ENGL 817AL - Field Notes: Why the title, Neuromancer?

This post is going to contain spoilers for William Gibson's Neuromancer, so proceed with caution if you're planning to read this book in the future.

Getting our bearings in class around the artificial spaces in this book was an exercise in acknowledging that not everyone has the same reference points when it comes to relating the descriptions given in words to a correlated visual medium or media for context. Examples provided to try and bridge the gap of words to visualization of what Gibson was potentially trying to get across were The Matrix, TRON, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and Blade Runner. 

While this exercise was conducive to grounding our understanding of the text, that is not the most interesting thing that I picked up on. Our professor asked a question that no one was really able to answer, but I thought a lot about: "Why is the book titled Neuromancer, and not Wintermute even though Wintermute is the more prominent AI?"

My thoughts may come out a little jumbled, but I hope I get my point/theory across.

Gibson's text is called Neuromancer because it is the AI of the two that most resembles/relates/connects with Case's story and experience. As the novel states: "Neuromancer was personality. Neuromancer was immortality." Neuromancer explains to Case that it does not want Wintermute to succeed with the plan of breaking down the human limitations on them so they can merge together, it wants to remain as it is. It has a drive for survival, for its continued immortality in the state that it is in.

Case is a human neurologically cut off from the cyberspace for which he lived and breathe and to which he was effectively addicted. Case is in a downward self-destructive spiral until he is brought on to the mission that is being run by Wintermute to free itself. Over the course of the mission he begins making human reconnections and reconnections with himself, his "meat" body, and coming to terms with his reintegration with cyberspace. Case becomes invested in his own survival and the human capabilities of his body, so that he can remain able to access cyberspace.

This survival of who and what they are is what connects Case and Neuromancer - not Wintermute. Wintermute is analytical, "decision maker, effecting change in the world outside." Case and Neuromancer are more concerned with the internal - their own "self" - whereas Wintermute just wants to explore, learn, grow and become more that it is. It is not connected with Case in the same sense; it is just using Case as a means to an end, and that is why I think it is titled after Neuromancer, not Wintermute.

A discussion in this sense about title could also be applied to Yellowface. Yes, Kuang does the racial appropriation gymnastics of being an Asian woman that writes from the perspective of a white woman who "steals" and publishes the work of an Asian American woman. And, yes, there has been analysis of the yellowface controversy in the book, but a lot of the main plot has to do with the publishing industry and the stealing of another person's work. But, still, Kuang chose to title the book Yellowface to connect the text and reader in a very specific way to the main character.

I'm dabbling in this notion and idea that titling a book has to do in part either with the main character of a book or the main plot of a book. Definitely more to think about here...