"The sky above the port was the color of television tuned to a dead channel" -- That is one of the all-time classic opening lines. It is also something people will gradually lose since most people no longer have that grey static.
An interesting brief history of what is, if I was forced to pick one, (still!) the best among the thousands of novels I've read.<p>The whole Sprawl trilogy is fantastic, and while I agree with other commenters here that Gibson's subsequent novels have become somewhat less awesome, it's hard to complain too much about that if you believe, as I do, that the author in question's first attempt resulted in <i>the best novel of all time</i>.<p>Still, Neuromancer is indisputably dated, as any such work would inevitably be, so I am glad to have originally read it in the 1980s.
This is very interesting to me from the "performing under pressure" point of view. I've been under the gun, so to speak, on more than one occasion and invariably I've delivered and learned most rapidly during those times.<p>Makes me wonder if people who "get shit done" operate on that sort of do-or-die mental state, or how long it's possible to put yourself in that mental state without either burning out or breaking down. I've read similar anecdotes from people like John Carmack and Richard Feynman (again, pressurized during WWII).<p>It's almost like we're operating at 50% efficiency, maybe we go to 75% when we're really focusing, but actually only when we're in the self-preservation state, we go to 90+%
I find Gibson's greatest gift is naming things and coming up with vernacular. Panther Moderns and ice are obvious standouts but I particularly liked "funny" as a term for pirated 3d printed objects in <i>The Peripheral.</i>
A great book. Unfortunately after Johnny Mnemonic , and the matrix(2+3) which were total garbage, I'm not sure I would want a movie based on that book.<p>It however influenced so much good stuff,like Ghost in the shell which is basically the same plot,Deus ex and others.<p>I enjoyed the audio-book read by Gibson itself,it was excellent.
Neuromancer was amazing. I realize now that Gibson's books monotonically decreased in quality.<p>The books have gotten thicker, artier, more self-indulgent, and weaker.<p>I'm sure he'd like to recapture the magic he had at 34, but maybe it requires the fear he spoke of. And an absolute ignorance about computers and networks.<p>I think it shares more with The Maltese Falcon than with any SciFi.<p>Saw WG complaining about GamerGate recently and thought how much he's aged, and how ungracefully, since GG and Operation Disrespectful Nod reminded me of the Panther Moderns.
Interesting to find that editor/author Terry Carr was so instrumental. The first scifi I ever read was his <i>Cirque</i>. That was a deeply weird book for an 8yo in the early 1980s (and thinking back I'm not sure whose bookshelf I could have raided to find it) but I was hooked.
<p><pre><code> “Is it going to be OK?” I asked, my anxiety phrasing the
question. He paused on the stair, gave me a brief,
memorably odd look, then smiled. “Yes,” he said, “I
definitely think it will,”
</code></pre>
Anxiety. Over the quality of the manuscript.
answer to title: <i>I would write, then, to the audience I imagined in the future of my discovery by friendly if unimaginable forces, and to them alone.</i>