I read Neuromancer twice when I bought it too, but that was because it excited me so much. The reason I'm typing here now, and that I work in IT, is Neuromancer.
In 1985, there was, in effect, no internet, certainly nothing like we have today. But people who read Gibson influenced the shape of the internet as it is today.
I would also agree entirely with Steve Roby's and Camelopard's comments, they pretty much said what I was going to say about Gibson.
The discussion about memory is interesting. I have a small library, but I think of those books as being crucial to who I am, in terms of the knowledge I possess. To lose one of those books would be to lose a chunk of memory or a skillset. In one of the other books in the Neuromancer trilogy (Count Zero or Mona Lisa Overdrive), one of the protagonists inserts software behind his ear and can straight away speak Spanish. That would be a very useful thing to have, though the thought occurs that you are then simply using someone else's pre-processed interpretation of Spanish, or philosophy, or whatever software you use - you don't interpret it ofr yourself as readily as reading from a number of sources, because (it implies in the story) when the software's removed, the knowledge goes with it. But I digress. My point is that there's about 50 books, a 'library within my library' that helped shape who I am, and I refer back to even twenty years later.
I also would recommend Burning Chrome, it's easier to see what he's getting at with the short stories in some ways. I'm also going to reread Pattern Recognition at some point soon, because what struck me about it was it's written in the style of a SF novel, but deals with contemporary technology, so that it's not SF at all, but gives that technology a different spin.
In 1985, there was, in effect, no internet, certainly nothing like we have today. But people who read Gibson influenced the shape of the internet as it is today.
I would also agree entirely with Steve Roby's and Camelopard's comments, they pretty much said what I was going to say about Gibson.
The discussion about memory is interesting. I have a small library, but I think of those books as being crucial to who I am, in terms of the knowledge I possess. To lose one of those books would be to lose a chunk of memory or a skillset. In one of the other books in the Neuromancer trilogy (Count Zero or Mona Lisa Overdrive), one of the protagonists inserts software behind his ear and can straight away speak Spanish. That would be a very useful thing to have, though the thought occurs that you are then simply using someone else's pre-processed interpretation of Spanish, or philosophy, or whatever software you use - you don't interpret it ofr yourself as readily as reading from a number of sources, because (it implies in the story) when the software's removed, the knowledge goes with it. But I digress. My point is that there's about 50 books, a 'library within my library' that helped shape who I am, and I refer back to even twenty years later.
I also would recommend Burning Chrome, it's easier to see what he's getting at with the short stories in some ways. I'm also going to reread Pattern Recognition at some point soon, because what struck me about it was it's written in the style of a SF novel, but deals with contemporary technology, so that it's not SF at all, but gives that technology a different spin.
Actually, Count Zero was the first Gibson novel that I read, when it was serialized in Asimov's. Then I went back and read Neuromancer and have read just about everything he wrote up to All Tomorrow's Parties.
