Category: Blog

There are few books that have been published in my lifetime that have had such a profound influence on not only literature, but on the world at large as William Gibson’s 1984 novel, Neuromancer.

 At its core, Neuromancer is a detective noir story set in a dystopian future. But this isn’t a novel that can be accounted for in simple terms.

Neuromancer is told from the perspective of our narrator, Henry Dorsett Case. Case is the novel’s reluctant anti-hero: a suicidal, drug-addled ex-hacker residing without work in Chiba City, Japan. Almost from the outset, we see Case as a world-weary cynic who bums around in bars trying not to let his past catch up with him. The last time he was caught, his captors destroyed his nervous system, making it impossible for Case to access Cyberspace, – a term coined by Gibson that has become part of our common lexicon:

“Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts… A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.”

Though Gibson saw this through dystopian eyes, the word and the concept of Cyberspace is now an inescapable part of modern life. I’m not sure how true this is, but author Jack Womack argued that Gibson’s conception of Cyberspace inspired the structure of the World Wide Web, asking “what if the act of writing it down, in fact, brought it about?” If there is even a shred of truth to this assertion, then this alone surely secures Gibson’s legacy as one of the most important creative imaginations of the last century, and I say this without exaggeration.

The drama of the story begins when Case is tracked down by Molly, a “street samurai” who works as a mercenary for an ex-army officer who goes by the name of Armitage. Through Case’s drug-fuelled paranoia, he convinces himself that Molly works for his ex-employer; he outruns her through the sprawl of neon lined streets, only to be accosted by her in his hotel room, which is barely larger than a coffin. Molly had modified her body with all manner of cybernetic enhancements: a tweaked nervous system; retractable four-centimetre long razors that are hidden beneath her fingernails; and lenses implanted into her eye sockets which give her enhanced sight and allow her to be fed information about what she is looking at.

Prior to being a razor girl, Molly worked as a prostitute. Of course, this is the dystopian future, so she wasn’t your usual prostitute. Sex workers were given neural implants that turned off their memories and limited their ability to control and reason their actions. Thus prostitutes were nothing more than hired meat-puppets who acted upon the whims of their employers – no matter how dark or depraved. It was only when Molly began to experience and remember what she otherwise couldn’t that she was able to get out of prostitution by blackmailing a sadistic senator with a penchant for murdering women. The idea of women being turned into sex zombies I found very disturbing, mainly because it isn’t that far from the realms of possibility.

Molly takes Case to Armitage and a deal is struck: Case’s services in exchange for his neural problems to be fixed. Suffice to say, Case jumps at the opportunity. Armitage is an incredibly complex and ambiguous character: his identity, both physically and metaphorically, is merely of his own creation. Indeed, it seems as though the more Case gets to know Armitage, the more detached Armitage seems from, not only reality, but his own personality. It is never made clear whether Armitage is the main man running the operation, or whether he is acting as another middleman (there are subtle suggestions of both possibilities throughout the book, but they are always in the guise of speculation and conjecture).

Beyond the techno-fetishism and the cybernetic-dystopia of Neuromancer, there is also oodles of charm and humour. Neuromancer is not a funny book: it takes itself quite seriously, but with this seriousness, the wit and personality of some of its characters can’t help but add an extra dimension to the proceedings. For example, when Armitage arranges for the repair of Case’s nervous system he says, “You needed a new pancreas. The one we bought for you frees you from a dangerous dependency.” To which Case responds, “Thanks, but I was enjoying that dependency.”

Though the novel is set in the future, there are many points in the story that give a direct nod to popular culture of the early-1980s. Indeed, the concept of cyberspace is simply Gibson’s speculative extrapolation of early videogames. But it’s not just technology and science that Gibson draws on in his vision of the future. With the proliferation of Rastafarianism in the late-1970s, it is perhaps of little wonder that a band of Rastafarian outlaws are key to the development of Neuromancer’s narrative. Gibson draws on the imagery of the dreadlocked, dub-loving pot-smoker adorned with bright colours, and combines it with a space ship (called Zion, no less).

Case spends much of the latter part of the novel hooked up to the Matrix (sound familiar?). Sometimes he experiences the real-world, but from the perspective of Molly’s cybernetic lenses, at others, he’s interacting with Artificial Intelligence constructs, that end up forming a key part of the plot. One such construct is Wintermute, who spends much of the novel attempting to break its programme and develop a personality. It’s difficult to outline Wintermute without spoiling some key elements of the plot, but all I’ll say is that Wintermute adds a great sense of mystery and intrigue to the novel. Indeed, the inclusion of Wintermute (and other AI constructs) has a similar uncanny effect that Asimov and Dick capture, in that it raises questions about the nature of consciousness, intelligences, determinism and freewill – essentially, you empathise with Wintermute.

The novel is full of incredibly vivid descriptions that manage to capture a real sense of the world and its characters with a few well-chosen turns of phrase. “The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel”, as an opening line couldn’t be more perfect in conveying a feeling of the world. Or the description of a speed-freak’s eyes as “eggs of unstable crystal, vibrating with a frequency whose name was rain and the sound of trains, suddenly sprouting a humming forest of hair-fine glass spines.”

The importance and influence of Neuromancer cannot be underestimated, even if we dismiss completely the idea that Gibson’s creative imagination was the catalyst for the invention of the World Wide Web. The term Cyberpunk was coined by a critic in reaction to this novel. The imagery, ideas and concepts associated with Cyberpunk have become a frequently visited well for creative people from fashion designers to TV writers, from game designers to musicians. I am in absolute awe that the residue of one creative mind has left such indelible marks on our world. It is a humble man, indeed, who can create such an important work of literature, and resist the urge to shout arrogantly from the rooftops: “I created this!”

Forget your dance mats and plastic guitars, the best ever dance game was on the Playstation and it had aliens, robots and school girls to jive with…

Released in 1998 on the PS1, Bust-a-Groove is a game where you tap predetermined buttons in time with the soundtrack. However simplistic this sounds, it piles on so much fun and charm that it ranks as one of my favourite games of all time.

From its opening moments the presentation screams ’90s popular culture, scratch-mixed samples and quick video cuts transporting you back to a time when MTV wasn’t clogged up with reality shows about dopey teenage girls.

To begin, you have the option of choosing one of ten characters: the fat break-dancing burger-freak Hamm; a creepy, sexy-adult-baby called Kelly; the Capoeira Twins – a pair of dancing aliens lifted straight from the X Files; a 200ft high voguing robot – Robo Z; a school girl called Shorty who dances with her pet mouse, and many others. Each character is unique, with their own bizarre costumes, individual dance routines, and songs that echo the character’s personality.

After tweaking your fully-editable move set, it’s time to play through the game. Whereas modern rhythm games have a tendency to licence songs from existing artists, or provide a substandard cover version of a famous song with the moniker “as made famous by…”, Bust-a-Groove had its own original soundtrack.

The songs spanned the genres: from Funk to Hip-Hop; Disco to House. Each tune was infectious and memorable. And if you made a mistake, you weren’t punished for it in the way that you are on later games where you get hit in the ears by a horrible guitar crunch, or are simply kicked off for your ineptitude. Instead, your character shakes themselves off like a wet dog, and tries to get back into the rhythm – this feature made the game incredibly accessible. Indeed, the difficulty of the button combos performed can be chosen during play as you are given the choice of two options with each line of the song, meaning that a player has control over exactly how difficult they want their experience to be, without having to leave the round to tweak the game’s difficulty settings.

Though the game is entertaining in single-player mode, Bust-a-Groove really comes into its own in the multiplayer mode. The accessibility of the game balances perfectly with its depth. I first came across Bust-a-Groove through a mate of mine who owned a chipped Playstation. He brought it round my house and we played the Japanese version of the game non-stop for about a week. Ironically, the guy owned the biggest collection of pirated games I think I’ve ever seen, and now works as a Trading Standards officer – I wonder if he ever mentioned his games collection at work?

After stripping the skin off my thumbs on the game, I sought an English version and played it relentlessly, figuring out all the tricks and hidden dance moves and attacks that can be utilised in multi-player mode.

The rest of my family hadn’t mastered the game like I had, but we could all sit around in my sister’s bedroom and play the game. I always won of course, but it didn’t matter because we all had fun playing it and it was neither here nor there who was the better player (but I was).

There are very few multiplayer games that transcend the generations and allow even the weakest players to have fun and play each level right to the end. Even family favourites like Mario Kart kick the losing players off the game before everyone has finished the course. Bust-a-Groove rewards competent players once the round is finished by the inclusion of Fever Time. Fever Time doesn’t activate if you simply beat your opponent, it comes into effect when you hit most of the beats in the song. Fever Time allows you to watch as your character flips and dances across the screen in celebration – it’s very satisfying to watch.

Two decades later, I still find myself occasionally humming the tune to Shorty and the EZ Mouse.

A story about the kidnapping and murder of countless children is the subject of today’s review. But don’t worry; it’s not one of those trauma memoirs: it’s a kid’s book!

Before rereading The Witches, I was filled with a mixture of excitement and trepidation: I hadn’t read the book for almost twenty years, and I was worried that my cynical scoffery as a jaded 30-something would stamp on those rose-tinted glasses that served my fond memories of this book so well. Luckily for me, Roald Dahl is a great writer, and I was quickly reassured that I had absolutely nothing to worry about.

Witches hate children. They hate children so much, that they try to kill at least one child a week (“One child a week, is fifty-two a year. Squish them and squiggle them, and make them disappear!”). Why do witches hate children so much? Because, to witches, children smell of dog’s droppings. And when they are not engaged in the kidnapping and murder of children, witches spend the rest of their time obsessing about the best ways to do away with them: a crippling and debilitating addiction, you must admit. It must be a hard life being a witch, but I just can’t bring myself to empathise with the child murder bit.

The subject of child murder probably isn’t what most children’s authors think of when they start to write a book. But Roald Dahl makes the killing of children seem like something quite amusing. Perhaps it is because witches fear capture more than anything else that they have utilised all manner of creative ways of splatting and squishing children. One such death was administered by a witch turning a young boy into a slug, with the child’s own father flushing the slug away with boiling water. Another saw a child magically transformed into a mackerel and served up to the child’s unsuspecting mother, so that the mother would commit an unwitting act of cannibalism. When you start to think about it, this is all very sinister stuff.

In order to distract the boy from the grief of losing his mother and father in such tragic circumstances, his grandmother starts to regale him with stories of witches – only they aren’t stories, they’re real.

What I particularly like about The Witches is the warmth of the relationship between the boy (our unnamed narrator and protagonist) and his grandmother (a cigar-smoking, ex-witch hunter). After the boy’s parents were killed after driving into a ravine, he moves in with his grandmother in Norway. In order to distract the boy from the grief of losing his mother and father in such tragic circumstances, his grandmother starts to regale him with stories of witches – only they aren’t stories, they’re real. That’s right, in order to comfort a grieving child and make him feel safe, she scares the shit out him – as if the poor lad wasn’t traumatised enough. Witches, as his grandmother notes, look like normal women, but they can be spotted if you know what to look for: they wear gloves to hide their clawed hands; they wear wigs to cover their bald heads; their eyes change colour; and their spit is blue.

                                              The drama of the story really begins to build at around halfway through the story, when the boy and his grandmother are staying in the Hotel Magnificent in Bournemouth. During their stay, the boy becomes trapped in a ballroom filled with all of England’s witches and the Grand High Witch, at what is seemingly the witches’ AGM. Reading the tension of this scene back almost twenty years later, I can’t believe that this scene didn’t scare me half to death. The boy was hidden behind a screen and saw the Grand High Witch murder a witch who had interrupted her with sparks from her hands, and listened as she outlined her diabolical plan to turn the children of England into mice. At the end of the meeting , one of the witches smells dog’s droppings. The boy’s cover is blown, and he is transformed into a mouse.

I love the ending of The Witches; I’m not going to detail it here, that’s for you to find out. I recall that when I was about nine, a film version of The Witches was released. I remember that I really enjoyed it, except for the ending. They’d Hollywoodified the ending, and I hated it. For some tenuous and half-explained reason, the High Witch of England (the team leader of Witches GB) had a pang of guilt and decided to change everything back to how it was before the witches had turned the boy into a mouse. A major lesson in the book is that people can live and find happiness in even the most terrible of situations. The ending of the book is bittersweet, but the film took that away.

Revisiting The Witches was a lot of fun, it was weird how familiar each paragraph was, and how familiar each of Quentin Blake’s illustrations were. Blake’s illustrations ooze charm. They capture the childish simplicity and slightly sinister edge of Dahl’s work perfectly. The partnership between Dahl’s and Blake’s creative imaginations is absolutely perfect. I’d even go as far to say that not enough credit is given to Blake’s illustrations in creating the complete experience. Yes, the stories are excellent, but it is the illustrations that add that final magical ingredient to make them great.

Fans of Roald Dahl will already know that he has an incredibly dark sense of humour. Dahl utilises this dark comedy to espouse his very firm moral code that says that if you are a little shit, you will get your comeuppance. Look at the group of golden ticket winners in Charlie and the Chocolate factory. Apart from Charlie they are all abhorrent: spoilt, greedy, lazy, obnoxious – and Dahl takes great delight in punishing them in ironic ways. For me, this is great moral lesson that all children should be forced to learn. Compare this with the moral code in a book like Michael Rosen’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt – a book which teaches children that if something’s remotely scary, then it’s not worth the risk. The Witches teaches children not to let fear win, to always look for the positive angle in a bad situation, and that sometimes we have to fight for something bigger than ourselves.