One of the ideas we continue to bring up in class with these science fiction novels is what science fiction does that other genres fail to do. We looked for lines that were being crossed, like the racial boundaries in “The Comet.” I think we can say the same for Neuromancer written by William Gibson. In Gibson’s short biography before the story begins, it said that “Gibson is credited with having coined the term “cyberspace,” and having envisioned both the Internet and virtual reality before either existed” (Gibson 4). Keeping these two facts in mind, it’s interesting to see how cyberspace and virtual reality unfold through the novel.
Because Gibson is introducing his view on future technology, he has to be able to describe it well to allow readers to get a clear understanding of it. I think the way Gibson begins his novel does a good job immersing his readers into this somewhat familiar yet foreign world. Case does not start out as a “cyberspace cowboy” in the middle of a project, but as a man just surviving. Gibson takes time building the setting and providing backstory such as how Case’s nervous system was damaged by mycotoxin (Gibson 8). He provides the readers with tiny glimpses of what Gibson imagines cyberspace to be like “the matric…bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless void” (Gibson 7). Only once Armitage helps Case fix the damage done to his nervous system, do the readers get a better view of what cyberspace is. Then readers learn that cyberspace is “lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data” (Gibson 49). Even though Case is already familiar with cyberspace, by bringing Case back to it, Gibson can describe cyberspace as new and exciting that will allow readers to get a better idea of what cyberspace is to him.