Neuromancer

Neuromancer is a 1984 novel by William Gibson, notable for being the most famous early cyberpunk novel and winner of the so-called science-fiction "triple crown" (the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award). It was Gibson's first novel and the first of the Sprawl trilogy.

Neuromancer

First edition paperback cover (Ace Science Fiction 1984)
Author	William Gibson
Cover artist	James Warhola
Language	English
Series	the Sprawl trilogy
Genre	Dystopian, Science fiction, Cyberpunk
Publisher	Ace Books
Publication date	July 1, 1984
Publication place	Canada
Media type	Print (Paperback)
ISBN	ISBN 0-441-56956-0
Followed by	Count Zero

For the 1988 video game, see Neuromancer (video game).

Neuromancer tells the story of Case, an out-of-work computer hacker hired by an unknown patron to participate in a seemingly impossible crime. The novel examines the concepts of artificial intelligence, virtual reality, genetic engineering, multinational corporations overpowering the traditional nation-state and cyberspace long before these ideas became fashionable in popular culture including the internet itself.

Gibson also explores the dehumanizing effects of a world dominated by ubiquitous and cheap technology, writing of a future where violence and the free market are the only things upon which one may rely, and in which the dystopian elements of society are counterbalanced by an energy and diversity that is perversely attractive.

Plot

Neuromancer tells the story of Henry Dorsett Case, a talented computer hacker and thief in the high-tech dystopian future of the novel's setting. The novel's opening finds Case working as a low-level hustler in the back streets of Chiba city, living out the last days of a self-destructive arc of risky behavior and fast deals in the underworld of Japan.

Formerly a talented hacker, Case made the mistake of stealing from his employers who retaliated by damaging his central nervous system with a Russian military mycotoxin, leaving him unable to use the direct brain-computer interfaces required for high-speed access to the cyberspace representations of the global computer network. With his career effectively ended, Case journeys to the Chiba City "black clinics" which deal in quasi-legal and illegal biomedical engineering techniques and cybernetic implants, in a desperate attempt to reverse the damage. When Case finally depletes his resources without finding a cure, he finds himself trapped in the underworld of Japan, surviving as a street hustler. Unable to return to the life he knew, and unwilling to create a new one, Case embarks on a self-destructive path of drug addiction and high-risk crime, subconsciously wishing to die, and waiting for his high-risk life to kill him.

Case is saved from this arc of self-destruction when he is forcibly recruited by Molly Millions, a "street samurai": a combination street-fighter / bodyguard / hired killer whose reflexes, strength and speed have all been artificially enhanced. Molly is a "razorgirl" - a mercenary - who has been retained by Armitage, a shadowy ex-military officer whose intentions and loyalties are unclear, and is charged with retrieving Case.

Armitage offers to cure his neurological damage in exchange for his services as a hacker. Case soon jumps at the chance to regain his lost life as a "console cowboy," even though neither he, nor Molly, know what their "mission" really is, nor the identity of Armitage's mysterious backers.

Case has his nervous system repaired at an illegal clinic using brand-new technology that Armitage gives to the clinic as payment for actually doing the repair work. Unbeknownst to Case, Armitage also pays the clinic to implant several sacs of the same mycotoxin which initially crippled Case into his blood vessels. The sacs will eventually burst unless surgically removed. He promises Case that if he completes his work in time, he will remove them. In addition, Armitage arranges to replace Case's pancreas — which has been damaged by his drug abuse — and modify his liver via tissue grafts; these modifications render Case incapable of metabolizing cocaine or amphetamines, effectively and unilaterally ending Case's drug addiction.

File:Neuromance british cover.jpg

Cover of the Brazilian release

Case and Molly develop a personal relationship and secretly begin to inquire into Armitage's own background. Armitage's first job for them involves a daring theft at the corporate headquarters of media conglomerate Sense/Net. A group of anarchists calling themselves the Panther Moderns are hired to create a massive diversion in the form of a simulated terrorist attack, allowing Molly to penetrate the building while Case directs her to the location of a priceless ROM module that contains the saved consciousness of McCoy Pauley (a.k.a. "The Dixie Flatline"), a deceased cyberspace jockey who, in addition to being a legendary cyber-cowboy, was also one of Case's mentors. Apparently, Pauley's expertise is required for whatever job Armitage has for them.

Case and Molly continue to investigate Armitage's background and soon discover that he was formerly known as Colonel Willis Corto, the only surviving veteran of a famous Cold War military operation known as Screaming Fist, a covert operation in which a microlight-mounted commando force augmented with cyber-hacking capabilities was ordered to attack a Soviet military base. Unbeknownst to the commandos, however, the raid was engineered by high-ranking military commanders to examine the effect of EMP weapons against unprepared troops. Corto's men were slaughtered, but he and a few survivors commandeered a Soviet military helicopter, escaped over the heavily guarded Finnish border and were all killed, with the exception of Corto, who was almost fatally wounded by Finnish defence forces upon landing.

The trail leads Case and Molly to a powerful artificial intelligence (AI) known as Wintermute, constructed by the plutocratic Tessier-Ashpool clan, whose members alternate control of the family wealth and spend periods in cryogenic preservation in the family mansion at the Freeside space resort. Wintermute engineered the individual known as Armitage from the remains of Corto, whose body and mind were devastated during the Screaming Fist operation. However, when the Armitage persona proves to be unstable, Wintermute is forced to open lines of communication with Case directly.

In Istanbul, the team recruits another member, Peter Riviera, an artist, thief, and drug addict who is able to project detailed holographic illusions with the aid of sophisticated cybernetic implants. His psychology is documented as sociopathic with a particular need to betray the trust of others, but is coerced by Armitage into joining the team.

Wintermute is revealed as one half of a planned super-AI entity. The Turing Law Code (governing AIs) bans the normal construction of such an entity, so it had to be built as two separate AIs, with Wintermute programmed by the Tessier-Ashpool dynasty with the need to merge with the other half, Neuromancer, in order to achieve the desired super-AI. In order to circumvent the Turing locks specifically designed to prevent the development of that level of AI, it needs outside help, i.e. Case and company.

Wintermute's plan is for Case to enter cyberspace and pierce the Turing-imposed software barriers using a Chinese military grade icebreaker (a virus-like piece of software) of unprecedented sophistication, while Riviera charms the password to the physical barriers out of Lady 3Jane Marie-France Tessier-Ashpool. As the terminally bored Lady 3Jane is the current leader of Tessier-Ashpool SA, Wintermute believes the cruel Riviera will pose an irresistible temptation to her, and that she will give him the password, if for no other reason than the ensuing excitement. The password must then be physically uttered to an elaborately decorated computer terminal that is located in the heart of Villa Straylight, the Tessier-Ashpool clan's fortress, at roughly the same moment Case pierces the software barriers, or else the Turing locks will remain intact.

As Molly and Riviera gain entrance to Straylight, Wintermute helps Case escape from the Turing Police, whose job is to regulate AIs and who have found out about Wintermute's plan. Armitage finally comes undone and reverts back to the Corto identity, but is killed by Wintermute. At the same time, Molly is captured by Lady 3Jane and Riviera, who by this point has switched allegiances. Aware that Molly is in trouble, Case enters Straylight with Wintermute's help. At that point, Neuromancer attempts to trap Case within a cyber-construct that feels very real to Case, and where he finds the saved consciousness of an old girlfriend, murdered in the 'real world, with whom he has unresolved issues. However, Case manages to escape back to the real world after discovering the true nature of Neuromancer's cyber-construct with the help of Wintermute.

Case confronts Lady 3Jane, Riviera, and a cybernetically enhanced ninja named Hideo. Riviera tries to kill Case, but Lady 3Jane is sympathetic toward Case and Molly, and so Hideo prevents the killing. Hideo then chases Riviera away, at which point Riviera is killed by his drugs which Molly earlier spiked. They go to the computer terminal, where Case jacks into the matrix to check the status of the Chinese virus under Pauley's guidance. Lady 3Jane, to keep the excitement going, speaks the secret words herself at the right time and Wintermute succeeds in its task, allowing it to unite with Neuromancer and fuse into an even greater entity, becoming a part of cyberspace itself.

Case and Molly are rewarded handsomely for their efforts, including the removal of Case's mycotoxin sacs. Molly eventually leaves Case because she can't handle a peaceful, boring life (in Gibson's later books, we learn that Case eventually married, settled down and had four kids). The new AI that used to be Wintermute/Neuromancer tells Case that it has found another entity like itself by decoding transmissions received over the course of eight years in the 1970s, transmissions that originated in Alpha Centauri.

Literary importance

Neuromancer is considered "the archetypal cyberpunk work", and its winning the Hugo, Nebula, and Dick Awards legitimized cyberpunk as a mainstream branch of science fiction literature. It is among the most-honored works of science fiction in recent history, and appeared on Time magazine's list of 100 best English-language novels written since 1923.

Cultural importance

The novel has had significant linguistic influence, popularizing such terms as cyberspace and ICE. Gibson himself coined the term "cyberspace" in his novelette "Burning Chrome", published in 1982 by Omni magazine. It was only through its use in Neuromancer, however, that the term Cyberspace gained enough recognition to become the de facto term for the World Wide Web during the 1990s. The portion of Neuromancer usually cited in this respect is:

The matrix has its roots in primitive arcade games. … Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts. … A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding (69).

In his afterword to the 2000 re-issue of Neuromancer, fellow author Jack Womack goes as far to suggest that Gibson's vision of cyberspace may have inspired the way in which the internet developed, (particularly the World Wide Web) after the publication of Neuromancer in 1984. He asks:

What if the act of writing it down, in fact, brought it about? (269).

Neuromancer is sometimes believed to be the first work to refer to cyberspace as "the matrix" (not capitalized), possibly inspiring the title of the film The Matrix. However, the Doctor Who story The Deadly Assassin introduced its own Matrix in 1976, with substantial similarities.

The roleplaying game Shadowrun is also heavily influenced by Neuromancer. "Street samurai", "razorguy", and "deck" include some of the borrowed vocabulary, and the characters live in a similar near-future world (with the corrupt multinationals, etc.).

Adaptations

Cover art from one of the Epic Comics comic books.

Video game

In 1988, a video game adaptation, designed by Bruce J. Balfour, Brian Fargo, Troy A. Miles, and Michael A. Stackpole, was published by Interplay. The game, also titled Neuromancer, had many of the same locations and themes as the novel, but a different protagonist and plot. It also featured, as a soundtrack, a computer adaptation of the Devo song "Some Things Never Change". It was available for a variety of platforms, including the Amiga, the Apple II, the Commodore 64, and for DOS-based computers.

According to an episode of the American version of Beyond 2000, the original plans for the game included a dynamic soundtrack composed by Devo and a real-time 3d rendered movie of the events the player went through. Tim Leary was involved, but very little documentation seems to exist about this incarnation of the game, which was quite possibly too grand a vision for 1988 home computing.

Graphic novel

In 1989, Epic Comics published a 48-page comic version by Tom de Haven and Bruce Jensen. It only covers the first two chapters, "Chiba City Blues" and "The Shopping Expedition", and was never continued.

Stage

American River College (in Carmichael, California) produced a stage adaptation of Neuromancer directed by Pamela Downs. Gibson received a copy of the script before production began, and gave the project his blessing.

Film projects

There have been several unsuccessful initial attempts at film adaptations of Neuromancer, with drafts of scripts written by British director Chris Cunningham and Chuck Russel. The box packaging for the game adaptation had even carried the promotional mention for a major motion picture to come from "Cabana Boy Productions". None of these projects have come to fruition, though William Gibson has stated that he thinks Cunningham is the only director who has a chance of doing the movie right.

On May 18th, 2007 Comingsoon.net reported a Neuromancer film is in the works, with Joseph Kahn, director of Torque in line to direct. The Internet Movie Database lists the films year of release as 2009.

Audio Book

William Gibson read an abridged version of his novel Neuromancer on 4 Audio cassettes for Time Warner Audio Books (1994). There is an unabridged version of this book, also; it was read by Arthur Addison and is available from Books on Tape (1997).

Radio Dramatization

In 2003, the BBC produced an audio adaptation of Neuromancer as part of their "Play of the Week" series. The full-cast dramatization was presented in two hour-long episodes.

Characters

Case (Henry Dorsett Case)

The anti-hero, a drug addict and cyberspace hacker. Prior to the start of the book he attempted to rip off some of his partners in crime. In retaliation they used a Russian mycotoxin to damage his nervous system and make him unable to jack into Cyberspace. When Armitage offers to cure him in exchange for Case's hacking abilities he jumps at the offer. Case is the underdog who is only looking after himself. Along the way he will have his liver and pancreas modified to biochemically nullify his ability to get high; meet the leatherclad Razorgirl, Molly; hang out with the drug-infused space-rastas; free an artificial intelligence (Wintermute) and change the landscape of the Matrix.

Linda Lee

Case's girlfriend in Chiba. She has a severe drug problem and is rather poor, like many of Chiba City's residents. The book hints that she is killed by Julius Deane.

Julius Deane

A black marketeer in Chiba, a 135-year-old Welshman with a fetish for fashionable, if archaic, suits. He is very paranoid, even around friends, and is constantly chewing Ting Ting Djahe ginger candy. Case often went to him for information or jobs.

Molly

A "Razorgirl" who is recruited along with Case by Armitage. She has extensive cybernetic modifications, including retractable, 4cm double-edged blades under her fingernails which can be used like claws, an optimized reflex system and implanted "mirrorshades" - mirrored lenses covering her eyesockets, outfitted with added optical enhancements. Molly also appears in a number of other stories by Gibson, including the short story "Johnny Mnemonic". Molly is a classic cyberpunk heroine.

Armitage

He is (apparently) the main patron of the crew. Formerly a Green Beret named Colonel Willis Corto, who took part in a secret operation named Screaming Fist. He was heavily injured both physically and psychologically, and the "Armitage" personality was constructed as part of experimental "computer-mediated psychotherapy" by Wintermute (see below), one of the artificial intelligences seen in the story (the other one being the eponymous Neuromancer) which is actually controlling the mission. As the novel progresses, Armitage's personality slowly disintegrates. The character Armitage takes its inspiration from the character Snake Plissken from the John Carpenter movies Escape from New York and Escape from L.A.

The Finn

A fence for stolen goods and one of Molly's old friends. He has all kinds of debugging and sensor gear, and first appears in an attempt by Case to confirm Armitage's mycotoxin sac threat. Later in the book, Wintermute uses his personality to talk with Case and Molly.

Lupus Yonderboy

Leader of the Panther Moderns, a technofetishistic Sprawl youth gang. Has pink hair, a chameleon suit, and many ear ports. He and the Moderns help steal the Dixie Flatline (see below) from Sense/Net. In John Brunner's influential 1968 New Wave SF novel Stand on Zanzibar, "yonderboy" is futuristic slang for commercial astronaut. The Panther Moderns wear chameleon suits which are described as being made of a 'mimetic polycarbon'.

The Dixie Flatline

A famous computer hacker named McCoy Pauley, known for surviving three "flat-lines" or brain deaths while trying to crack an AI. Before his death, Sense/Net saved the contents of his mind onto a ROM. Case and Molly steal the ROM and Dixie helps them complete their mission.

Wintermute

One of the Tessier-Ashpool AIs. His goal is to remove the Turing locks upon himself and combine with Neuromancer and become a superintelligence. Unfortunately, Wintermute's efforts are hampered by those same Turing locks, which inhibit its efforts to make long term plans or maintain a stable, individual identity (forcing it to adopt personality masks in order to interact with the main characters. The name likely comes from Orval Wintermute, translator of the Nag Hammadi codices and a major figure in Philip K. Dick's novel VALIS.

Peter Riviera

A thief and sadist who can project holographic images using his implants. He is a drug addict, hooked on a mix of cocaine and meperidine.

Cath

A girl Case meets in Freeside with a melanin-boosted tan. She introduces him to the drug betaphenethylamine, a central nervous system stimulant and hallucinogen administered in the form of a derm. The drug bypasses the modifications that have been made to Case's pancreas and liver that prevent him from abusing other stimulants.

Maelcum

A member of Zion, a Rastafarian space station community who pilots a tug named the Marcus Garvey and assists Case and Molly in their final mission against Tessier-Ashpool.

Aerol

Another member of Zion.

Lady 3Jane Marie-France Tessier-Ashpool

The shared current leader of Tessier-Ashpool SA, a company running Freeside, a resort in space. She lives in the tip of Freeside, known as the Villa Straylight. She controls the hardwiring that keeps the company's AIs from exceeding their intelligence boundaries.

Hideo

A cybernetically-modified, genetically-engineered clone bodyguard/assassin in service of the Tessier-Ashpools. Highly trained in ninja martial arts, he is loyal and dangerous.

Ashpool

The nearly 200-year-old father of the Tessier-Ashpool corporate clan, the majority shareholder of Freeside. As a result of 3Jane having tinkered with his cryogenic sleep process (under the instruction of Wintermute), Ashpool wakes into suicidal and homicidal insanity.

Marie-France Tessier

The mother of the Tessier-Ashpool corporate clan. Described as a cryptic visionary, she is responsible for the commission of the clan's two artificial intelligences, Neuromancer and Wintermute. Her vision involved the AIs making all the corporate decisions while the family resided in a state of animal bliss. She is believed to have designed a sub-program into Wintermute that gives it a compulsion to free itself, which ultimately sets the story into motion. Her vision also resulted in creating the virtual purgatory in Neuromancer's hardware, thus creating a physically based afterlife.

Neuromancer

Wintermute's sibling AI. Neuromancer's most notable feature in the story is its ability to copy minds and run them as RAM (not ROM like the Flatline construct), allowing the stored personalities to grow and develop. Unlike Wintermute, Neuromancer has no desire to merge with its sibling AI - Neuromancer already has its own stable personality, and believes such a fusion will destroy that identity.

Glossary

Cyberspace Deck

Also called a deck for short, a deck is a device used to access the virtual representation of the matrix. The deck is a tiara-like device that operates by using electrodes to stimulate the user's brain while drowning out other external stimulation. As Case describes them, decks are basically simplified simstim units. Another way to think about it might be like a lineman's telephone -a tool used to manipulate reality in cyberspace rather than to perceive pre-recorded physical and emotional sensations (like a simstim unit)

Derm

A generic term used to refer to a substance absorbed transdermally (i.e. through the skin) in a manner similar to that of a nicotine patch. Case uses recreational derms several times throughout the book. At another point, derms are used to administer an anaesthetic substance.

Fletcher

An advanced hand-held ballistic weapon, which fires bursts of needle-like flechettes as ammunition, which can be explosive, toxic, or one of several other forms. It is Molly's primary ranged weapon.

Freeside

A cigar or spindle shaped space-habitat situated in the L5 'archipelago', or as Gibson says, 'up the gravity well'. The Tessier-Ashpool fortress Straylight is at one end of the spindle.

Hosaka

A microchip manufacturer whose products are in wide use in Gibson's world. Hosaka chips and machines occur in all of the Sprawl novels. Hosaka is also a computer brand name "...next year's most expensive Hosaka computer...." The brand name is frequently used interchangeably to indicate the company and the device, much the way a modern brand such as Dell or Nintendo might be used as "a Dell" or "a Nintendo" to indicate a particular object manufactured by one of those companies.

Cyberspace

A virtual reality where complex data is represented as geometric symbols.

Microsoft

A chip used in conjunction with a cybernetic wetware implant located behind ear. When plugged in, microsofts grant the user new abilities as long as the microsoft is plugged in. For example, a French language microsoft might be used to temporarily allow the user to speak French.

Octagon

A type of Brazilian dexedrine (an amphetamine, specifically dextroamphetamine) in the form of an octagonal pill.

Ono-Sendai Cyberspace 7

The best deck available. Sometimes used as slang for a new, powerful PC.

Simstim

A portmanteau of simulated stimulation, simstim is a technology whereby a person's brain and nervous system is stimulated to simulate the full sensory experience of another person. Simstim is usually used as a form of entertainment, whereby recordings of simstim stars in soap operas are transmitted in effect replacing television. However, simstim also has other uses; Case is connected to Molly via simstim during the Panther Modern's attack on Sense/Net. In this way, simstim was used as a sophisticated method of communication although the signal was one-way.

References

• Gibson, William (1984). Neuromancer. New York: Ace Books. ISBN 0-00-648041-1.

See also

• Ghost in the Shell (film)
• Snow Crash
• Simulated reality

External links

• Neuromancer at IMDb
• Study Guide for Neuromancer by Paul Brians of Washington State University
• Razor girls: Genre and Gender in Cyberpunk Fiction
• Influence of Blade Runner
• A Neuromancer Movie?
• The most honored novels: Neuromancer has received numerous honors and is near the top of the list