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Had I read Neuromancer upon release I'm sure I would have loved it. But I didn't. I'm reading it years after its legacy has cemented itself as a tone-setting hallmark of the cyberpunk genre. I've seen this story told in movies and games to the point that its world, terminology and themes have been exhausted of what original value they brought to the table.

For its part, Neuromancer has an incredibly detailed, thoughtful backdrop. It is effectively the encyclopedia of cyberpunk tropes. Its language is so evocative that it has become the de facto standard for how dystopian futurism is communicated to this day. If you want to be a tourist in such a world - to experience the voyeurism of a futuristic anti-corporate heist while being roped along in a criminal military-industrial plot - this book is your ticket to that gritty, nihilist amusement ride. In this regard the book excels. I grew up on The Matrix, Bladerunner, 2001, and have dabbled in Shadowrun; as a historical exercise, I feel like I'm uncovering the communal reference material for many of my favorite genre classics.

What it lacks, however, feels all the more absent now that we've seen twists on the genre that have improved on the source. The book's themes feel like cliches. The interface of humanity and technology, whether artificial intelligence is consciousness, and what extreme corporate power looks like in a future of ruthless space-capitalism - your typical technobabble base. Unfortunately, the book just never poses many questions beyond this standard dystopian affair. There's no suggestion of how society can do better, there's nobody fighting for salvation - the personalities all feel like uninspired cardboard cutouts of people. Despite posing so many dystopian questions, the questions just don't go anywhere. The book poses these questions and resigns to wallowing in their inevitability. It's long-form late-night couch philosophy culminating in "what does it all mean, man?", but at least it's set against the backdrop of futuristic drug abuse, robotic augmentation and cyberdecking into the matrix. What's worse, anything that isn't your standard heist plot dressed in a futuristic setting feels like it hangs all of the dirty laundry of the 80s out to dry - primary among them are sexism and xenophobia. Not for any critical purpose as far as I can tell - just the spirit of the times seeping through into a socially unimaginative distant future. And it's hard to chalk up to the era when contemporaries like Ursula K. Le Guin were exploring concepts like the fluidity of gender identity at the same time.

If there's any saving grace in the book from a critical perspective it is the time spent with the space Rastafarians. I'm not in a position to comment on the authenticity of Rastafarian beliefs or practices, but the introduction of a civilization living with intention to reject and disrupt the ruling corporatocracy was the furthest the book goes into philosophy or politics. It amounts to an unfortunately short detour before the book hops back into full-fledged space heist.

If you're new to cyberpunk worlds, this is a great start. It offers more than enough world building and drips with neon cybernetic style to help get you acquainted with the fundamentals of the genre. If you've been steeped in the genre already, this book offers a nice history lesson, but is a comparatively shallow experience after seeing how much better the genre can be.

A slow-burn psychological thriller that ramps up to a fever pitch while hitting quite a few strong notes along the way.

The Lathe of Heaven is uniquely gripping because its themes seem to morph so fluidly throughout the novel, giving just enough breath to each to offer social commentary while still leaving plenty of air for the reader to ponder the implications. Just to name a few, the book hits on self medication, spiraling into incarceration, medical/psychological research and its ethical implications, weighing ethical responsibilities to individuals against humanity at large, our duty to monitor our unconscious biases and an amnesic fading grasp on reality. Explored in a surrealist fictional present, these topics are provided with enough distance from our real-world understanding to mull them over with fresh eyes.

Of these, I was particularly interested in the ethics of research science as these considerations still ripple through the field of medical research today. The book offers a caricature of a fantastical medical research scenario, but its underpinning themes are still critical factors of any medical research. How patient consent is communicated, how experiments are approved, how the disadvantaged (in this case the addicted and incarcerated) may be exploited for medical gain, the professional impact of discovery, the profit motive of research and the calculus of weighing advancing knowledge that can benefit all of humanity against the sacrifices of individuals. These problems surface in our daily lives in an attenuated capacity and the book offers a hyperbolic chamber of decision making to allow us to weigh their impact.

Beyond the themes themselves, the mechanics of the story unfold in a very tangible way. The only other work of Le Guin's that I've read so far is The Left Hand of Darkness, and I found the two novels to be quite the stark contrast. Where it felt like understanding Left Hand of Darkness' world was preconditioned on an encyclopedic memory of the world's setting, The Lathe of Heaven trimmed a lot of the sci-fi fat down to only what was necessary to drive an analysis of its themes. I appreciated how direct this was, letting me devote more of my reading energy toward reflecting on the book instead of constantly retreating into the recesses of world lore to keep up. What's more, for as much as the Lathe of Heaven sticks close to many science fiction tropes, they're approached from such a unique angle that no part of the book felt like it's been overdone, even half a century after it was written.

The Lathe of Heaven was a refreshingly concise analysis of a litany of social themes, packing quite a few narrative beats into such a concise form factor. I would consider it a must read for any fans of socially critical science fiction.