Neuromancer

Neuromancer

First edition
Author	William Gibson
Audio read by	Robertson Dean
Cover artist	James Warhola
Series	Sprawl trilogy
Genre	Science fiction, cyberpunk
Publisher	Ace
Publication date	July 1, 1984
Media type	Print (paperback and hardback)
Pages	271
ISBN
OCLC	10980207
Preceded by	"Burning Chrome"
Followed by	Count Zero

Neuromancer is a 1984 novel by William Gibson, a seminal work in the cyberpunk genre and the first winner of the science-fiction "triple crown"—the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award. It was Gibson's debut novel and the beginning of the Sprawl trilogy. The novel tells the story of a washed-up computer hacker hired by a mysterious employer to pull off the ultimate hack.

Before Neuromancer, Gibson had written several short stories for prominent science fiction periodicals—mostly noir countercultural narratives concerning low-life protagonists in near-future encounters with cyberspace. The themes he developed in this early short fiction, the Sprawl setting of "Burning Chrome" (1982), and the character of Molly Millions from "Johnny Mnemonic" (1981) laid the foundations for the novel.John Carpenter's Escape from New York (1981) influenced the novel; Gibson was "intrigued by the exchange in one of the opening scenes where the Warden says to Snake 'You flew the Gullfire over Leningrad, didn't you?' [sic] It turns out to be just a throwaway line, but for a moment it worked like the best SF, where a casual reference can imply a lot." The novel's street and computer slang dialogue derives from the vocabulary of subcultures, particularly "1969 Toronto dope dealer's slang, or biker talk". Gibson heard the term "flatlining" in a bar around twenty years before writing Neuromancer and it stuck with him. Author Robert Stone, a "master of a certain kind of paranoid fiction", was a primary influence on the novel. The term "Screaming Fist" was taken from the song of the same name by Toronto punk rock band The Viletones.