Also dubbed the "Cyberspace" or "Matrix" trilogy, William Gibson's triad of far future dystopian techno-nightmare novels gave birth to the cyberpunk genre. The first title, Neuromancer, takes most of the credit, while the other two titles, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive flesh out the world and characters introduced in the first book and brings the trilogy to a close. In following with my previous reviews, my critiques will focus on style, content, and an overall "feel" of the story. Similar to my other novel series reviews, I will go over each novel one by one. However, for this review, I will begin with a sort of treatise on the man behind the books, American-Canadian (how about I just stick with North American?) author William Gibson, as well as an overall review with a summary.
To start off, William Gibson, the author, is one of the few writers to whom the word "prophetic" is a fitting description. Like Ray Bradbury, George Orwell, and Aldous Huxley before him, he is attuned to changes in the social, political, and economic climate, and has tapped into the cultural mainstream to plot in his mind a predicted layout of what the future will look like. In the Sprawl Trilogy, it's bleak, dystopian, and gritty. He has written other books like the Bridge Trilogy (Virtual Light, Idoru, and All of Tomorrow's Parties), which details in his words the birth of the future cyberspace (the Sprawl Trilogy lives right at its peak).
If you're an established science fiction fan, particularly of authors like Neal Stephenson and Dan Simmons, then this is an absolutely must-read. There are few writers out there who can engross you more in the journey they take you on than the destination they take you to. What distinguishes Gibson from the rest is his writing style: he doesn't just merely "show" you the world he portrays but forces you right into it. You'll see a lot of names of people and places being thrown around, some of which may not be familiar. The lives of the characters in his books are drawn out explicitly in a neo-noir style.
His first book, Neuromancer, is also his debut novel. It won the holy trinity of science fiction awards, the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick awards, for best science fiction novel the year it came out. The book has the feel and element of a heist story: many vested interests banding together to score big, multiple locales, and bits and bytes of romance, violence, and intrigue. However, it isn't your typical heist story: it vividly describes the potential future of the world wide web in a way that we have yet to experience! It serves as both a window into another world within our own, a dystopia so frighteningly convincing it could just be the world of tomorrow that people look forward to. One wouldn't know it from a pick-up read, but it's clear that the plot was the string that tied together its pages... and loosely if I might add. The book is the Genesis of the Cyberpunk genre - the prototype of its kind - and the subsequent term "cyberspace". In retrospect, movies like "The Matrix" series and video games like "Deus Ex" (as well as the most hardcore of some Japanese anime franchises) have borrowed heavily from Neuromancer: the "matrix" being the infrastructure of cyberspace, a satellite colony called "Zion"... the references are too myriad to name here. That this book is from 1984 is terrifying: the internet had yet to take its full, present form and many of the concepts in the book ring true to today's web world such as "jacking in" (logging in) and others. The book itself drips with content and style: reading the book is more like living in this 1980's-esque vision of the future, and the writing style, simply put, is one of the best I've seen. It really is, according to some reviewers, a "mind-bender of a read".
Content - 5/5
Style - 5/5
Overall - 5/5
Count Zero, the second book in the series, mixes elements of the already-established cyberpunk, by then Gibson's brainchild, with elements of biopunk. He tells the story of how an ex-soldier plans to kidnap an executive who turns out to be a defector, with several plot twists along the way. Gibson drops the noir-esque elements from Neuromancer in favor of a descriptive style that is easier to take in. Unlike Neuromancer, Count Zero incorporates more side stories to flesh out the world. Having read the book once, I have to say I was not as impressed by this book as I was from the previous title. There were a few side stories interwoven with the main one, and the use of cyberspace is markedly reduced compared to Neuromancer, and only near the end do we get thrown into that godless man-made cityscape. The characters are well-rouned, sure, but the plot literally crawled, for both the side story and the main plot. The style of writing is still solid, but the content suffers a bit.
Content - 3/5
Style - 4/5
Overall - 3.5/5
While Count Zero included almost no characters from the first book (although corporations like Tessier-Ashpool and devices like the Ono-Sendai were present), Mona Lisa Overdrive draws from its predecessors to bring the trilogy to a close. The stakes are raised compared to the first two, and characters from both prequels are re-introduced, with new characters entering center stage: entertainers, mobsters, the Yakuza, and "phantom entities" within cyberspace. The 3rd book also sees a return of Gibson's noir-esque descriptions mixed with Count Zero's panache for keeping it simple. The names and places are both familiar and alien, and the descriptive writing almost gets you into some cyberspace dream sequence at times. Reviewers weren't kidding when they said that this is Gibson's "most absorbing book to date" (well, at the time, at least). Mona Lisa Overdrive's strength is the enigma it keeps you in: the lack of certainty the characters are presented with in their existence is organic and visceral to the extent of being terrifying at times, and the relationships between characters is amplified.
Content - 4/5
Style - 5/5
Overall - 4/5
All in all, the Sprawl Trilogy was a superb journey unlike any other. The "noir prophet" of cyberspace has done work that has been underestimated in its prophetic value as more and more of us are engrossed into the ever-growing world of technology and cyberspace. It paints a grisly picture of what would become of us if we give in to the all-consuming power of technology. I think Neuromancer at least should be on everyone's reading list if not the others, but if you're willing to take a step further into what cyberspace could be, then this book is for you.
Salaam
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