A look at why William Gibson's vision of a washed-up computer
hacker navigating his way through a dystopian future is a vital
piece of literature... There are few books that have been
published in my lifetime that have had such a profound influence
on not only literature, but on the world at large, as William
Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer. In simple terms, Neuromancer,
at its core, is a detective noir story set in a dystopian
future. But this isn’t a novel that can be accounted for in
simple terms. Neuromancer is told from the perspective of our
narrator, Henry Dorsett Case. Case is the novel’s reluctant
anti-hero: a suicidal, drug-addled ex-hacker residing without
work in Chiba City, Japan. Almost from the outset, we see Case
as a world-weary cynic who bums around in bars trying not to let
his past catch up with him. The last time he was caught, his
captors destroyed his nervous system, making it impossible for
Case to access Cyberspace, – a term coined by Gibson that has
become part of our common lexicon: