Neuromancer, 30 years old this month, leapt into cyberspace almost before it existed
I recently read this book for the first time. It seemed innocuous, and I thought I just didn't "get" it until I found out it was written 30 years ago. Gibson predicted our lives so well, and has been emulated so often by other sci-fi writers that it just seemed like a good - if a little bit derivative - sci-fi novel. But Gibson is (along with Dick and Asimov), the one being derived FROM. This concept fascinates me.
I first read it in 1987. It was pretty damn groundbreaking even then. That was about the time Bruce Stirling wrote Islands in the Net - which predicted the fall of the Soviet Union, the use of drones for assassination and the rise of corporate culture over nation-state. About two years later the two of them wrote The Difference Engine, the book that created Steampunk (and is the only example worth bothering with). My best friend wrote his masters' thesis for his MFA on how The Matrix basically stole every useful trope from William Gibson and Bruce Sterling and Hollywooded it into oblivion. The "Neuromancer movie" is one of those legends of Hollywood that has almost happened so many times it's heartbreaking. Now it'd be a period piece.