Essential linkage: Find out what William Gibson got right and wrong in Neuromancer, the classic cyberpunk novel.
Bill Gibson famously wrote Neuromancer - a novel of a near future full of slick hackers, alarmingly intelligent and powerful AI and social dystopianism - on a mechanical typewriter. He was merely trying to write the classic 'good story, well told', and while he nailed that in spades, he also created one of the flagship novels of the cyberpunk movement, while presaging and inspiring a number of real technologies.
The folks over at MacWorld decided to cellbrate the book's recent 25th publishing anniversary with a neat little article on the tech that Gibson so vividly invented and wrote about. It details what's come to pass, and what might be just around the corner...
The goal of plastic surgery in Neuromancer is not so much to enhance beauty as to serve anonymity. Gibson's characters wear their altered skin like masks. In chapter 4 Gibson describes the face of a local gangster in Chiba City: "His [Angelo] face was a simple graft grown on collagen and shark-cartilage polysaccharides, smooth and hideous." The same character might show up a year later with a completely different face, the novel suggests. Just this year, the science of plastic surgery achieved its first full-face transplant. Plastic surgeons routinely enhance biceps, chest, and butt muscles. When science perfects the growth of human tissue to predetermined specifications, the industry will likely mushroom again. Twenty-five years after Neuromancer, Gibson's vision of the, uh, "beauty image" is closer than you might think.
The goal of plastic surgery in Neuromancer is not so much to enhance beauty as to serve anonymity. Gibson's characters wear their altered skin like masks. In chapter 4 Gibson describes the face of a local gangster in Chiba City: "His [Angelo] face was a simple graft grown on collagen and shark-cartilage polysaccharides, smooth and hideous." The same character might show up a year later with a completely different face, the novel suggests.
Just this year, the science of plastic surgery achieved its first full-face transplant. Plastic surgeons routinely enhance biceps, chest, and butt muscles. When science perfects the growth of human tissue to predetermined specifications, the industry will likely mushroom again. Twenty-five years after Neuromancer, Gibson's vision of the, uh, "beauty image" is closer than you might think.
It's a great little piece, not just for its analysis, but also as a timely reminder of just what an incredible work Neuromancer is. If you've not read it, or haven't read it in years (and trust us, it gets better with every re-read), now's a great time to get back in touch with the book.
Issue: 109 | February, 2010