this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2024
105 points (92.7% liked)

Science Fiction

13722 readers
30 users here now

Welcome to /c/ScienceFiction

December book club canceled. Short stories instead!

We are a community for discussing all things Science Fiction. We want this to be a place for members to discuss and share everything they love about Science Fiction, whether that be books, movies, TV shows and more. Please feel free to take part and help our community grow.

  1. Be civil: disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally insult others.
  2. Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, or advocating violence will be removed.
  3. Spam, self promotion, trolling, and bots are not allowed
  4. Put (Spoilers) in the title of your post if you anticipate spoilers.
  5. Please use spoiler tags whenever commenting a spoiler in a non-spoiler thread.

Lemmy World Rules

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Tenthrow@lemmy.world
105
Why is Neuromancer so hard to get in to? (self.sciencefiction)
submitted 3 weeks ago by BennyInc to c/sciencefiction@lemmy.world
48 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I just started reading Neuromancer, and finished the first two chapters. Can someone encourage me to keep on reading? It’s just so… disorienting. Very quick scene changes, hard to follow dialogues (who is actually talking?), too much jargon (I have read up on some, to get the gist), … I just feel lost, and doubt I will enjoy it at some point.

I like various degrees of scifi, and many people recommended the book (and the ones following it). I also fought through some harder chapters in Trisolaris, Children of Memory, The Expanse books, CS Lewis‘ Space Trilogy, … but Neuromancer is on awholenother level.

Is it just me? Did anyone else have a hard time with it? Does it get better? Is it worth it?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] peto@lemm.ee 16 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I think a lot of the appeal is that it does just drop you right in at the deep end and doesn't set out much of the bigger picture stuff right there at the front. It's not going to be to everyone's liking.

It's got a lot in common with hardboiled stories, except that where your classic hardboiled detective is moving through a world we are somewhat familiar with, Case is moving through somewhere rather more exotic. You might get some benefit from reading Burning Chrome and Johnny Mnemonic which are short stories then coming back.

There is probably something to be said for just visualising rather than trying to understand.

[–] BennyInc 3 points 3 weeks ago

As someone with Aphantasia that’s easier said than done 😄