William Gibson, Neuromancer

Tatiani Rapatzikou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.1.2: Canadian Writing and Culture (Anglophone): The Twentieth Century and beyond, 1900-present.
Vol. editors: Sarah Henzi (Simon Fraser University), Kerry Myler (Newman University), Glen Nichols (Mount Allison University), Wendy Roy (University of Saskatchewan), Denis Salter (McGill University), Karis Shearer (University of British Columbia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1984

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel
Science Fiction

Resources

William Gibson's first and highly acclaimed novel, Neuromancer (1984), established him as one of the most admired and influential writers of the 1980s. It also helped to popularise cyberpunk, a new literary sub-genre. Bruce Sterling in his preface to Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (1986) referred to Neuromancer as “the quintessential cyberpunk novel” whose fame relied on the depiction of a believably gritty future and the representation of cyberspace as a living space. However, the image of the future portrayed in Neuromancer had already been anticipated by three key films, all produced in 1982: David Cronenberg's Videodrome with its hallucinatory mass-media world; Steven Lisberger's Tron …

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2038 words

Citation: Rapatzikou, Tatiani. "Neuromancer". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 11 July 2003 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=10548, accessed 26 November 2024.]

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