But how many of them compare a dim, polluted, and smog-filled Asian sky to the way a flat-screen looks in the moments just before Netflix loads the series you want to watch? The TV isn’t on, but it isn’t off, either. The book’s very first sentence reveals everything the reader can expect: “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”Īuthors have been describing the sky for thousands of years. Dick and the Hugo-is its breakneck storytelling, which combines high technology, a classic tale of corporate greed, war, revenge, and politics with some dazzling writing. The brilliance of the novel and what won it every literary award available-the Nebula, the Philip K. In exchange for Case’s services, his employer cures his damaged nervous system and ends his drug addiction as a sort of signing bonus. (artificial intelligence) called Wintermute. A mysterious ex-military man named Armitage recruits Case and a group of cyber-rogues to infiltrate an extremely powerful A.I. He gets a second chance from a multinational corporation with shady and ominous plans. The plot centers around Case, Neuromancer’s high-paid “cyberspace cowboy” whose unique skill is his ability to infiltrate the most secure corporate databases-in other words, he’s a top-tier hacker, but he’s caught stealing from an employer who poisons his nervous system with toxins that end his hacking career. The “sci” in Gibson’s novel may almost be familiar to twenty-first-century readers, while the “fi” remains timeless. So while William Gibson didn’t consciously put mobile phones in Neuromancer, technology caught up and pencilled it in for him.

It’s possible to make calls on some tablets, and it’s possible to Skype or Facetime on almost any device. I don’t remember how I imagined the Hitachi when I first read Neuromancer, but when I read that sentence a few weeks ago, I imagined an iPad mini or Android tablet.

But there’s a scene early on in the book where the protagonist, a cyber-hacker for hire named Case, returns to his pod hotel, which he describes as sparse: “There was nothing in Number 92 but a standard Hitachi pocket computer and a small white styrofoam cooler chest.” In a 2011 interview, he said he just didn’t envision it. William Gibson knows there are no cell phones in his iconic 1984 novel Neuromancer.