After thinking about Neuromancer for years and having just re-read it, almost literally not putting it down, I am adding this to my very short list of beloved books. Of these I have listed six as being my all-time favorites. Dick, an observer who does not skip ahead to a distant dystopian rebirth, but instead chronicles the ugly fall itself.Īs I type these words here in June of 2018, Goodreads says that I have rated over 1400 books and have reviewed over 1300. Gibson is the literary successor to Phillip K. Gibson creates an edge, a tension that exists throughout the narrative that grabs the reader and won’t let him go. Neuromancer defined the genre and I could hardly go a few pages without noticing how it had influenced literature and film since.Īs a book, this was excellent, I could not put it down.

It can even be said that Gibson, who in turn heavily influenced the producers of The Matrix, is a bridge between the older 60s post-modernist dystopian science fiction with the more modern, computer driven, angst ridden world weariness that has represented artists since the 80s. Dick, among others, but then goes to a wholly different level. Gibson takes his influences from Escape from New York, Anthony Burgess and from Phillip K. Neuromancer has been called the definitive, benchmark novel of the cyberpunk sub-genre. Bladerunner was a distinctly cyberpunk vision, whereas Dick’s was dystopian but not necessarily cyberpunk. One reason why Bladerunner was as good was because Scott’s vision was so different from Dick’s. Bladerunner was of course patterned loosely after Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. I have written that Bladerunner was that most rare of accomplishments, a film that was as good or better than the book. William Gibson said that while writing Neuromancer he went to see the Ridley Scott film Bladerunner and thought that his ideas for the book were hopelessly lost, that everyone would naturally assume that he had taken all of his queues from the film. Dick’s writing and wondered what would happen if you extended his vision into the not too distant future, if you liked Bladerunner, if you liked The Matrix … and even if you like all the film and fiction that has made an attempt to be any of the above, you will love Neuromancer.

Neuromante by William Gibson