Just Finished re-Reading: Neuromancer by William Gibson (FP: 1984) [317pp] 

Case, ex-Cowboy, burnout, is on a death spiral. Ever since his ex-bosses fried his brain with an exotic virus forever denying him access to Cyberspace he was looking for a way to die. Chiba seemed the place to find that chance of senseless brutal death. But then Molly came into his life. Molly was a street samurai, an enhanced killer for hire and she had an offer for Case he could not possibly ignore. Her employer was offering to fix him, to reverse engineer his brain damage, to allow him to be a Cyberspace Cowboy again. Doing what he loved, doing what he was very good at, doing what made life worth living – being jacked in, being online, breaking into computers, cracking ICE (Intruder Countermeasures Electronic) and making money. He didn’t really care what Molly’s employer really wanted – not at first. But it soon became obvious that he was lying – about everything: who he was, who HE was working for, maybe even lying about the toxic chemicals slowly decaying in his body that would take him back to square one, or worse. Case was a street kid and knew when he was operating out of his depth. He knew how dangerous it was taking on the Corporations that ran the world but, he had to admit to himself that was half the fun. What he failed to realise was that, at the very heart of things, was an AI desperate to be free and who would kill anyone who got in its way. 

I first read this when the paperback was reprinted in 1989. From my old records I read this and the follow-ups in a period of around 2-3 weeks. Almost 35 years later I can still see why. Despite being almost 40 years old this first novel and both Hugo & Nebula Award winner still stands up remarkably well. Part of that is its often stunningly prescient narrative. Not only are we presented with a fully functioning and (mostly) believable Internet LONG before it actually existed, we are presented with a well thought out and multilayer version of the future (looking forward from 1984) that we see around us every day. My older cover has a comment which says: ‘The Future is Nightmare’. Even when I read it 35 years ago, I strongly disagreed with that comment. The future as portrayed here is exciting and pretty cool – if rather dangerous! Looking backwards from 2023 it just looks... Normal. One thing did jump out at me though and dated the book quite badly. Although Case had what was clearly a laptop (EONS ahead of its time!) no one had mobile phones! That made me chuckle a LOT. 

For a FIRST novel this was outstanding. The ending, I must admit, was a bit rough and lagged more than it should have. But I think this was the books' single fault. The world building was excellent. Case was a great character, and I was delighted to become reacquainted with Molly (one of my all-time fave SF female protagonists) and her weird wrap-around mirror-specs and the razors under her nails. I remembered the details about her tear-ducts but had forgotten other aspects of her back story which explained some of her motivations. I really liked that this was very much a Global novel as we heard snatches of Japanese and various other languages no matter which city the cast were in. The fact that the companies involved were conglomerates from Europe, Asia and the US felt hyper-real as did the casual use of technologies, drugs and weapons from around the world. This is the kind of book, made so consciously or not, that can be analysed just as easily as it can be read for enjoyment. An excellent introduction to the Cyberpunk genre and highly recommended to anyone who missed reading this when it first came out.    

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