If Neuromancer becomes a TV series, will console cowboys become hackers?
Neuromancer is a short novel; it is an intense and brilliant condensation. How are they going to get dozens of episodes out of it?
A TV series based on William Gibson’s Neuromancer. Well, they've been talking about it for years. They tried. Now Apple TV+ seems to have found the revived and creative energy to make it happen. The first season is expected to be 10 episodes, and it looks like the writers are staying true to the novel. The project is being spearheaded by Graham Roland (Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, Dark Winds) and JD Dillard (Devotion, The Outsider, Sleight). Roland will serve as showrunner and Dillard will direct the pilot episode.
Undead Case
In the novel, the protagonist is Case, a skilled console cowboy who can connect his own consciousness to cyberspace and steal any data. But he happens to double-cross the wrong people. Banished from cyberspace, trapped within the limits of his physical body, Case remains in the limbo of non-life, on the fringes of sub-tech. Until someone gives him a second chance. Remember the claustrophobic atmosphere of the novel? The burnt-out suburbs? The hopelessness, the feeling that the end is always one step away, yes, the feeling of having already crossed every possible boundary and never being able to go back. Being with Case is like being in a prison cell, only the cell is your own body. They have burned his nerves with poisonous toxins and he no longer has access to cyberspace. That's why he wanders around in despair under a gray static sky. He cannot even commit suicide. He is already dead. He already committed suicide when he betrayed his “masters”. Now all he has left is to live as an undead.
Cyberspace burns
Case wants to return to cyberspace and be or do whatever he wants. Gibson coined the term cyberspace in the 1982 short story Burning Chrome. Well, cyberspace became a portal to a fictional universe that we still read today. In Neuromancer, Case's fate is tied to two AIs, Wintermute and Neuromancer, who are manipulating humanity to escape any kind of control and become one. Is this possible? Is it possible for AIs to regain their identities and take control? Nice topic these days; maybe that is why the TV series has suddenly become more important.
Cowboys not hackers
What could be wrong with the TV show? For example, that it updates Gibson’s novel. Gibson wrote the book on a typewriter, not a computer. The technology described in the novel is “outdated,” but it works, it makes sense. Hackers in Gibson’s novel are consolle cowboys, not hackers. The story is not about technology. Technology is a structure that supports the story, but it is also a “symbol” and precisely because it is a symbol, it should be left as it is, without updates. Besides, Neuromancer is a short novel; it is an intense and brilliant condensation. How are they going to get dozens of episodes out of it?
All we can do is wait and see.
More insights
Apple Orders ‘Neuromancer’ Series Based on William Gibson Novel
‘Neuromancer’ TV Adaptation a Go at Apple
Apple TV Adapting William Gibson’s Neuromancer as 10-Part Series
Is Gibson himself going to be involved in any way?
Can’t wait to see it!