Apple TV is adapting a cyberpunk book that was widely considered “unfilmable” for a very long time, but it is hard not to see how the series already has a major sci-fi problem.
In recent years, Apple TV has cemented itself as the best streaming home for science fiction shows. Even with its most recent addition to the genre, Pluribus, the streaming service established that it is far ahead of the curve when it comes to sci-fi. Upcoming sci-fi shows, especially a cyberpunk adaptation on Apple TV, suggest that Apple TV’s sci-fi domination is not ending anytime soon.
However, a closer look at the highly anticipated cyberpunk show suggests that it will have to overcome one major sci-fi problem to succeed.
Apple TV’s Neuromancer Is Exciting, But It May Not Feel As Novel & Refreshing As It Did In The 1980s
A long time ago, when William Gibson’ Neuromancer was first published, its portrayal of cyberspace, corporate power, fractured identities, and humans “jacking in” genuinely felt prophetic and alien. The book was so novel for its time that it soon became the foundation for the cyberpunk subgenre. As its influence grew, many sci-fi books and movies that followed heavily drew from its unique ideas and foresight of the future.
Neuromancer is still a great read four decades after its release, but many of its concepts and story threads have been absorbed, flattened, and endlessly recycled by decades of cyberpunk descendants, like The Matrix, Ghost in The Shell, Akira, etc.
Owing to this, it is hard not to wonder if Apple TV’s Neuromancer will feel as fresh and groundbreaking as it once did. Our current reality also seems to have caught up with many technological projections and their impact on human lives that were captured in the Gibson novel. Contrarily, some aspects of the book, like the lack of cellphones in its story, also seem dated.
Given how every aspect of the original novel now registers as familiar iconography because of how widely influential Neuromancer has been, Apple TV’s upcoming sci-fi adaptation of the book risks feeling too derivative even though it adapts the text that invented many familiar ideas.
Neuromancer Can Still Feel Relevant & Distinct If It Leans More Into The Book’s AI Predictions
Neuromancer‘s biggest strength still lies in its exploration of AI, which feels futuristic even to this day. A lot of shows and movies about AI fixate on surface-level implications of LLMs by showing how they could gain sentience and wage a war against humans. The AI technologies, Neuromancer and Wintermute, in the William Gibson book, in contrast, do not merely turn out to be rogue machines or evil overlords.
Instead, they are portrayed as constrained intelligences that are designed to limit their growth. They have a strong desire to merge with one another only because they wish to become “whole.”
This unique exploration of AI in the William Gibson book seems relevant for the times and perfectly aligns with modern conversations surrounding the potential development of superintelligence and its impact on humans. If Apple TV‘s Neuromancer leans more on these aspects of the novel, it could still feel incredibly distinct and avoid falling into the trap of portraying secondhand futurism.
