So, I've finished reading William Gibson's Neuromancer. I picked it up a couple months ago... one of those things I spotted in Borders and thought "Hey, I should read that!" It turned out the be really good, if you haven't read it yet I highly recommend it.
I've been fascinated by the cyberpunk genre for a while now... I've always liked The Matrix, Ghost in the Shell is one of my favorite manga and anime, and now Neuromancer is my new favorite book. The future it presents seems... plausible, very plausible, even considering it was written about 25 years ago. A world where multinational corporations have grown in scope and power, where capitalism, advertising and technology pervades every aspect of life, where the Internet (called "cyberspace", or "the matrix") is central to both the social and economic worlds. Considering Neuromancer was written before the modern Internet formed, I think Gibson made a pretty good guess as to how hacking, data security, and the Internet in general would operate. Even the three-dimensional, hallucinogenic, direct mind-machine interface he described doesn't seem all that far-fetched. Hell, he describes an orbiting space resort/city in plausibly realistic detail!
I've gone ahead and picked up the rest of Gibson's "Sprawl" trilogy, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, and will probably spend the next few weeks going through those (depending on how much I enjoy this trilogy, I may move on to his "Bridge" trilogy: Virtual Light, Idoru, and All Tomorrow's Parties).
Again, if you haven't read Neuromancer yet, do so!
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