Why am I passionate about this?
Something that annoys me to no end is when people avoid reading fantasy or sci-fi because it isn’t realistic. I argue that realism isn’t about the veracity of flying dragons or building a fusion reactor that can fit in our hands; it’s about the human elements in between. Sci-fi can be a reminder of the dangerous trajectory we are heading in. Fantasy can reflect inequality by condensing resources to one mystical gem. To this end, any book that ends with me understanding the danger of language by describing it as a virus or showing me how books can bridge the gap between past and present makes me grow as a person.
Kian's book list on think about humanity's legacy
Why did Kian love this book?
I wonder where humanity is heading. Somewhere around 2023, I fell off the deep end with my newfound love for the cyberpunk genre. I started with this classic. Just the opening has lodged itself in my brain: “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
In the future, I wonder if the line between machine and flesh, digital and real, will be so blurred that it’s all the same to us. In many ways, the post-capitalistic cyberpunk world is already here, and I see that reflected in Neuromancer.
9 authors picked Neuromancer as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
The book that defined the cyberpunk movement, inspiring everything from The Matrix to Cyberpunk 2077.
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
William Gibson revolutionised science fiction in his 1984 debut Neuromancer. The writer who gave us the matrix and coined the term 'cyberspace' produced a first novel that won the Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick Awards, and lit the fuse on the Cyberpunk movement.
More than three decades later, Gibson's text is as stylish as ever, his noir narrative still glitters like chrome in the shadows and his depictions of…