My most recent listen, after The Sandman: Act III, is William Gibson’s ”Neuromancer”. It’s a novel that I’ve read a couple of times before, but that before is now the distant past. It’s definitely an important part of my science fiction origin story, and something that I’ve liked a whole lot because I’ve wanted to like it a whole lot. See also ”Blade Runner”.

Back in the mid nineties, probably ’94, I first watched ”Star Wars” and fell in love with it. Prior to that, and after that, I read and enjoyed a lot of science fictions stories. It also furthered me deeper into the sci-fi black hole. The first and most prominent stop in that hole was ”Blade Runner”. Here was a movie starring Harrison Ford, about a future cop chasing humanoid robots, in a hauntingly beautiful and disturbing dystopia. Obviously I was going to love it, right.

Right.

Right?

I think the fact that Blade Runner stared Ford did a lot of heavy lifting for me when I first watched it, probably as a twelve year old. I most certainly didn’t understand it, and the fact that what I watched was a VHS copy on a 19″ television screen meant that I could not fully appreciate it’s cinematic beauty. But I did convince myself that I liked it, and it’s a movie that I’ve returned to over and over again. It has grown with me and as an adult I absolutely think that it is a masterpiece.

What does this have to do with Neuromancer? Well, everything. Partly because they are both defining works within cyberpunk, partly because cyberpunk as a whole was one of those things that I knew that I wanted to like, so I made myself like, even though it was weird thing for pre teen me. I am so far removed from the standard cyberpunk protagonist, and I’ve never really been part of the goth, punk or any other subculture that’s close to cyberpunk. I was a squeaky clean, middle-manager type even as an elven year old.

Anyway, some way along the line I picked up on cyberpunk being a thing, and that William Gibson was important within that genre. The exact timeline is hazy, thirty years later, but it’s undeniable that the next Big Thing in this story happened in 1999 when I watched ”The Matrix”. No movie have ever before, not ever after, had a bigger impact on me.¹ I was fourteen years old and I felt like I could suddenly see the world in a new light. Sure, the kung fu fights and the tight leather outfits was a part of the appeal, but the philosophy, the ideas also struck a chord big time. Even though it wasn’t a true description of the world, it was still accurate.

And as I geeky out to The Matrix, thought more about it, and read more about it, cyberpunk kept coming up. Again, the exact timeline is blurry. I had probably read a novel or two from William Gibson, but I’m almost positive that I read Neuromancer, in a Swedish translation, after watching The Matrix. After that, I read Count Zero and Mona-Lisa Overdrive as well.

Neuromancer was similar to Blade Runner to me, in that I probably wanted to like it more that I did. I absolutely wanted to understand it more that I did. But I did like it, and it felt profound. I re-read it. I read more Gibson, slowly but surely.

Now, as I listen to it as a forty year old, I think I fully appreciate it for the first time. It is really, truly a masterpice.