Comments on: Neuromancer

By: TM

TM — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 08:58:31 +0000

I never felt that much association between Blade Runner and Neuromancer. The first line of the book sets the atmosphere for the trilogy; the rest is texture. Blade Runner certainly saturates your pores, and I think it does so in a way that Neuromancer doesn’t even attempt. Ridley Scott’s film world is dense and oppressive, as is The Sprawl, but Blade Runner almost leaves you feeling like you need a shower to wash off the residue of that world. Sure they’re similar, but I think they share much in common with so many other dystopian near-futures. It’s not quite on-topic, but I heard Scott in interview explain that he never read Do Androids … ? because he didn’t want PKD’s world to influence the one he was trying to create. At the time I found that incredibly arrogant, but maybe Scott’s is truly a stand-alone creation.

By: Garrett

Garrett — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 04:27:07 +0000

No problem! Supposedly there’s a movie version in the works starring the (adult) Anakin dude. I’m sure it’ll rip off Blade Runner’s visual sensibilities!

By: Claire Evans

Claire Evans — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 03:30:04 +0000

Wow, thank you for this link! This is a very exciting further muddle of the relationship between Blade Runner and Neuromancer.

By: Garrett

Garrett — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:33:53 +0000

Alright, found it:http://www.brmovie.com/FAQs/BR_FAQ_BR_Influence.htm

By: Garrett

Garrett — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:29:11 +0000

I actually read in an interview somewhere (I’ll try to find it) that Gibson saw Blade Runner when it first came out and was so dismayed that he almost stopped writing Neuromancer. Blade Runner had captured the aesthetic he had in mind, and he was afraid of being accused of plagiarism when he completed and released his book.

By: Claire Evans

Claire Evans — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:40:58 +0000

I guess it just depends which one you heard of first, right?

By: evan

evan — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 02:46:16 +0000

the trip is figuring out whether or not the atmosphere of blade runner and neuromancer actually share that many links to begin with, or if its just some pre existing association that generated before your exposure to either thing. i’m having the same problem with raymond chandler books and humphrey bogart movies right now. how much do they ACTUALLY have in common…?but you’re right, gibson doesn’t really spend pages explaining what things are like, that is left up to the reader. so its not his fault we all imagine that it looks like blade runner…

By: Claire Evans

Claire Evans — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 10:11:43 +0000

Whoa. No way! I'm already getting schooled by my readers. Thank you.I know that Blade Runner is loosely based on Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep -- sometimes it seems that every decent sci-fi movie has at least a little Dick in it -- but I genuinely thought the scenery, that muggy, crime-ridden, techno-Japanese slum, came from Gibson. I wonder if it was the other way around? What a trip.There are so many other similarities, too! The "off-world" nature of human colonial future (Freeside, in the case of Neuromancer). There's a lot of interesting parallels here:http://www.cla.purdue.edu/academic/engl/theory/postmodernism/plans/postmodplansmatrix.htmlDid you hear this amazingly garbage rumor about Neuromancer being made into a movie starring Hayden Christensen? Somebody get this guy away from the classics!

By: JoDee

JoDee — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 00:27:34 +0000

It's a fine book and definitely broke some ground, but Bladerunner was released two years before it was published, and that in turn was based on Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep written about 25 years earlier. I fully realize that this is a geeky comment, and now I have to go reread both. And buy the dvd that has 3000+ versions of the movie.

By: Claire Evans

Claire Evans — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 17:13:12 +0000

Done and done!