William Gibson Neuromancer
Novel Two this week was William Gibson’s Neuromancer, first published in 1984. I was lent the Tenth Anniversary Special Edition by Jon Broadbent, a friend here on the Gold Coast. Finally I had more than 15 minutes a night to read it.
The novel tells the story of Case, an out-of-work cowboy (computer hacker) who is hired to take part in an online crime. The novel starts in Chiba City, a sprawling city in Japan. Case joins a team made up of Armitage, a reconstructed war veteran, Molly, an enhanced warrior who could have inspired Dark Angel, Peter Riviera, a drug-addicted imagination projector, and Dixie Flatline, the personality construct of a now-dead hacker. Along the way they team up with a couple of Rasta space pilots to travel to Straylight where they’ll hack into the system of Tessier-Ashpool, one of the richest corporations in the world.
It took a while to get into the lingo…
Coffin Hotel - building rentoung out cheap sleep space not much bigger than a coffin
Sarariman - Japanese for white-collar worker (Salary man)
Gaijin - Japanese for white foreigner
Hosaka - a computer and microchip manufacturer
Microsoft - a software accessory
Neuromancer won Gibson the Hugo, Nebula, Philip K. Dick, Seiun and Ditmar (Australian) awards. He went on to write “Count Zero” and “Mona Lisa Overdrive”. William Gibson wrote the script for Johnny Mnemonic, a cyber-punk movie released in 1995, starring no other than Keanu Reeves. The story first featured in Gibson’s collection of short fiction, Burning Chrome. Gibson also has written Virtual Light (1994), Idoru (1996), Tomorrow’s Parties (1999), and Pattern Recognition (2004).
Gibson is known as the father of ‘CyberPunk’. His books inspired novelists (such as Neil Stephenson), film directors (Wachowski Brothers Matrix Trilogy), and comics (The Invisibles). The Cyberpunk Project is a useful guide to works in this genre.
Gibson lives in Vancouver, has his own web site, www.williamgibsonbooks.com and writes regularly on his blog.
3 Responses to “William Gibson Neuromancer”
By Stephen G on Sep 24, 2005 | Reply
Gibson’s “Neuromancer” and “Idoru”, together with the “Burning Chrome” collection, remain some of my favourite fiction. Gibson’s original work lays the foundation, even the language, for fictional and non-fictional explorations of cyberspace. Some of his later work seems to be a little forced but he still manages to touch on issues of human nature, religion and spirituality in technoculture.
By Matt Stone on Sep 24, 2005 | Reply
Duncan, You may be intersted an old post of mine that touches on William Gibson at Basically, Gibson forsaw the advent of techno-shamanism way back.