Virtual Ripoff
What is the matrix? It's William Gibson's idea, dammit!
      by David Rosiak

"Whoa, dude, how can I answer what the matrix is when I don't even know what Neuromancer means?"

Back in 1994, I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to lay my hands upon William Gibson's very own screenplay adaptation of his classic novel, Neuromancer, which is considered by pretty much every science fiction fan to be the seminal work of the "cyberpunk" genre. I finally managed to obtain a copy for no less than thirty-five bucks at Dragon Con, Atlanta's yearly comic book convention. With wild geeky abandon, I set about devouring the script.

Admittedly, I was excited. Two years prior, I'd procured a copy of Gibson's unproduced Alien 3 script, and it was a stunner. Full of thoughtful dialogue, unexpected character developments, and plot turns that ran over with pure Gibsonian coolness (imagine a space station overrun with thousands of genetically enhanced, Giger-esque Aliens that hatched full grown and hungry), it had gone unmade primarily due to budget restraints that prevented the lensing of a picture on such a grand scale. In that single script, at least to my mind, Gibson had shown exactly why fans considered him the driving force behind modern science fiction. I had no doubt that, given the opportunity, Gibson would no doubt prove himself that rarest of the rare -- the author capable of adapting his own work to the screen.

Neuromancer was a book that seemed destined for film greatness. In a cult-like, Blade Runner-ish fashion, it followed the adventures of Case, the ultimate anti-hero, a cyber-cowboy who made his living by "jacking into the matrix," a shared hallucinatory reality simulated by the world's vast interlinking computer networks. Masters of the matrix were the kings of Gibson-world, able to move data as if it was a living thing while delighting burgeoning computer geeks like myself with endless glorification. At last, the act of sitting in front of the screen and typing away was no longer the bane of my existence. It was... well, it was pretty freakin' cool. All right, maybe I'm deluding myself here, but Gibson made it seem cool.

About twenty pages into the script, I realized that something had gone wrong. Gone were the monolithic descriptions of Gibson's labyrinthine, computer-created world, wiped away was the noncommittal antihero, missing were the moral ramifications of the then-genius idea of personality cloning. Even the dialogue was subtly Hollywood-ized, replaced by lines that seemed little more than exposition for the public ("You burned three international corporations in as many days," a villain tells hero Case, "that's bad business. Bad news for you.") In their places were simplified screen versions of the matrix, a watered down hero who was set upon by more simplistic forces of evil, and bombastic, action-oriented set pieces that were put in place only to offer a visceral roller coaster ride. There was even a vague attempt at a "happy" ending in place of the ambiguous finale of the book. I came to a quick decision. Sure, William Gibson was the man when it came to writing science fiction novels with an edge -- hell, his original scripts even kicked serious cinematic ass -- but he definitely wasn't the "chosen one" who should be allowed to write script adaptations of his own works. Don't believe me? Then just check out -- if you dare -- Johnny Mnemonic, the one adaptation he did that made it to the multiplex.

These days, just about everyone knows the terms "cyberpunk", "virtual reality", and "matrix". These are buzzwords that movies, television, and books have branded into our brains. Gibson created them all in 1984 with the publication of Neuromancer, a book which had set off a nice bidding war in Hollywood almost immediately after its release, a book which still remains unfilmed. In 1994, those words were a little more obscure -- sure, we'd gotten a taste of virtual reality with director Brett Leonard's abysmal soap operatic The Lawnmower Man, in which a mentally handicapped lawnboy played by B-movie icon Jeff Fahey (whose idea of assaying this role consisted of drooling and muttering more than Ronald Reagan in office) is turned into a pillar of smarts due to some virtual reality experiments performed on him by resident neighborhood mad scientist guy Pierce Brosnan. Sure enough, absolute power corrupts absolutely and quickly turns the movie into an absolute crapfest that spouts off half-wittedly about the evils of science. This wasn't cyberpunk, though. It was more like cyberpunk-lite.

But hey, it was our first exposure to a cinematic world that might be, and it turned a profit, didn't it? Soon after, Hollywood began to cash in with a veritable bombardment of low rent schlockers that employed "V.R." (gotta love the catchy initials) in any way possible. Movies like Virtual Combat, Virtual Girl, Virtual Sexuality, Virtual Encounters, Virtual Assassin, Virtuosity and so on. There was money to be made, never mind the fact that the rights to novels by key writers in the much superior cyberpunk literary revolution, such as Gibson himself, Bruce Sterling, John Shirley, Neal Stephenson, and Rudy Rucker, had all been snapped up and were already languishing away in studio vaults. Instead, it was full speed ahead with the reaping of cyber profits.

Next Page >