# Help ME ID a Book **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 3, 2009, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-a-book/501761 "2009-07-03T01:04:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-a-book/501761/1 "2009-07-03T01:04:38Z")
Sci-fi novel, I read it in the late 1980’s. It concerns something I believe called “jacking”, whereby “users” can plug into a virtual world. There’s even virtual cafes where jackers can meet and such, much like a modern internet cafe except that everything is virtual and appears real to the jacker. People that can do this have surgically implanted jacks at the base of their skull. I believe the protagonist is a gamer, and is testing a game that doesn’t have a “safety net” that pulls the human mind out of the game so that the lifeless body can eat, shit, not die, etc. Trying to recall this pulp novel, so I can read it again. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-a-book/501761/2 "2009-07-03T02:23:21Z")
That was a pretty common trope in that time period. I will assume, however, you don’t mean **Neuromancer** ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-a-book/501761/3 "2009-07-03T03:01:23Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > That was a pretty common trope in that time period. I will assume, however, you don’t mean **Neuromancer** That doesn’t sound right. Think of something pulpy like that that a meth using roommate in the Army would provide. This is the same guy that influenced me to read the Hubbard dekalogy. ---
**Author:** ![Darryl\_Lict](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7cd45c/32.png) [@Darryl\_Lict](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darryl_Lict)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-a-book/501761/4 "2009-07-03T03:29:33Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > That was a pretty common trope in that time period. I will assume, however, you don’t mean **Neuromancer** I hardly ever read Sci Fi, but **Neuromancer** exactly fits the description. Anyone else writing about it stole the idea. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-a-book/501761/5 "2009-07-03T05:53:05Z")
well I hope when you figure it out you post here, so the rest of us can go read it. ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-a-book/501761/6 "2009-07-03T06:03:43Z")
Case, Chiba, Molly, Armitage, Tessier-Ashpool, Wintermute. Any of those ring a bell? If so then it’s the same book **RealityChuck** said. ---
**Author:** ![BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bcef8e/32.png) [@BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-a-book/501761/7 "2009-07-03T06:10:12Z")
Wasn’t Johnny Mnemonic (with Keanu) based on a book by Philip K Dick? It sounds vaguely like what you’re talking about. I think if it’s not that one then it might be another Dick book-- I seem to recall something about jacking in and trying to hack but a hacker being caught by some kind of trap that would have killed him except that someone (maybe the protagonist) released him by doing something that no one else could do with computers. Man, it’s been awhile. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-a-book/501761/8 "2009-07-03T07:02:45Z")
> [@BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](#): > > Wasn’t Johnny Mnemonic (with Keanu) based on a book by Philip K Dick? No, it was named after the story of the same name, by William Gibson. ETA: You can tell it wasn’t a Dick story: at the end you still held some sympathy for the protagonist and didn’t wish him into the Seventh Circle of Hell. Though at that point you’d probably wished everyone else into the Ninth Circle, so it has that in its favor. ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-a-book/501761/9 "2009-07-03T15:08:40Z")
> [@Darryl\_Lict](#): > > I hardly ever read Sci Fi, but **Neuromancer** exactly fits the description. Anyone else writing about it stole the idea. That book sounds really cool from reading it’s wiki page, but that plot description doesn’t fit. The protagonist of the book I cannot recall is a hotshot gamer, renowned for “jacking in” to games that aren’t complete and do not have the “safety net” in place to yank his mind out of the game when you die virtually (or that brings you out every few hours involuntarily for bodily functions, eating, etc). I think there’s a term for people that “die in the game”, rendering them insane, which is a “hothead”, I think. I vaguely recall a scene in the story where the protagonist visits a ward of “hotheads”. Damn. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-a-book/501761/10 "2009-07-03T15:17:46Z")
Here’s a list of major cyberpunk novels: > **[List of cyberpunk works | Print media](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cyberpunk_works#Print_media)** > > 1."Cyberpunk" (1983) by Bruce Bethke | > 2.Burning Chrome (1986) by William Gibson | > 3.Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (1986) edited by Bruce Sterling | > 4.Patterns (1989) by Pat Cadigan | > 5.Crystal Express (1989) by Bruce Sterling | > 6.Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk & Postmodern Science Fiction (1992) edited by Larry McCaffery (contains both fiction and nonfiction) | > 7.Hackers (1996) by Jack Dann & Gardner Dozois | > 8.Dragonfire: A Cyberpunk Short Stor Some of them are too late to be the one you’re remembering. Look at each of them and tell us which it is. I’m sorry, but without further details, there’s no way we can figure out what you’re talking about. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-a-book/501761/11 "2009-07-03T16:49:12Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > No, it was named after the story of the same name, by William Gibson. Who wrote **Neuromancer**. As I said, there were many books that vaguely fit your description written at that time. Cyberpunk was big and most cyberpunk novels had a protagonist who jacked into a computer. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2009, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-a-book/501761/12 "2009-07-03T23:49:06Z")
> [@FoieGrasIsEvil](#): > > Sci-fi novel, I read it in the late 1980’s. It concerns something I believe called “jacking”, whereby “users” can plug into a virtual world. There’s even virtual cafes where jackers can meet and such, much like a modern internet cafe except that everything is virtual and appears real to the jacker. People that can do this have surgically implanted jacks at the base of their skull. > > I believe the protagonist is a gamer, and is testing a game that doesn’t have a “safety net” that pulls the human mind out of the game so that the lifeless body can eat, shit, not die, etc. > > Trying to recall this pulp novel, so I can read it again. I think you’re thinking of “Count Zero” the sequel to Neuromancer - at least in that book the hero is a kid trying to make a name for himself (as opposed to Neuromancer, where the hero is a washed-up cyber intrusion specialist) ---
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2009, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-a-book/501761/13 "2009-07-04T00:45:13Z")
Try the Shadowrun series. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2009, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-a-book/501761/14 "2009-07-04T01:19:48Z")
This is a hijack, but this thread reminds me of how much I hated that “jacking in” trope that still haunts sf like a flesh eating virus. I’m pretty sure it originated in Samuel R. Delany’s brilliant _Nova_, which is the ur novel for almost everything the cyberpunks did. Thing is, _Nova_ came out in 1968. Then the idea of jacking in to a computer was radically cool. By the 1980s it wasn’t. Even at the time I kept thinking of how limiting the fact of needing a physical tie to the cyberworld would be. Wireless was obviously the future. Why would these people, flitting all over the world and off it, allow themselves to be stuck and immobilized like that? And the idiots kept writing this dumb idea, for years and decades. I satirized the notion in a story and even so readers thought it was cool. It baffles me. ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2009, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-a-book/501761/15 "2009-07-04T03:21:19Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > This is a hijack, but this thread reminds me of how much I hated that “jacking in” trope that still haunts sf like a flesh eating virus. > > I’m pretty sure it originated in Samuel R. Delany’s brilliant _Nova_, which is the ur novel for almost everything the cyberpunks did. > > Thing is, _Nova_ came out in 1968. Then the idea of jacking in to a computer was radically cool. By the 1980s it wasn’t. Even at the time I kept thinking of how limiting the fact of needing a physical tie to the cyberworld would be. Wireless was obviously the future. Why would these people, flitting all over the world and off it, allow themselves to be stuck and immobilized like that? > > And the idiots kept writing this dumb idea, for years and decades. I satirized the notion in a story and even so readers thought it was cool. It baffles me. I still maintain that some kind of phone-type jack is pretty amazing, considering it deals with the issue of how much people will tolerate from their government. ---
**Author:** ![BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bcef8e/32.png) [@BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2009, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-a-book/501761/16 "2009-07-04T03:24:01Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > No, it was named after the story of the same name, by William Gibson. > > ETA: You can tell it wasn’t a Dick story: at the end you still held some sympathy for the protagonist and didn’t wish him into the Seventh Circle of Hell. Though at that point you’d probably wished everyone else into the Ninth Circle, so it has that in its favor. Ha! And thank you, Gibson was the author (I’m pretty sure) of that half-remembered muddle I posted before. Can’t remember the book though. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2009, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-a-book/501761/17 "2009-07-04T04:02:58Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > This is a hijack, but this thread reminds me of how much I hated that “jacking in” trope that still haunts sf like a flesh eating virus. > > I’m pretty sure it originated in Samuel R. Delany’s brilliant _Nova_, which is the ur novel for almost everything the cyberpunks did. > > Thing is, _Nova_ came out in 1968. Then the idea of jacking in to a computer was radically cool. By the 1980s it wasn’t. Even at the time I kept thinking of how limiting the fact of needing a physical tie to the cyberworld would be. Wireless was obviously the future. Why would these people, flitting all over the world and off it, allow themselves to be stuck and immobilized like that? > > And the idiots kept writing this dumb idea, for years and decades. I satirized the notion in a story and even so readers thought it was cool. It baffles me. I re-read _Oath of Fealty_ (Niven and Pournelle) a few months ago, and I was vastly amused at one scene. One of the characters is depicted as being on the phone, which had an extra-long cord. Several characters in this book had implants in their brains which enabled them to communicate with a computer, without jacking in or any sort of cords. However, the concept of wireless didn’t carry over to phones? I seem to recall that the reason this guy had an extra long cord (handset to base) was because he’d had a brilliant idea once and forgot it somewhere between setting the phone back on the hook and getting to paper and pencil. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2009, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-a-book/501761/18 "2009-07-04T04:11:54Z")
> [@FoieGrasIsEvil](#): > > I still maintain that some kind of phone-type jack is pretty amazing, considering it deals with the issue of how much people will tolerate from their government. Could you explain this? All the cyberpunk milieus were libertarian-oriented and the government never mandated these jacks in any story I read. Just the opposite.