Week 11: Cyberpunk Overdrive (Mona Lisa Overdrive & Johnny Mnemonic)

This week I read Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson and the film Johnny Mnemonic (1995) that is based on a story written by the same author.

I really enjoyed aspects of Mona Lisa Overdrive. I adore the integration of advanced technology throughout the story. After finishing the book, I looked up some information about it and the previous two books in the trilogy and from that, I gathered that this was focused on even more so in the other novels.

My favorite character, or at least the character that I found myself caring the most about, was Kumiko. The story started with her so from the very start I was very interested to see how she tied into the larger narrative. I don’t feel like my want for her to be involved and important to the plot were ever really satisfied. Even when Kumiko made it her mission to talk to Molly, she was very separated from the action. Their conversation was fairly short and it felt like what information she had to share had already been more or less figured out by other characters.

I also enjoyed Kumiko’s “ghost” Colin. I feel that he should have been focused on a little more as well. Although I think I say that out of subjective motives.

Overall the book had a lot of characters. I think that hurt the book in several ways. There wasn't much story in the book - or at least not many story elements that felt overtly motivated. What gives the novel its length is the detailed descriptions of setting and characters slight interactions with those settings. This often leads to some beautifully illustrative passages, but it can make the narrative drag a little.

The number of characters also lead to me being somewhat lost. I often had to focus to keep everyone straight. I think this is partially my fault as it is the third book in the series but I read it first. I think that having a little more background to the overall universe could have been helpful to me.

Both Molly and Bobby’s pasts were brought up. Brief accounts of their adventures and shenanigans when they were younger. I think I would have preferred actually read about those more action-packed times.

Both the book and the film had women trapped in some form of cyberspace where they try to communicate and bend reality to what they want. In Johnny Mnemonic this AI woman is more of a guardian angel that gives guidance to the protagonist and is trying to guide the corrupt head of a company back to caring about humanity. The author uses similar characters in drastically different ways. One is the antagonist behind the scenes and the other is a helpful force fighting for the protagonist’s cause.

While the movie might be a little outdated and extremely hard to follow, I think it held a lot of elements that inspired and motivated many genre films that followed it. The details that went into the environment to create a slightly dystopian future filled with technology was incredible to see. I love the way that the movie maker's brought Gibson's world to life. I was watching it with a friend and the whole way through we were joking that it was a test run for The Matrix – I personally like to believe that the Keanu Reeves was hired to play Neo based on his performance in Johnny Mnemonic.

I had a really tough time getting into the book when I started reading this week. The first couple days I only got through a couple pages and ended up having to re-read them a couple times to retain it. But I’m glad I did get all the way through it. I think if I had read the previous two books the conclusion would have been more meaningful to me. I also think that I would have followed the film adaptation of Johnny Mnemonic if I had read the written version first. This week has inspired me to read much more of William Gibson’s work in the future.