Neuromancer Part 3:
Midnight in the Rue Jules Verne
Dean Taciuch
George Mason University
Ch 8
The physics of the cigar-shaped spindle involve rotational gravity (centrifugal force: rotational force pushing object away from center). The narrower the spindle, the less rotation, so the ends of the spindle have lower gravity (zero at end points).
Disorientation is due to lack of normal up and down. The sky in Freeside is a light system suspended from its center. If you could see past it, you'd see the "ground" on the other side of the inside surface.
Climbing up into gravity would be like climbing upside down (103)
SAS: Space adaptation syndrome.
A severe motion sickness caused by zero-g
and acceleration
Rastafarianism: religion of Ethiopian/African origin,
popularized in Jamaica/Caribbean.
Ethopia is Zion (holy land); the rest of the secular world is Babylon.
Ganja (marijuana) is a sacred herb.
The Rastas in Zion are remnants of the construction crew for Freeside.
The matrix is "Babylon" (106)
Dixie Flatline's predicament: is he alive? He is a ROM contruct, not RAM
(ROM: static read-only memory; RAM is dynamic random-access memory)
Ch 9
Case goes braindead (116-121) and we get the first of his internal visions--presented by Wintermute (abbeviated in these notes as W/M).
Linda appears and tries to get him to stay. Then Case visits Julie Deane, who is really Wintermute.
W/M explains a bit about Corto, and warns that he is becoming unstable. W/M
is only one part of a larger structure. Case shoots him.
(120): W/M is part of larger "potential entity." Like a man whose lobes have been severed. A lobotomized patient is passive; personality (self) is destroyed.
W/M has no personality, no coherent self, like a lobotomized mental patient
Ch 10
the hive dream (126-27).
The delivery of the icebreaker: Kuang Grade Mark Eleven
Question of AI motives: as Dix explains, they are not human (131). Dix is a construct, but he's a human construct. The AI is not.
132: question of AI autonomy: it has limited citizenship, but TA own the mainframe and the program. And the Turing police monitor all AIa for signs of autonomy.
Ch 11
Riviera's performance at the 20th Century club. Dedicated to 3jane and designed to enrage Molly (we don't know why yet, but it has to do with her background as a meat puppet)
Case finds Molly in a meat puppet cubicle, studying. She tells him her story
(147-49)
Cut out circuit prevents the women from remembering, but Molly's bio work broke
the cut out, and she remembered the sex murders she had been part of. Riviera's
show had created just such a scene.
Ch 12
Case's "rage" (152). W/M has created this for him, as motivation.
Case sees Linda's face in the articfiial stars (this is Neuromancer's doing,
as we find out later).
Arrest by the Turing police.
Background
Part 1: Chiba City Blues
Part 2: The Shopping Expedition
Part 3: Midnight in the Rue Jules Verne
Part 4: The Straylight Run & Coda
Closing and Discussion
