Neuromancer

这是一部让不少读者读得云里雾里、却又放不下书的书。它几乎凭一己之力为“赛博朋克”命名：那面由无数数据堆叠而成、如万家灯火般退却的“赛博空间”，那个外壁纯白、内里却藏着极度复杂智能的“白色方块”，至今仍是理解数字世界最贴切的隐喻。然而真正留住读者的，并非炫技式的设定堆砌，而是冷硬技术之下突然翻涌的肉身——一段让主角重新记起“属于牛仔们鄙弃的肉体”的情感，以及贯穿全书、如 noir 侦探小说般阴郁迷幻的语言。吉布森用近乎诗意的密度，把信息量压进每一句，读起来费力，却也正因如此，它成了《黑客帝国》《盗梦空间》《西部世界》反复回溯的源头。它适合愿意慢下来咀嚼文字、对“技术如何重塑人与身体关系”真正好奇的读者；若只求情节顺畅，或许会中途晕眩。

William Gibson is the author of Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Burning Chrome, Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties, and Pattern Recognition. Biography Science fiction owes an enormous debt to William Gibson, the cyberpunk pioneer who revolutionized the genre with his startling stories of tough, alienated loners adrift in a world of sinister high technology. Gibson was born in Conway, South Carolina, and spent much of his youth in Virginia with his widowed mother. He grew up shy and bookish, discovering science fiction and the literature of the beats at a precociously early age. When he was 15, he was sent away to private school in Arizona, but he left without graduating when his mother died suddenly. He fled to Canada to avoid the draft and immersed himself in '60s counterculture. He married, moved to British Columbia, and enrolled in college, graduating in 1977 with a degree in English. Around this time he began to write in earnest, combining his lifelong love of science fiction and his newfound passion for the punk music evolving in New York and London. In the early 1980s, Gibson met writer and punk musician John Shirley and sci-fi authors Lewis Shiner and Bruce Sterling. All three were blown away by the power and originality of Gibson's stories, and together the four men went on to forge a radical new literary movement called cyberpunk. In 1984, Gibson's groundbreaking first novel, Neuromancer, was published. Daring and revolutionary, it envisioned such techno-marvels as AI, virtual reality, genetic engineering, and multinational capitalism years before they became realities. Although it was not an immediate sensation, Neuromancer struck a chord with hardcore sci-fi fans who turned it into a word-of-mouth hit. Then it won the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards (the Triple Crown of Science Fiction), catapulting Gibson into superstardom overnight. Even if he had never written another word, Gibson's impact would be clearly seen in the works of such cutting-edge contemporary authors as Neal Stephenson, Pat Cadigan, and Paul DiFilippo. But, as it is, Neuromancer was just the beginning -- the first book in an inspired trilogy that has come to be considered a benchmark in the history of the genre; and since then, Gibson has gone on to create even more visionary science fiction, including The Difference Engine, a steampunk classic co-authored with Bruce Sterling, and such imaginative post-9/11 cyber thrillers as Pattern Recognition and Spook Country .