Week 3: Neuromancer

Neuromancer is a cyberpunk book. Scratch that, neuromancer is THE cyberpunk book. Not only was it the first one, but it's the one that most embodies what cyberpunk IS. It's the book that invented the term Cyberspace, and contained the concept of the internet (albeit under a different name) some decades before it's invention. In fact, there are theories that this book is the REASON the internet exists as it did, that it inspired the real thing. Cyberpunk books depict a world where highly developed cybernetics, AI, and other technological wonders are completely commonplace. It's rarely utopian (which is part of where the "punk" part of cyberpunk comes from) but is rarely quite DIStopian either, the preference usually being to depict a world where technology has solved some problems while opening up completely new ones. Cyberpunk is the inspiration for a wealth of new genre/settings (for they really are both), from the Genetic engineering of Biopunk to the supposedly low tech Clock and Steampunk. And this book is the book that started it all off.