Neuromancer by William Gibson: 7/10

‘Cyberpunk is a science fiction genre noted for its focus on “high tech and low life”.’ says Wikipedia. Neuromancer was one of the first books in this genre.

The first chapter of the book is kinda hard to get through. It’s basically a description of a place where you won’t want to be seen through the eyes of a person you wouldn’t want to be. There’s no real visible goal to the story nor really any entertainment value. No intelligent conversations. This changes when this person (Case is his name) gets contacted by people that can and will put him back into business.
One will find that a number of decent reviews exist on the internet that further explore the story, plot, characters and importance of the story.

Looking at the way the book was written, William Gibson guides us through the Earth of that time by use of extensive descriptions of locations. Every chair and desk in every hotel chamber is meticulously detailed and the workings of every knife and gun is put into words. Gibson seems to find the reasoning of the characters and the general situation less important whilst the specifics get a lot of attention.
Even though I would personally have preferred to get more information on general situation and more building of the characters, the way Gibson does describe the situations and the background picture is done expertly. Reading the descriptions gives one a vision of a future where all the good things in life have disappeared.

Although Neuromancer (or more precisely: Cyberpunk) isn’t really my genre, I did enjoy reading the book. It did not captivate me as much as I would like but William Gibson succeeds in painting a vision of the future that we might want to try and avoid.