My boss brought a bunch of books in to work and left them in our common lunch room. I snagged this one for myself because it is a classic work of SF that I have never read. The book one the triple crown of science fiction awards, the Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick awards, and was the first written use of the word "cyberspace".

Neuromancer was written in 1983 which makes it 27 years old. Unlike some science fiction it does not seem at all dated. There are devices and events that haven't happened but nothing I could see was incapable of happening. Perhaps the only event referred to that shows the time of writing is the Screaming Fist episode that Armitage was involved in. It was an ambush in Russia by US special forces to try to destroy the Russian nexus. If Gibson was writing now it might have been China or Korea or even Pakistan. But that's it as far as I could see for letting events at the time of writing colour the events of the future.

Case is a console cowboy (or computer hacker as we would think of him) who tried to take a piece of the pie for himself. His bosses destroyed his ability to connect to cyberspace (a term that didn't exist in 1983 and that Gibson is credited with inventing) so he is living in Japan trying to make a living with illicit substance dealing and using quite a bit himself. He's on a slow trajectory to death. He's virtually broke and he owes a lot of money. When the hired gun Molly tracks him to the coffin room he rents by the week he has just been ripped off by his girlfriend. Molly takes him to meet Armitage who is putting together a team of people with distinctive talents. As Case eventually finds out they are needed to infiltrate the defences of one of the world's major corporations, Tessier-Ashpool. Case and Molly team up to discover who Armitage is and for whom he is working. Case gets his computer networking powers back but Armitage tells him that he has been fitted with small sacs that contain a virus that will put him back into the same position unless he is injected with an antidote that only Armitage has. So it is in Case's best interests to help Armitage complete his job.

Tessier-Ashpool has a powerful Artificial Intelligence (AI) named Wintermute. Wintermute is the 'person' who hired Armitage and his gang. The job that Wintermute wants done is to free Wintermute from the bindings that prevent him from acting independently. Although it seemed to me that Wintermute had incredible powers there were a few things it could not do. One of the powers Wintermute had was to appear to Case and the others as a person they knew in real life. These constructs would help or motivate the team members because they seemed real.

I can see how this book won all the SF awards going at the time it was published. It's an incredibly detailed and imaginative work. I'm glad I finally took the opportunity to read it. IMDb says there is a movie in production due for release in 2011. That should be interesting to see.

I left this book in a BC baggie in one of the planters outside the station. This release is for the 2010 52 Towns in 52 Weeks release challenge.