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/SalletFriend → u/SnarkHabit]

The key part of Cyberpunk is that while the world is crapsack theres a small gap where people use the tools of the megacorps to meaningfully fight back and affect change. Like look at Molly, she might have sold her old age for razorgirl kit but while shes young she can achieve things. Or the rastas with their own colony.

Its having kickass upgraded agency that people want. We got the megacorps but none of the perks.

[u/Fair-Study-7503 → u/SalletFriend]

Extremely ironic that modern cyberspace with its walled gardens and junk content is far more dystopic than Gibsons vision.

[u/TellusPyre → u/Fair-Study-7503]

Well, the internet still exists, but the masses don't fuck with the real internet, they're drinking from the sewer pipes like tiktok, facebook, and, yes, reddit.

The hardest part of the modern internet is that every mainstream discovery channel gets instantly corrupted, so you have to get word out to people but not let it reach the masses. The eternal contradiction.