"Neuromancer" by William Gibson

 

Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group

Copyright: 1984

ISBN: 9780441012039

Neuromancer was William Gibson's first novel, and it took the science fiction world by storm due to its realism, interesting characters, and well thought out plot.

The story tells the adventures of Case, a hacker that is being forced to complete a mission to stay alive. In his bloodstream is a toxin that will release after a certain amount of time if there's no antidote given to him. He teams up with an agent (for lack of a better term) named Molly Millions. A lady with Mirror shade implants in her eyes, and 4 cm retractable razors in her fingertips (I haven’t quite figured out how this would work, as the first knuckle on most people is an average of 1.5 cm behind the finger tip).

The story revolves around two artificial intelligences named Wintermute, and Neuromancer. The two AIs, along with Case, Molly and the rest of the crew are also up against the Turing Police, who keep an eye on the doings of AIs, and those that try to hack into them. There isn’t a lot of background information given on why the Turing Police exist, or why they have to watch the AIs, so I found this to be a little off-putting as I happen to like these world-building details.

Molly is a character that also appears in Gibson's short story Johnny Mnemonic, which takes place before Neuromancer, but was written a few years afterwards.

Gibson has also written two more novels set in the same universe entitled Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive. However, I haven't read either of these yet.

This is an excellent book with great characterization, that makes you think and feel with the characters. The plotting is also very tight and well done, and the world building excellent. It however hasn’t quite kept up with the way technology has actually developed and changes since 1984, so I think it might have been better to set it further into the future - but that just my opinion.

Highly recommended to anybody who enjoys good science fiction.