Neuromancer is the amazingly forward-thinking scifi novel written in 1984 in which Gibson coined the term "cyberspace". The story, set in an indeterminant, dystopian Japan (and other venues, including an outerspace "location"), traces a kind of "cyber-cowboy" named Case as he embarks on a mission to breach a kind of digital "matrix". It's a very interesting experiment in putting into words the abstract construct (at the time) of going online into cyberspace. The characters of Case, his two women Molly & Linda, and an assortment of other strange characters, some human, some "constructs" and some of indeterminate form are not well rounded in general . The novel reads like an extended hallucination and is somehow compelling despite its very loose structure and plot. If anything, it is a visionary piece of writing that unwittingly invented the "cyberpunk" genre and catapulted us into the cyber age at a time when we were banging on word processors with 16K of memory and using dot matrix printers.
For a review of the book from NY Times, click here: http://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/08/books/they-ll-always-have-tokyo.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
For a review of the book from NY Times, click here: http://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/08/books/they-ll-always-have-tokyo.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
