Hi. I finished reading Neuromancer last night (for pleasure, not school) and I loved it. Now I have a question that I apologize for if it's been asked many times before:

What was the word/name 3Jane spoke that allowed Wintermute and Neuromancer to combine? Who was it that Case hated/loved?

I've thought about it and I'm not satisfied with anything I can come up with. I've looked all over the internet to no avail, and I browsed around this forum and didn't find an answer, so I'm reaching out to you good people for a solution.

At one point I thought the word was: Neuromancer, but I then found out it was not. I do not know.

Case hates himself. I don't think I would say that he loves anybody.

Can I look in your fridge?

Maybe there's something I'm not understanding. I was kinda getting the impression that the name 3Jane says was the same as the person Case loved/hated. Am I wrong?

I was thinking it was Neuromancer, too, but Case obviously doesn't love Neuromancer, so I gave up on that idea. So, is there no official answer to my question?

And you're not going to find much in my fridge, partner.

After further thought and looking over the pages again, I'm seeing things I got wrong. The name 3Jane knows is not the person Case hates/loves that Wintermute is motivating him with. My head was kind of spinning last night as I read so I guess I confused a few things. But I see now that, since there is no relation between the two things, there really isn't any way to know the name 3Jane spoke, is there? Damn...

I finished Neuromancer two days ago. I didn't like it very much, though. Sure, it contains great ideas and a poetic style which I loved, but actually Case, Linda Lee, Armitage, Molly and 3Jane are the probably most uncouth characters I've seen in a book. They were lacking of any deep characterization. The story just goes straight forward to the end without looking back.

Count Zero which was the novel that introduced me to the writer William Gibson in my teenager years is a way better read. It has more thoughtful and complicated conflicts: Turner-Allison, Turner-Conroy, Turner-Angela, Bobby-Two-a-Day and later on Bobby-Beauvoir and Lucas, Marly-Alain etc.

All in all it is a more mature and structured novel than Neuromancer.

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Originally posted by UberDog:
Case hates himself. I don't think I would say that he loves anybody.

I thought he loves Linda Lee, his former girlfriend in Chiba City.

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Originally posted by Maas Biolabs CEO:
All in all it [Count Zero] is a more mature and structured novel than Neuromancer.

Yes it is. Still, I find Neuromancer is a good read.

To address the original question:

quote:

In the instant before he drove Kuang's sting through the base of the first tower, he attained a level of proficiency exceeding anything he'd known or imagined. Beyond ego, beyond personality, beyond awareness, he moved, Kuang moving with him, evading his attackers with an ancient dance, Hideo's
dance, grace of the mind-body interface granted him, in that second, by the clarity and singleness of his wish to die. And one step in that dance was the lightest touch on the switch, barely enough to flip --

-- now
and his voice the cry of a bird unknown,
3Jane answering in song, three notes, high and pure.
A true name.

The three notes are, I believe, supposed to be some sort of tonal password for the skull/terminal, not a specific word in any language. Calling it a "name" is poetic license.

And I think the image that follows immediately after is significant:

quote:

Neon forest, rain sizzling across hot pavement. The smell of frying food. A girl's hands locked across the small of his back, in the sweating darkness of a portside coffin.

The girl is Linda Lee, I think, and her presence here, at least in his hallucination, speaks to the way he loved her. I think it's interesting that the memories and images that come back to him at this point of greatest stress are from Chiba, where he was on his way down, trying to kill himself, and that it was there that he found Linda, who had such a strong effect on him.

quote:

Originally posted by colin:

quote:

-- now
and his voice the cry of a bird unknown,
3Jane answering in song, three notes, high and pure.
A true name.

The three notes are, I believe, supposed to be some sort of tonal password for the skull/terminal, not a specific word in any language. Calling it a "name" is poetic license.

It was this passage that was part of what had me confused about the name/word and Case's love/hate. My original impression was that Case jacked out, said "now" and then him, 3Jane and the head all said the name in unison. (Like I said, my head was kind of spinning. Heh.) The more I thought about it today I realized that was wrong, and taking what you've said into consideration, I think you might just be right that it really is a song. It would be quite dramatic to have us anticipating an actual name or word through the whole book only to be surprised when 3Jane sings in the end. Also, when I examine the passage, it does seem very clear that it is a song. Nothing about, "song, three notes, high and pure" suggests she simply said a name or word.

quote:

Originally posted by colin:
And I think the image that follows immediately after is significant:

quote:

Neon forest, rain sizzling across hot pavement. The smell of frying food. A girl's hands locked across the small of his back, in the sweating darkness of a portside coffin.

The girl is Linda Lee, I think, and her presence here, at least in his hallucination, speaks to the way he loved her. I think it's interesting that the memories and images that come back to him at this point of greatest stress are from Chiba, where he was on his way down, trying to kill himself, and that it was there that he found Linda, who had such a strong effect on him.

It was absolutely Linda that Case loved. Again, I was just confused and the only reason I doubted it being Linda was because there was no way the name that 3Jane needed to say was Linda. That just didn't make sense. But yeah, I was way way off in my confusion.
As for the passage you quoted, part of me wonders if it's not so much a memory but something conjured up by Wintermute/Neuromancer, or the side effect of the two joining, like something weird your computer does when it shuts down or the way the image on your television distorts when you turn it off. The next paragraph gives me the same impression.

quote:

But all of this is receding, as the city scape recedes: city as Chiba, as the ranked data of Tessier-Ashpool S.A., as the roads and crossroads scribed on the face of a microchip, the sweat-stained pattern on a folded, knotted scarf...

But I could be way, way off again.

I never, ever got the impression he loved her. She represented the last bit of his humanity, he gave her the money becuase he was guilty of turning her into an addict and becuase he wished he could go back, back home, back to whatever life was before he wound up killing people for ludicrous sums of money.

Did she mean something to him? Yes. But was he in love with her? I don't think so.

I think he loved her about as much as Case was capable of loving anything. Maybe he loved the idea she represented more: something good, some kind of peace.

quote:

As for the passage you quoted, part of me wonders if it's not so much a memory but something conjured up by Wintermute/Neuromancer, or the side effect of the two joining, like something weird your computer does when it shuts down or the way the image on your television distorts when you turn it off. The next paragraph gives me the same impression.

I thought of it as imagery that arose as he lost consciousness, and yes, influenced by the joining of Wintermute/Neuromancer. So, a bit of both.

The scarf is again an image of Linda. See earlier when Case is trapped by Neuromancer in the land of the dead:

quote:

A girl was crouched beside rusted steel, a sort of fireplace, where driftwood burned, the wind sucking smoke up a dented chimney. The fire was the only light, and as his gaze met the wide, startled eyes, he recognized her headband, a rolled scarf, printed with a pattern like magnified circuitry.

quote:

He searched the room with the fireplace, finding a plastic canister filled with what he assumed was rainwater. Beside the nest of blankets, against the wall, lay a cheap red lighter, a seaman's knife with a cracked green handle, and her scarf. It was still knotted, and stiff with sweat and dirt.

This is possibly a side effect of Case being copied by Neuromancer at that moment, so that he can join Linda in the land of the dead:

quote:

And one October night, punching himself past the scarlet tiers of the Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority, he saw three figures, tiny, impossible, who stood at the very edge of one of the vast steps of data. Small as they were, he could make out the boy's grin, his pink gums, the glitter of the long gray eyes that had been Riviera's. Linda still wore his jacket; she waved, as he passed. But the third figure, close behind her, arm across her shoulders, was himself.

Also interesting that true names get mentioned earlier, in the conversation with Neuromancer.

quote:

Originally posted by colin:
I think he loved her about as much as Case was capable of loving anything. Maybe he loved the idea she represented more: something good, some kind of peace.

Yeah, that's fair.

quote:

Originally posted by colin:


I thought of it as imagery that arose as he lost consciousness, and yes, influenced by the joining of Wintermute/Neuromancer. So, a bit of both.

I believe that the hands locked across the small of his back is an echo from the beach bunker in Rio.

quote:

Originally posted by colin:
I think he loved her about as much as Case was capable of loving anything. Maybe he loved the idea she represented more: something good, some kind of peace.

Exactly! Maybe it's not fairytale love, but I think it's still a type of love. The kind of love you have despite oneself.

quote:

Originally posted by colin:
This is possibly a side effect of Case being copied by Neuromancer at that moment, so that he can join Linda in the land of the dead:

Yup, that's the kind of thing I was getting at.

quote:

Originally posted by colin:
Also interesting that true names get mentioned earlier, in the conversation with Neuromancer.

See, there's more of why I was thinking Wintermute and Neuromancer had Case trying to discover the word/name that only 3Jane knew. Kind of a head-scratcher, isn't it?

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
I believe that the hands locked across the small of his back is an echo from the beach bunker in Rio.

"in the sweating darkness of a portside coffin" says Chiba to me, although it's quite possible the same image was repeated elsewhere.

Wintermute cannot know the name. he says this at one point. Part of who he is, part of his programming is an inability to know the name. If he was told the name, he could not remember it. He needs Case to complete the phsyical arc of his and Neruomancer's co-evolution. Case is acting as a corpus collosum (sp?) for two brain hemispheres as represented by Wintermute on one side and Neruomancer on the other.

quote:

Originally posted by colin:

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
I believe that the hands locked across the small of his back is an echo from the beach bunker in Rio.

"in the sweating darkness of a portside coffin" says Chiba to me, although it's quite possible the same image was repeated elsewhere.

I am saying it is a final melange of images as he "dies."

Wait, wait, no... wrong place in the book. Forgot the port side coffin part. But I think the phrase is used in the virtual beach scene.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:

quote:

Originally posted by colin:


I thought of it as imagery that arose as he lost consciousness, and yes, influenced by the joining of Wintermute/Neuromancer. So, a bit of both.

I believe that the hands locked across the small of his back is an echo from the beach bunker in Rio.

Me, too. And what about the knotted scarf? It escapes me if she had that back in Chiba or only at the bunker.

quote:

See, there's more of why I was thinking Wintermute and Neuromancer had Case trying to discover the word/name that only 3Jane knew. Kind of a head-scratcher, isn't it?

Again, I claim it's poetic use of language. Note that in the passage FP quotes in the other thread, Neuromancer talks about computer code (or possibly passwords?) as "true names". So Case was trying to get a name that only 3Jane knew, but that "name" was a song, and a password.

It's lucky 3Jane wasn't tone deaf like me.

quote:

Originally posted by dAHMER:

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:

quote:

Originally posted by colin:


I thought of it as imagery that arose as he lost consciousness, and yes, influenced by the joining of Wintermute/Neuromancer. So, a bit of both.

I believe that the hands locked across the small of his back is an echo from the beach bunker in Rio.

Me, too. And what about the knotted scarf? It escapes me if she had that back in Chiba or only at the bunker.

I think she is wearing it in the arcade, if not, then she is wearing it when he remembers meeting her in the arcade when she first got to Chiba.

The scarf makes another appearance (kind of_) on Masahiko's wall above his computer in Idoru.