A shared hallucination owned by corporations and ripped through by prose that has fangs and takes speed. Rereading this after going through a lot more of the modern philosophy/theory fiction classics (Ballard, Burroughs, PKD, and Conrad) and things really clicked into place this time.

On my first read I remember being confused why it was even called “Neuromancer” and what that term connoted. But this time I was almost assaulted by the neural landscape built in this book. Computer operators jacking their consciousness into the matrix. Being able to see through the eyes of someone else. Simulations being deployed by AI to confuse and achieve their goals. Layer on layer of stimulants laid over the human experience. Direct cybernetic contrast of the corporeal and the machinic at the interface of the spine and the nervous system a la Marcel Duchamp’s efforts at the surreal. Gibson takes a look at control systems just like anyone worth their salt writing since Norbert Wiener.

A near-perfect book for me that has zero apologizing to do and zero interest in apologizing. You want in, good, you better suit up and be ready for the whiplash. It’s not slowing down and if you want to understand a fuckin thing about the world that’s been built in this book’s wake then neither can you.

This is a book that feels to me like red-eyed alterations to a computer’s config files at 1 in the morning with a paranoid glance at the modem on the wall.

If we’ve entered the neo-80’s with yuppie shameless flaunting of wealth and deregulation then I guess the only thing a jaded operator like myself can look forward to is the pseudo Platonism of the neo-90’s and some counter-cultural cyberpunk along the way. Will our cultural pancreas survive the synthetic teeth-chattering drug fugue along the way?