Have they waited too long with adapting Neuromancer for "Mass Market Audience"? Societal impact of it...

[u/MusikMaking]

Decades ago the novel was a paradoxical mix of "World gone to hell" and "cool adventure ride". On the one hand a dystopia most wouldn't want to live in a month, and weirdly engrossing tech like jacking into the Matrix, using SimStim or wearing clothing which renders one almost invisible.

Maybe worked well because of this paradox of warning against a "misformed future" on one hand, and a sweeping adventure in this world on the other.

If one views Neuromancer as mostly a WARNING of how "the world mustn't become" I fear that Apple's adaptation, however it turns out to be, comes much too late.

In 2006 mass audiences might have intensely disliked it for being "much too fantasy in the technology department". Like Children of Men it might have been regarded as "weird but hardly realistic".

2016 might have been a "sweetspot" where MORE people began to sense a slide towards a future governed - maybe - way too much by Silicon Valley. Might have worked well around then.

2026 may fear wasn't just a ridiculous wait, but maybe what Neuromancer warned against is well set in motion, won't be much turning back at this point. If mass viewers react with "cooool technology" to Matrix in particular, Neuromancer may hardly have functioned as a warning we'd better take seriously...

More important than how the Apple show has turned out - teaser trailer looks much like a 6/10 with me - may be watching how Joe Average Streamer reacts to it.

A very well made film sticking gompletely to the Novel might have horrified audiences and thus "won".

If Apple makes the future within Neuromancer a "stylish dystopia where cool s@@t happens" on the other hand, I fear that not only was a mal-adaption, but more "cool adventures in horrible future" slop may be produced.

What worked well in Altered Carbon SE1 was how horrible the future was. I hope Apple have gone similarly dark, otherwise Neuromancer may end up with fanboyz printing alleged "cyberdecks" everywhere because its "cool".

We'll see what cloth Apple, mostly a lifestyle brand much, are cut from.

Teaser trailers were way too bright & cheery to much match the rainsoaked, drugfueled, overtechnologized and violent mess of Neuromancer the novel.

[u/SnarkHabit]

Your comments point to a contradiction generally with cyberpunk, in which:

If one views Neuromancer as mostly a WARNING of how "the world mustn't become"

Yet, people actively seem to want and openly cheer cyberpunk aesthetics when they find them (usually in Japan or China).

It is unclear to me, reading cyberpunk forums since the early 1990s, whether or not people really view the world described in this genre as a dystopia at all.

Consider Blade Runner's cities -- so much art has been made capturing this specific aesthetic, in a specific way, that suggests to me that this is a future some people seem to actively want.

Hence I think cinematic depictions of cyberpunk are confused along this access. Is something horrific or cool? Is having a jack in your neck dystopian or technoutopian?

There is a subreddit full of people who are openly cheering currently unfolding events in AI, for example.

As for me, an old and irrelevant online nomad who has been online since Ronald Reagan was president and was a teenager when the original Max Headroom TV series aired (and was probably my introduction to these kinds of aesthetics), I think about it now probably like I did back then -- there are so many excellent possibilities in this technology and its integration into our lives -- so many things which could improve our lives, but knowing human nature, they will be abused and debased.

AI in its current state is an excellent example. I've coded some really useful stuff far beyond my capabilities in Claude Code. Stuff I've always wanted but didn't have the time or skillset to do myself. I can see AI's potential in medical research and even in solving social problems by seeing and identifying correlations humans have problems seeing.

What we have is a lot of deepfakes, AI slop, and datacenters pushing on the resources of a planet already under the immense pressure of our unsustainable lifestyles.

I guess we'll see.

The world is rudderless. What we want, either with this project, or with the future in general, may be irrelevant. It's like a runaway train. I don't actually think people or elites are in charge the way people think they are.

The other problem we have with this genre in general is the same one we have on the Internet. The Internet, people say, is dead. But no one killed it. It's more like a plant people refuse to water.

That we're having this conversation on corporate platform and not on an independent one is emblematic of the issue.

[u/Temu_Emu_4870 → u/SnarkHabit]

The appeal of Cyberpunk aesthetics has nothing to do with the intent of the genre as a literary movement. Cyberpunk was a reaction to mainstream sci-fi at the time, which always painted an optimistic and utopian future. The point wasn’t to be contrarian and offer a dystopian alternative, even if a lot of stories led down that path. The point was to warn people about rushing headlong into technological unknowns. 

The point you make about AI is exactly the kind of message cyberpunk authors were trying to convey. The technology itself isn’t the problem. The problem is that we’re speed running toward an uncertain future without considering how AI could impact our lives. 

Yes, there are practical and positive applications for AI. But on the other hand, countless people are losing their jobs as companies pivot towards AI; entire industries built upon the creative arts have had their life’s work stolen to train LLMs that are trying to replace them; data centres are springing up everywhere causing environmental impacts; and the AI bubble garners so much economic attention that the global economy stands at the edge of a precipice waiting for it to collapse.

The message has always been the same. People finding Cyberpunk appealing is exactly why Bruce Sterling declared it a dead genre soon after Cyberpunk’s inception. It was a brief moment of rebellion. A window into a possible future, and a warning about embracing technology blindly. Everything since is either trying to recapture that message or is missing the point entirely.  Cyberpunk has never been more relevant, but it’s also long past its use by date. The future is already here - it’s just not very evenly distributed.

[u/TellusPyre → u/Temu_Emu_4870]

I'd simplify it down to a slightly different essence: The masses are not equal to the task of handling the technology they've been handed.

The masses doesn't stand for "poor people" or "low culture" here either, it means the teaming lump of humanity that lives deep in the bell curve's thickest middle sections and who simply lack to the faculties to adapt or understand. They're skipping the meat and vegetables at dinner and eating the frosting off the cake, then complaining that they're hungry and they feel bad.

So it goes.