Cyberpunk Superstars

I can't say I'm familiar with all (or even most) of the cyberpunk tropes and authors, but I do enjoy the genre, and a couple of its brightest lights are among my favorite novels of all time. I'm talking about William Gibson's Neuromancer and Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. Let's see if I can convince any newbies to read either or - better yet - both of them. Maybe it'll help if I tell you right up front that one of the two features mirrored eyes; and both feature mind control, as well as two very different types of fascinating, smartass antiheroines. Oh, and the antiheroes are quite likable, too. ;-)

I'll start with Neuromancer, since that's the book that really introduced cyberpunk to the masses (In fact, Gibson himself coined the term cyberspace in an earlier work). In a nutshell, the story revolves around ex-hacker Case, whose punishment for his crimes is a biological modification that prevents him from accessing the 'net at all. When a shady ex-military officer offers to reverse the damage in exchange for Case's help in a dangerous scam, the plot is off and running. Soon we're introduced to fellow conspirator Molly Millions, who's the main reason I keep coming back to this story (and the others in which she appears) time and time again.

Oh, how to describe the delectable Molly? She's a "razor girl" or, as a group of spacefaring Rastafarians terms her, "Steppin' Razor" (Yes, you heard that right: spacefaring Rastafarians. And they're everything you'd imagine.). Molly is a top-flight street fighter and mercenary equipped with razor claws that she can extend from beneath her nails with a flick of the fingers. And she has mirrored lenses implanted in her eye sockets. When asked at one point how she cries, she says her tear ducts have been rerouted into her salivary glands, so, "I spit." That tells you all you need to know about Molly right there. And yet there's so much more...like her backstory involving sexual slavery and MC (not the only MC in this story, but to say more would be to spoil some nice surprises).

I've searched the web for even a halfway decent depiction of Molly; but unfortunately, this is the best I could come up with, and it doesn't do her justice by a long shot. In my mind she looks more like Gina Gershon. With a body, lips, and attitude like Gina's, who cares whether or not you can see her eyes? In fact, the fact that you can't see them just intensifies the attraction. She's the epitome of totally unattainable cool.

Neuromancer is justly regarded as a modern classic, even taught in some college classes. Gibson shows you why right from the start with this famous opening line: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." The whole book is written like that, which makes it at once fascinating, futuristic, and occasionally damned hard to understand. Gibson's attitude toward his readers seems basically to be, "Keep up if you can, suckers." I do love the book, but I had to read it two or three times to fully understand it.

Neal Stephenson is quite a bit friendlier in Snow Crash. This guy actually takes the time to explain things the reader might not understand - like avatars. Yes, just as Gibson gave us cyberspace, Stephenson gave us avatars. Everyone on the internet knows what they are now, but the idea (in its modern form, anyway) started right here. Snow Crash is another piece of seminal cyberpunk, responsible for many of the ideas we now take for granted both in SF and on the real live internet.

It's also occasionally, unexpectedly hilarious. Take, for example, our protagonist, whose actual name is Hiro Protagonist. He's a half-black, half-Asian computer genius who (because of poor people skills and that damned samurai sword he won't let go of) has been reduced to delivering pizzas for the Mafia. In this dystopian future, the Mafia is an organization at least as open and legitimate as any other...which isn't saying much. Anyway, Hiro doesn't deliver pizzas for very long, or we wouldn't have a story; but before he loses the job Stephenson does manage to fire off this hilarious, over-the-top description of Hiro's delivery vehicle, which is still my favorite passage from the entire book:

A row of orange lights burbles and churns across the front, where the grille would be if this were an air-breathing car. The orange light looks like a gasoline fire. It comes in through people's rear windows, bounces off their rearview mirrors, projects a fiery mask across their eyes, reaches into their subconscious, and unearths terrible fears of being pinned, fully conscious, under a detonating gas tank, makes them want to pull over and let the Deliverator overtake them in his black chariot of pepperoni fire.

Is that brilliant or what?

Anyway, after losing his job, Hiro teams up with a punky teen who calls herself Y.T. (I'll leave it to the novel's readers to discover what the initials stand for) and who has, if not actual biological implants like Molly, a rather unique device called a "dentata" which she uses as a defense against potential rapists. If you're not familiar with the reference, click here - but DO NOT READ THE SNOW CRASH SPOILER at the bottom. You're meant to wonder just how dentata-y Y.T.'s dentata really is; and the payoff, when it comes, is truly hilarious.

Y.T. herself is a very cool character, not a smartass movie-teen with a bigger brain and fancier vocabulary than most adults (Yes, Juno, I'm talking to you). Okay, well, Y.T. is a smartass...but she can also be just as dim and clueless as any real teenager, especially when it comes to matters of the hormones. Thus the dentata scene, which will leave you screaming - but only with laughter. I promise. ;-)

But wait - there's an actual plot here, too. And yes, it does involve mind control - as well as computer viruses that can infect human brains; ancient (I kid you not) Sumerian mythology; and a bad guy so dangerous that not only does he have "Poor Impulse Control" tattooed across his forehead, but he also drives a motorcycle equipped with a hydrogen bomb where the sidecar used to be, rigged to detonate if his brain ever ceases to function.

And did I mention the mind control? People with actual antennas sticking out of their actual heads. Yeah, it's that kind of story. ;-) And Hiro really can use that samurai sword. Snow Crash is a totally insane, wacky, badass book - as opposite from Neuromancer as two books in the same genre can be, but every bit as wonderful.

I recommend both very highly.