Monday, May 21, 2007 at 3:06 pm | Permalink
  3. J Erwine wrote:

    I can’t imagine a Neuromancer movie. There’s way too much that goes on in that book to translate it to screen in any adequate way.

    That book probably makes my top 20 SF novels of all time…maybe even top 10…

    Monday, May 21, 2007 at 3:38 pm | Permalink