Neuromancer: Not Your Typical Story

Neuromancer is contrary to typical adventure novels in many ways. First, the characters do not fit the modified hero cycle stereotypes of sci fi and noir. Instead of the naive young protagonist who will grow into adulthood, we have Case, a suicidal druggie ex-hacker who makes his living off of dangerous street jobs. Our love interest (more of a femme fatale) is Molly, a lethal, closed off and deeply traumatized woman who has more of a business and casual sex relationship than emotional attachment with Case. We have flawed characters such as Wintermute that do terrible things but are not simple villains.

Another way in which Neuromancer differs from most stories is that the characters are hard to empathize with and understand. On one hand, as a reader I am constantly inside Case’s head, knowing what he thinks. In the scene where he is captured by the Turing cops, he realizes that Pierre would play the Bad Cop and Roland would be the Good Cop, seeing through the attempted manipulation and in turn manipulating the cops by concealing information. Though we get up close and personal with Case throughout the book, I still feel as if I don’t know him. I don’t know what he does in his spare time, much of his background, or what he would make small talk about. I don’t really root for him as I would with most protagonists. This is much the same with Molly, who I understand to an extent but have a hard time empathizing with.

Gibson intentionally made the characters of Neuromancer non-stereotypical and hard to understand and empathize with. I believe he did this to draw emphasis away from the characters. He wanted instead to focus on the implications of hyper-advanced technology: the cyber world of the Matrix, the body transplants, the super-intelligent AI’s. He also wanted to make the world of Neuromancer as realistic as possible by setting it in the backdrop of modern day places and cultures, as opposed to a fantasy world convenient to the plot of his story. Gibson used the characters of the book as a medium for portraying all of his ideas about the implications of a technologically based future.

What Did We Miss? Happy Pills

I’ve become very interested in my mood recently. Recognizing my current emotions and accepting them makes it easier to deal with unhappy thoughts, tiredness, boredom and other negative emotions. Everyone on the planet experiences these emotions daily, and many people are discontented on a daily basis. There are certainly strategies for dealing with normal, everyday unhappiness... but what if you didn’t need to deal with it?

Scientists are already using technology to read emotions in the brain, and many of the hormones that affect emotion are already known. Much as people use recreational drugs to feel good, it makes sense that some of the hormones that invoke happiness could become commercially available in pill form.

If it was legal and socially acceptable to take these pills, everyone who could afford them would buy them. The most common pill would be happy pills, which might be made of dopamine, which does invoke such emotions but is common in illegal drugs and could be addictive. The happy pills might be addictive but if enough people were hooked it could be acceptable to be constantly taking these pills. If the pills were widespread and seen as the norm, it could become socially unacceptable to be sad, and if you shared sad emotions with other people they would just tell you to pop a dopamine pill. Also, it could lead to higher rates of depression or bi-polarity and people would be unsatisfied in between taking the pills, unless it got so extreme that people were constantly high on happiness.

Another possible pill might be norepinephrine, a type of adrenaline that makes people more alert and focused. Made into pill form, it could be used for aerobic exercises like running, biking, and swimming to increase performance. With how advanced science is already becoming, there are assuredly other hormones and neurochemicals that will be developed that could affect one’s emotions.

I don’t know if being able to alter how you feel at will is a good idea. It would definitely be enjoyable to an extent, but I imagine that it would be abused by many people. I can’t imagine that easy access to happiness drugs wouldn’t pose health problems, and I don’t think this would be a beneficial thing. Happiness should be found in the things one does, interpersonal connections, love, creativity, from inside sources. If someone (excluding those with clinical depression) need drugs to be happy then they should change how they see the world or their lifestyle rather than rely on self-medication. Happiness pills would just be an advancement of the recreational drugs of today, and I doubt they would be beneficial to mankind.

If It Walks Like A Human and Talks Like A Human...

We watched Blade Runner: The Director's Cut in class. Going straight to the point, I think that the most important message of the movie is that a machine that looks like a human, walks like a human, talks like a human, and thinks like a human it is a human. Humans are machines made by evolution: the materials may be different, but our construction is essentially the same. A machine made to have the same (or greater) mental capacities should be treated as a sentient human. You shouldn’t make such a machine and expect it to be any less inventive and unpredictable and free-thinking as a human. If you make such a machine also almost physically invincible, you better make sure to keep it in check (unlike that sucker Tyrell). Obviously he never watched any sci-fi, which makes it quite obvious that he had it coming.

What would be the purpose of such a machine anyway? Mining in other planets? Companionship? Sex? All of these tasks could be more cheaply fulfilled by people, especially in an overpopulated planet like Blade Runner’s Earth is where labor is probably cheap. It seems silly to me to go to the massive, mind boggling expense of building a machine that’s as complex as a human for almost any task.

It would be unethical to make such a machine as well. It would be deprived of many of life’s pleasures, i.e. sex, drugs, rock and roll, and food. Unless you limited its lifespan, it would be close to immortal, which probably sucks. If you limited it and restricted it for its whole life, that would be slavery. Of course, in sci fi the theme is usually “ethics, who cares?”