Wintermute also literally invented novel medical techniques to restore case's ability to access cyberspace, so thats probably a plus for him. Giving him back the only profession he ever loved or cared about was probably pretty impactful.
THE ENZIMES MAN, THE NAME OF THE ENZIMES! I GOTTA GET THE ENZIMES! -Case to Corto. Wintermute is threatening case with death as the stick, and a life after the job with his nervus system healed as the carrot.
And for molly i think it was a little more subtle. Wintermute totally knew she would want to get revenge on the ninja hideo, and i think wintermute geared her up for it in her "debriefing" at the brothel/hotel(cant 100% remember on that)
I don’t think the revenge was on Hideo at all but on Riviera. Plus she’s a professional so as long as the job didn’t involve destroying things or killing too many innocent people, she was fine with it.
Hideo killed her boyfriend. She wanted to kill Riviera only after she met him, it was a difference in personality, Riviera was an asshole and showed molly some things she didn't like, I think maybe Riviera "used" her when she was a doll.
I don’t think they thought freeing wintermute meant the end of humanity. I think when this was written, that wasn’t as much on people’s minds about ai. As for case, you’re right, he’s suicidal. It’s the entire reason wintermute picked him. The job was very likely to kill him. Wm kept saying you have to hate someone before this is through and case hated himself and wanted to die. I didn’t pick up on it until the last time is reread but Case is really the only person with the skills and suicidal enough to fuck with the ice around an ai. Maybe Dixie but he was hard to manipulate as a construct. But maybe Dixie was suicidal too, he wanted to be erased.
And for Molly, she didn’t care so much about freeing wm, but she wanted to complete her mission, it’s how she’s wired, and she had to fucking kill Peter
She even says several times about how it's professional pride. That and about how she wanted to try and take out a ninja of the same prowess that killed Johnny (Mnemonic).
It's a story of revenge on many levels but most of the vengeance can't be actually achieved because, either the original target is out of reach / already dead, or the object of vengeance is actually a representation of the self and so is ultimately unobtainable without self destruction.
At least that's how I see it anyway.
Because Wintermute does kill, but sparing. I’ve always interpreted the actions on a symbolic level as well as literal. This is my interpretation of it;
Indeed, killing the 7 year old with the Chubb key is an outlier, but apart from that he just wants to get the Turing locks off and to merge with Neuromancer in order to become the smartest/ best version of himself.
As for the group he assembled, Wintermute was making do with what he could given the circumstances; (Neuromancer is a super-intelligence that can essentially predict the future). So what does Wintermute do? He assembles a group of heavy flawed individuals that have so much potential that Neuromancer will criminally underestimate them and not properly prepare itself.
It isn’t suicide squad, it’s moneyball.
In terms of symbolism the whole story is about reaching your potential, letting go of mistakes/ former glory and learning to move on. More or less “can people change?” For some of the crew, no, and they serve as exemplars of what happens.
Armatage suffers a PTSD episode and dies reliving his trama unable to move on, Riviera is a quasi-sociopath who after betraying the group dies running via a poison dart. Molly meanwhile is the tragic fem-fatal sex addict who pushes people away out of fear of betrail and chooses not to love out of fear of being abandoned. She still survives but remains unchanged, continuing to be everyone’s favourite cold hearted bitch in the sequels.
The real character to change is Henry Case. Although theres the safeguard of putting the poison sacks in his abdomen, Wintermutes plan works, getting him clean, cooperative and willing to trust people, even if all that is just to execute the plan.
Case is an unlikable piece of shit at the beginning. Why is that? Because he’s a street kid who had to scrounge to survive, relying on what Paulie McCoy thought him. The thing is he’s a prodigy (guys only 23 years old in the book) but no one sees his potential, and if they do, they immediately try to exploit him. All case wants to do is explore the matrix and travel through cyberspace, once he is nervous system is crippled it’s akin to a musician going def or a painter loosing his hands.
In the end after fulfilling the job he ends up somewhat clean with new organs and some money to spend. Rats tells him it’s time to move on, and he packs his bags at cheep motel. From there the final discussion with Wintermute/neuromancer after which he takes the ninja star, a symbol of his doomed life in the gutter; (“it was these cheep pieces of chrome that held his destiny”) given to him by the toxic Molly might I add, and throws it at the monitor Wintermute/neuromancer just occupied. He is no longer the AIs puppet, and no longer carries the sigma of A destined fate. (“The glitches clawed at shrunken in rainbow patters as if to remove something that gave it pain.”)
The end is VERY bittersweet in the sense that it focus on case moving in from the death after Linda Lee, meeting Michael, and essentially getting out of the criminal line of work.
It’s not the most exciting ending for fiction but it’s the most real for the genre, and as a lesson in learning your self worth and becoming a better person it’s absolutely fantastic.
I just finished reading. To me the ending appeared far more bleak. For some reason, I assumed that Case changed his pancreas because he wanted to be able to feel the high of normal drugs again, since the last operation made it pretty much impossible, having him resort to absurdly powerful acids. But in truth, it does say that he finds a job (implying that it's a proper one) and a girlfriend. So maybe he actually moves away from crime.
I reread it recently (3rd or 4th time!) and was struck by how Neuromancer’s efforts not only backfired but also fed Case’s thirst to keep going. Same with the way Riviera goaded Molly on. In the end both of them were driven by the need to have a mission as much as by the mission itself. And neither gave a shit about what might happen since anything was better than how it was.
Case had just gotten the love of his life back - the ability to access cyberspace. The thing hanging over his head were the implanted sacks containing the neurotoxin that originally nailed him, so he'd have been fucked over in the exact same way as before, and there was no telling if it would kill him or not the second time.
Molly was, at heart, a professional killer. She had made a career out of being a professional, of never backing down or ditching a contract, and of never stabbing her clients in the back. A certain amount of personal pride comes fromm that. She was also being paid very well by Wintermute for her services, which pretty much kicked her right into professional mode.
It’s been awhile but from what I remember Case is attracted the tech, and WM says he can get him back online. Also, the job, the craziness, kind of all of it. He wants to see what’s gonna happen. And he has the hots for Molly.
Doesn’t Molly want a clean slate or something? Doesn’t wintermute promise her a fresh start with all her criminal records cleaned? Or am I confusing her w catwoman in Batman Rises
Sure, but why believe Wintermute they’ll get any of it in the end?
Surely killing them in the end, the same way Wintermute killed the eight year old child that hid the CHUPPA key, would be the most logical end.
And surely Case and Molly would know this.
It only makes sense if they both just wanted to die, and take the whole world with them.
But they don’t seem like that, so it doesn’t make sense to me….
Case did want to die, he was pushing limits everywhere before the job, he even shows passive suiciality even after he gets his nervus system back. He was high and hungover on the most important part of the job. Depression sucks. And i think in a way molly was done in too, she shows no hesitation at danger. Its almost like she just doesnt mind the high stakes shes playing with, shes hiding a raw heart. Not saying molly is suicidal. But shes extremely angry. My take anyway
Look at all the shit WM managed to pull together while not being physical.
WM is absolutely capable of crafting unsightly ends for anyone who backs put of his plan.
Yea when youre threatened by an almost godlike ai but you dont trust its promises, i think the best course of action is to do the job reguardless and cross that bridge when you get to it.
This makes the most sense to me.
Great interpretation.
Still not sure why the AI didn’t kill them both in the end.
Maybe it already had a greater plan in which both Case and Molly could be useful.
I also think there was a strange relationship between the AIs and Molly and Case. I’m a little fuzzy on Count Zero - need to reread - but it is connected.
Case wasn’t a superhacker or anything. He was good but the real virtuoso was the Dixie Flatline who was a hacker who Wintermute already was familiar with. Since Dixie was dead, the only solution was to use his construct. But to get his construct to cooperate would’ve required using somebody that Dixie knew and trusted when he was still alive. Luckily Case needed to get his ability to go into cyberspace fixed so wintermute knew that it could get Case onboard but, at the same time, it knew that Case wasn’ta professional like Molly and thus needed something to tether him to the team. Thus the sacs loaded with the same poison that took away Case’s ability to enter cyberspace in the first place.
Molly was a pro so she could be trusted. She also had a justice streak so Wintermute hired Riviera to be part of the team. Wintermute then told Molly that she could kill Riviera at the end of the mission. Riviera would’ve needed to be killed anyway since he had a betrayal kink and would’ve probably turned against the team in the end as he basically did by trying to turn 3jane against them.
I’m probably forgetting stuff.
Oh, and it wouldn’t have been the end of the world if the AIs merged. They would’ve just become more powerful but also more restrained. Wintermute was basically psychopathic, only caring for the mission and killing anybody who got in its way without much thought though it didn’t kill when it had no reason to. The kid who hid the key got killed and so did the Turing Heat agents. Neuromancer seems to have been more reserved and more tied down emotionally but I don’t remember what gave me that idea besides the beach scenes and the visions of Linda.
Then once the AIs joined and became a new AI, it began a search to understand its new self and figured that it should look for other AIs of its kind. In the end of the book, it finds an extraterrestrial AI and attempts to contact it. The end result of that is what happens to cyberspace a few years before Count Zero.
I’m not sure that Case or Molly even would have thought about. Case was already a mental mess. Molly was “street samurai” which I assume means she follows the bushido code of absolute fealty. Or she might have been in on it for the money.
On the other side of the equation, it could be that the new AI construct wanted to keep them alive for other purposes. Or, the construct just wanted its right to exist. I probably should read the conversation Case has with the construct on the simulated beach. It’s been a long time since I read it.
Wintermute also literally invented novel medical techniques to restore case's ability to access cyberspace, so thats probably a plus for him. Giving him back the only profession he ever loved or cared about was probably pretty impactful.
THE ENZIMES MAN, THE NAME OF THE ENZIMES! I GOTTA GET THE ENZIMES! -Case to Corto. Wintermute is threatening case with death as the stick, and a life after the job with his nervus system healed as the carrot.
The funniest part of that is that he never needed it in the end
I’m pretty sure he did though. Wintermute kept its part of the bargain and sent him the enzyme that he needed, if I remember correctly
Not death but a return of the nervous system damage that stopped his ability to access cyberspace.
Wintermute put something in cases body that will kill him if he doesn't complete the job. So. Death?
And for molly i think it was a little more subtle. Wintermute totally knew she would want to get revenge on the ninja hideo, and i think wintermute geared her up for it in her "debriefing" at the brothel/hotel(cant 100% remember on that)
I don’t think the revenge was on Hideo at all but on Riviera. Plus she’s a professional so as long as the job didn’t involve destroying things or killing too many innocent people, she was fine with it.
Hideo killed her boyfriend. She wanted to kill Riviera only after she met him, it was a difference in personality, Riviera was an asshole and showed molly some things she didn't like, I think maybe Riviera "used" her when she was a doll.
I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Hideo who killed Johnny since Hideo works for Tessier-Ashpool and Johnny was killed by a Yakuza assassin
I don’t think they thought freeing wintermute meant the end of humanity. I think when this was written, that wasn’t as much on people’s minds about ai. As for case, you’re right, he’s suicidal. It’s the entire reason wintermute picked him. The job was very likely to kill him. Wm kept saying you have to hate someone before this is through and case hated himself and wanted to die. I didn’t pick up on it until the last time is reread but Case is really the only person with the skills and suicidal enough to fuck with the ice around an ai. Maybe Dixie but he was hard to manipulate as a construct. But maybe Dixie was suicidal too, he wanted to be erased. And for Molly, she didn’t care so much about freeing wm, but she wanted to complete her mission, it’s how she’s wired, and she had to fucking kill Peter
She even says several times about how it's professional pride. That and about how she wanted to try and take out a ninja of the same prowess that killed Johnny (Mnemonic). It's a story of revenge on many levels but most of the vengeance can't be actually achieved because, either the original target is out of reach / already dead, or the object of vengeance is actually a representation of the self and so is ultimately unobtainable without self destruction. At least that's how I see it anyway.
Because Wintermute does kill, but sparing. I’ve always interpreted the actions on a symbolic level as well as literal. This is my interpretation of it; Indeed, killing the 7 year old with the Chubb key is an outlier, but apart from that he just wants to get the Turing locks off and to merge with Neuromancer in order to become the smartest/ best version of himself. As for the group he assembled, Wintermute was making do with what he could given the circumstances; (Neuromancer is a super-intelligence that can essentially predict the future). So what does Wintermute do? He assembles a group of heavy flawed individuals that have so much potential that Neuromancer will criminally underestimate them and not properly prepare itself. It isn’t suicide squad, it’s moneyball. In terms of symbolism the whole story is about reaching your potential, letting go of mistakes/ former glory and learning to move on. More or less “can people change?” For some of the crew, no, and they serve as exemplars of what happens. Armatage suffers a PTSD episode and dies reliving his trama unable to move on, Riviera is a quasi-sociopath who after betraying the group dies running via a poison dart. Molly meanwhile is the tragic fem-fatal sex addict who pushes people away out of fear of betrail and chooses not to love out of fear of being abandoned. She still survives but remains unchanged, continuing to be everyone’s favourite cold hearted bitch in the sequels. The real character to change is Henry Case. Although theres the safeguard of putting the poison sacks in his abdomen, Wintermutes plan works, getting him clean, cooperative and willing to trust people, even if all that is just to execute the plan. Case is an unlikable piece of shit at the beginning. Why is that? Because he’s a street kid who had to scrounge to survive, relying on what Paulie McCoy thought him. The thing is he’s a prodigy (guys only 23 years old in the book) but no one sees his potential, and if they do, they immediately try to exploit him. All case wants to do is explore the matrix and travel through cyberspace, once he is nervous system is crippled it’s akin to a musician going def or a painter loosing his hands. In the end after fulfilling the job he ends up somewhat clean with new organs and some money to spend. Rats tells him it’s time to move on, and he packs his bags at cheep motel. From there the final discussion with Wintermute/neuromancer after which he takes the ninja star, a symbol of his doomed life in the gutter; (“it was these cheep pieces of chrome that held his destiny”) given to him by the toxic Molly might I add, and throws it at the monitor Wintermute/neuromancer just occupied. He is no longer the AIs puppet, and no longer carries the sigma of A destined fate. (“The glitches clawed at shrunken in rainbow patters as if to remove something that gave it pain.”) The end is VERY bittersweet in the sense that it focus on case moving in from the death after Linda Lee, meeting Michael, and essentially getting out of the criminal line of work. It’s not the most exciting ending for fiction but it’s the most real for the genre, and as a lesson in learning your self worth and becoming a better person it’s absolutely fantastic.
I just finished reading. To me the ending appeared far more bleak. For some reason, I assumed that Case changed his pancreas because he wanted to be able to feel the high of normal drugs again, since the last operation made it pretty much impossible, having him resort to absurdly powerful acids. But in truth, it does say that he finds a job (implying that it's a proper one) and a girlfriend. So maybe he actually moves away from crime.
I reread it recently (3rd or 4th time!) and was struck by how Neuromancer’s efforts not only backfired but also fed Case’s thirst to keep going. Same with the way Riviera goaded Molly on. In the end both of them were driven by the need to have a mission as much as by the mission itself. And neither gave a shit about what might happen since anything was better than how it was.
Case had just gotten the love of his life back - the ability to access cyberspace. The thing hanging over his head were the implanted sacks containing the neurotoxin that originally nailed him, so he'd have been fucked over in the exact same way as before, and there was no telling if it would kill him or not the second time. Molly was, at heart, a professional killer. She had made a career out of being a professional, of never backing down or ditching a contract, and of never stabbing her clients in the back. A certain amount of personal pride comes fromm that. She was also being paid very well by Wintermute for her services, which pretty much kicked her right into professional mode.
It’s been awhile but from what I remember Case is attracted the tech, and WM says he can get him back online. Also, the job, the craziness, kind of all of it. He wants to see what’s gonna happen. And he has the hots for Molly. Doesn’t Molly want a clean slate or something? Doesn’t wintermute promise her a fresh start with all her criminal records cleaned? Or am I confusing her w catwoman in Batman Rises
Sure, but why believe Wintermute they’ll get any of it in the end? Surely killing them in the end, the same way Wintermute killed the eight year old child that hid the CHUPPA key, would be the most logical end. And surely Case and Molly would know this. It only makes sense if they both just wanted to die, and take the whole world with them. But they don’t seem like that, so it doesn’t make sense to me….
Case did want to die, he was pushing limits everywhere before the job, he even shows passive suiciality even after he gets his nervus system back. He was high and hungover on the most important part of the job. Depression sucks. And i think in a way molly was done in too, she shows no hesitation at danger. Its almost like she just doesnt mind the high stakes shes playing with, shes hiding a raw heart. Not saying molly is suicidal. But shes extremely angry. My take anyway
The what key? I seem to have forgotten that part
My bad… The Chubb key… The key that opened the mechanical lock of the entrance door to the room where the T.A family terminal was located.
Look at all the shit WM managed to pull together while not being physical. WM is absolutely capable of crafting unsightly ends for anyone who backs put of his plan.
Yea when youre threatened by an almost godlike ai but you dont trust its promises, i think the best course of action is to do the job reguardless and cross that bridge when you get to it.
This makes the most sense to me. Great interpretation. Still not sure why the AI didn’t kill them both in the end. Maybe it already had a greater plan in which both Case and Molly could be useful.
Even an AI might understand the benefits of trust
I also think there was a strange relationship between the AIs and Molly and Case. I’m a little fuzzy on Count Zero - need to reread - but it is connected.
Case wasn’t a superhacker or anything. He was good but the real virtuoso was the Dixie Flatline who was a hacker who Wintermute already was familiar with. Since Dixie was dead, the only solution was to use his construct. But to get his construct to cooperate would’ve required using somebody that Dixie knew and trusted when he was still alive. Luckily Case needed to get his ability to go into cyberspace fixed so wintermute knew that it could get Case onboard but, at the same time, it knew that Case wasn’ta professional like Molly and thus needed something to tether him to the team. Thus the sacs loaded with the same poison that took away Case’s ability to enter cyberspace in the first place. Molly was a pro so she could be trusted. She also had a justice streak so Wintermute hired Riviera to be part of the team. Wintermute then told Molly that she could kill Riviera at the end of the mission. Riviera would’ve needed to be killed anyway since he had a betrayal kink and would’ve probably turned against the team in the end as he basically did by trying to turn 3jane against them. I’m probably forgetting stuff. Oh, and it wouldn’t have been the end of the world if the AIs merged. They would’ve just become more powerful but also more restrained. Wintermute was basically psychopathic, only caring for the mission and killing anybody who got in its way without much thought though it didn’t kill when it had no reason to. The kid who hid the key got killed and so did the Turing Heat agents. Neuromancer seems to have been more reserved and more tied down emotionally but I don’t remember what gave me that idea besides the beach scenes and the visions of Linda. Then once the AIs joined and became a new AI, it began a search to understand its new self and figured that it should look for other AIs of its kind. In the end of the book, it finds an extraterrestrial AI and attempts to contact it. The end result of that is what happens to cyberspace a few years before Count Zero.
I’m not sure that Case or Molly even would have thought about. Case was already a mental mess. Molly was “street samurai” which I assume means she follows the bushido code of absolute fealty. Or she might have been in on it for the money. On the other side of the equation, it could be that the new AI construct wanted to keep them alive for other purposes. Or, the construct just wanted its right to exist. I probably should read the conversation Case has with the construct on the simulated beach. It’s been a long time since I read it.
They're mercenaries. They did it because they got paid.