William Gibson, Neuromancer

I first read Neuromancer sometime between high school and college, when this guy (who gave me The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide--wrapped in a towel!--for my 17th birthday) recommended it. He claimed that most of The Matrix had been taken from it, uncredited, and that if I liked the latter, I should check it out. It was unlike anything I'd ever read, and there were definitely distinct echoes of The Matrix, but I don't really remember much at all, beyond a scene or two that stuck with me, about that first time.

Recently, however, as I've been reading a lot about cyborgs, Neuromancer keeps showing up. It's considered the grandfather of cyberpunk novels, so I thought I should revisit it. I'm glad I did (I'm much better equipped to critique the essays that reference it), but in all I was pretty underwhelmed. My main impression was that it was not nearly as well-written or absorbing as Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon, which I had just read. The latter reads like a film; the former reads a bit more like the lines of characters that comprise the matrix and have to be deciphered. The real importance of the novel, though, I think, is that he's the one who imagined it.

Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

Pretty much everyone read this book before I did, and thought I would love it--especially the Italy bits, since I had lived there. They were right! I found the book completely charming, in turn hilarious, insightful, and moving.

I was initially struck by how similar to me author/narrator Liz Gilbert felt--her love of travel, her ability to make friends, her passion for my Italy. It became subsequently clear how very different we are, despite our similarities, but I think that's one of the book's strong points--a wide variety of audiences (at least of women) can relate.

I read the book in Hawaii, either on the beach or on the balcony, but I think that even if I hadn't, the book would have seemed like a miniature vacation. It did make me cry--I could identify more closely than I might have liked to with the heartbreak she felt--but it also made me laugh out loud and feel calmed and encouraged by her wisdom and the wisdom of others that she shares.

Richard Morgan, Altered Carbon

In my Time and Interactivity Seminar, I met a woman who, like me, was interested in cyborgs, and she and I ended up presenting on that subject on the same day. When we met at the Bad Waitress to talk about what each of us would be presenting, she mentioned this book to me, and loaned it to me at the next class period.

It looks like pure pulp sci-fi, especially its purplish, holographic cover, and I wasn't too sure about it. Plus, it's long--an inch and a half thick, and 534 pages--and so it didn't look like the sort of thing I could just breeze through and return. Still, I was about ready for something new to read, and accepted it.

In good sci-fi/cyberpunk fashion, the story opens right into the fictive world, terms and concepts undefined and left to the reader to work out. It makes for a bit of work at the beginning, but is not overwhelming and is well worth it. Morgan, an educated Brit, weaves a creative, carefully crafted, novel that is part cyberpunk, part noir detective story. His writing is highly literate, and, like the story, is articulate and complex, yet exciting and engaging.

Especially fascinating for me were the concepts introduced and the questions raised: what does death mean if the entire mind can be downloaded and re-uploaded? what does it mean to live in a previously-inhabited body? what about a synthetic body? how would it feel to know someone was wearing your old body? how much of attraction is embodied or chemical?

It might sound a little loopy... but I ended up writing a short paper on it (in relation to Henri Bergson's ideas about memory) and reading it twice. So there it is.