Neuromancer

Gibson, William. Neuromancer. New York: Ace, 1984. Introd. Terry Carr.

Cyberpunk vision of a 21st-c. world where human systems are altered by mechanical, chemical, cybernetic, and surgical means; the hard-case hero is a data thief in the world of the human-computer interface, "the Matrix." The plot threatens or promises release upon cyberspace and human society of a powerful AI. Cf. and contrast the funky worlds of P. K. Dick's Do Androids Dream [. . .[ and the film BLADE RUNNER, the human-machine interface in K. O'Donnell's ORA:CLE and V. Vinge's Across Real Time (under Fiction and Film). See in this Category WG's Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, and the entry for J. T. Sladek's The Müller-Fokker Effect and the works cross-indexed there. The Neuromancer trilogy is important for positive containment (freedom to act) within computers ("cyberspace") and for use of the hive motif. For similar literary effects with more mundane technology, see F. Pfeil, Goodman 2020.

Neuromancer is much discussed in the scholarly literature.[1] For one interesting example: "Computer Fictions: Narratives of the Machinic Phylum." Discussed for its racial aspects in Isiah Lavender's Race in American Science Fiction. For an economic reading through a Marxist lens, see David Brande's "The Business of Cyberpunk," itself discussed in Heather Hick's "Striking Cyborgs: Reworking the "Human" in Marge Piercy's He, She and It, p. 88." Cited in Thomas Foster's "'The Postproduction of the Human Heart': Desire, Identification, and Virtual Embodiment in Feminist Narratives of Cyberspace."

For "Approaching Neuromancer" in the classroom and scholarship, see SFRA Review #238 (February 1999), possibly accessed or downloaded at the Issue Archive here[2] or at U. of South Florida Digital Commons here.[3] The issue includes

• "Oldromancer/Neuromancer" by Donald Giziger (pp. 5-7).
• "Neuromancer Study Questions from David Mead.
• [Study] Guide to Neuromancer by Rich[ard D.] Erlich (pp. 7-16).
• A list of secondary sources by Donald Glinzer (pp. 17-18).
• A longer list of "More Secondary Sources" by Hal Hall (pp. 19-24): a work by a major bibliographer important enough that we  give it an independent citation. 

RDE, initial, and finishing 29Jul23, 4Aug23, 12Aug23