Johnny Mnemonic

This short story was my first introduction into Cyber Punk. Johnny Mnemonic was not at all what I expected. I had always imagined Cyber Punk to be really similar to Steam Punk, which I had only seen cosplays and re enactment pictures of. The idea of this, futuristic realm which robots and guns, mixed with this victorian era stylistic mash up is absolutely beautiful, that is not at all what I got out of Johnny Mnemonic. The Story was choppy and hard to follow. Having no introduction into this genre I found it hard to picture a lot of the scenes and what it would be like for these characters. So much of the story was about killing and this 'dog eat dog' way of life. How the woman brutally injured her so called 'lover' so thoughtlessly was maybe what this genre was about, but it was jolting and unexpected compared to this seamless gentlemen's victorian space pirate picture I had.

Though it was unexpected I did like the idea of body modifications like the dog people of the under part of the city. This really relates to the book Babel 17 with how the people in that book world would also modify the aesthetics of their body for personal preference, all of the under city folk did the same. I'm not sure why it was col to choose dog bangs rather than say feline features, which I guess must just be a personal preference for me to imagine in my head, but that is how I would imagine myself, I guess.

Overall it isn't fair to the story to judge it so harshly but I still did find it very hard to follow and so many new ideas were being introduced that I ended up wanting to stop reading because I had become so lost. The cool parts of the story were lost in my failing to visualize how that would look and picture it in a city with the other main characters and how the clothes would look and the buildings. Everything just didn't add up.

Though I still really love the idea of cyber punk now that I have a better understanding of it, this particular story didn't resonate anything with me. 2/10