Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Unavailable
Neuromancer
Unavailable
Neuromancer
Unavailable
Neuromancer
Audiobook10 hours

Neuromancer

Written by William Gibson

Narrated by Robertson Dean

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

Neuromancer is the multiple award-winning novel that launched the astonishing career of William Gibson. The first fully-realized glimpse of humankind's digital future, it is a shocking vision that has challenged our assumptions about our technology and ourselves, reinvented the way we speak and think, and forever altered the landscape of our imaginations.

Editor's Note

Wild cyberpunk tale...

It's hard to overstate how much Gibson's wild cyberpunk tale of rogue hackers, super-intelligent AIs, and shadowy corporations has influenced the way we think about technology and its role in our society.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateJun 30, 2011
ISBN9781101536698
Unavailable
Neuromancer
Author

William Gibson

William Gibson’s first novel, Neuromancer, won the Hugo Award, the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award, and the Nebula Award in 1984. He is credited with having coined the term “cyberspace,” and having envisioned both the Internet and virtual reality before either existed. His other novels include All Tomorrow’s Parties, Idoru, Virtual Light, Mona Lisa Overdrive, and Count Zero. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with his wife and two children.

More audiobooks from William Gibson

Related to Neuromancer

Related audiobooks

Thrillers For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for Neuromancer

Rating: 3.931763649175076 out of 5 stars
4/5

6,243 ratings189 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I think I'd expected Tron, The Matrix, or even Johnny Mnemonic. Instead, an unlikable druggie / tech addict goes on a VR-enhanced trip to evade dying at the hands of the mob, as his pseudo-girlfriend does. This might need a reread to see if I'd read the first time with too many expectations.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This was a re-read of an archetype of the cypberpunk genre, with all of the nostalgia that accompanies a visit to an old friend. Unfortunately, the first half (or more) of the book came across as being as muddled this time around as it did the first time I read it decades ago, as the plot does not develop and flow very smoothly. As before, I had the sense that it had been written and rewritten and edited and reedited countless times, to the point where it was easy to get lost on some details--even the second time around. Still, it's easy to see how much of an inspiration it was for much of what came later, from Neal Stephenson to The Matrix to countless other standards of the genre. It's not an overlong book, but it's easy to get bogged down (because of the muddled nature of much of it), especially if you're not technically oriented in the first place. But it's worth the effort, if only to see what launched the genre in the first place, way back when Ronald Reagan was president and guys like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were just getting the personal computing revolution going.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    i think this is my favorite book ever
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Here is the novel that started it all, launching the cyberpunk generation, and the first novel to win the holy trinity of science fiction: the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award and the Philip K. Dick Award. With Neuromancer, William Gibson introduced the world to cyberspace--and science fiction has never been the same. Case was the hottest computer cowboy cruising the information superhighway--jacking his consciousness into cyberspace, soaring through tactile lattices of data and logic, rustling encoded secrets for anyone with the money to buy his skills. Then he double-crossed the wrong people, who caught up with him in a big way--and burned the talent out of his brain, micron by micron. Banished from cyberspace, trapped in the meat of his physical body, Case courted death in the high-tech underworld. Until a shadowy conspiracy offered him a second chance--and a cure--for a price
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Here is the novel that started it all, launching the cyberpunk generation, and the first novel to win the holy trinity of science fiction: the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award and the Philip K. Dick Award. With Neuromancer, William Gibson introduced the world to cyberspace--and science fiction has never been the same. Case was the hottest computer cowboy cruising the information superhighway--jacking his consciousness into cyberspace, soaring through tactile lattices of data and logic, rustling encoded secrets for anyone with the money to buy his skills. Then he double-crossed the wrong people, who caught up with him in a big way--and burned the talent out of his brain, micron by micron. Banished from cyberspace, trapped in the meat of his physical body, Case courted death in the high-tech underworld. Until a shadowy conspiracy offered him a second chance--and a cure--for a price
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    On my best 3 books in the world list. I was so engaged in this cyberworld I wanted it to be real. To show my devotion to this book I named my daughter Jane. I wanted to add the 3 but my husband vetoed that.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    What on earth can I say about this SF classic that I finally, FINALLY!!! got around to reading? I've read Gibson's work before, Pattern Recognition, so I thought I knew what to expect when it came to his style. Then there's the fact that I am so well-aware of Neuormancer's impact on SF, as well as the real world, that I thought I knew what was coming.But picking up this book and reading the first few pages was a pure adrenaline rush of words. Punctuation aside, I'd forgotten about Gibson's amazing use of words and descriptions, the zing of his language. Even so far removed from this book's debut, it's easy to see how it created such a stir in the SF world at the time. It's also easy to see how much influence this book has had on so many current writers.I'm not going to bother with a link here, because I have nothing spoilery to say and let's face, the book's a classic. Even if I did spoil you, it wouldn't ruin the experience of reading the book. And for me, being so far removed from the book's debut and having read its progeny in terms of the genre, Neuromancer was more of an experience than it was a life-changer. It was good, don't get me wrong. Yes, it took me a little while to get into the rhythm of Gibson's prose, and I always felt I was catching on to what was happening just a little late, and even then, I wasn't sure if I got what I thought I got. One quick check to Wikipedia pretty much confirmed my interpretation of the book, so that's good. I particularly admired Gibson's use of the simstim, which was pretty darn cool.I can only image what kind of mindfreak this book must have been in the pre-cyberpunk SF world. This book must have been acid to those people. Again, the use of description was very enjoyable, and even I was surprised at the range of setting this book encompassed. I'm glad I finally got around to reading it, and maybe one day, I'll pick up more of Gibson's work in the future. Though, and I'm sure this is absolute heresy, I think I enjoyed Pattern Recognition more. Just chalk that up to the fact I read it first and it had a female POV, okay? :)
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In a few words: the body versus the mind.Sort of.I read this in a college class on literature and popular culture in a segment on cyberpunk. The best way to imagine this book, I think, is to take The Matrix, turn it inside out, and add the visual element of Tron. It's a curious setting, with a purpose that was up for some debate in class. Tech modified bodies, vat-grown meat, space vacations, out-of-body internet surfing...it's an interesting enough read just for the world Gibson lays out, which is good because I'm still not sure I understood the conclusion of the plot, except to say that it's something of a thinker. It remains a book that has stuck with me.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Man-machine interfaces. Hive minds. Personality transformations. Gibson weaves a fast-paced story, set in a world whose vastness can only be glimpsed through scraps of information and scattered references throughout the text.It demands your attention as the author plunges you headlong into the world of the Sprawl with no guiding hand at your side.Definitely not a light read, but a thoroughly enjoyable one nonetheless.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A classic that paved the way to a whole genre and that got a lot of things right. But a bit of a slog to read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Decent sci-fi story.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    There's something about this book. Something odd and a little other-worldly way that feels both surreal and prescient, even now, even still, so long after it was written. And part of it is the reality of this world, and Gibson's willingness to make his readers WORK for it. This isn't an easy read to let float by, and there were some times when I put it down, unsure how I even felt about it... but then I'd pick it back up, and find myself unable to just read a single chapter, or even two; instead, I read it in maybe five sittings, in spurts of 70 pages or so after that first day I picked it up, and read just enough to get a taste.Whatever reason brings you to it--whether you want to know what got the ball rolling with cyberpunk and changed sci-fi, or how this was written when it was, or love sci-fi or have simply heard it's a classic--I think you'll find something here. The characters feel so real as to be able to step out of the page, and there are moments when Gibson's writing is simply perfect, rough and beautiful and everything it needs to be. In a really odd way, this reminded me of how I felt when I first read Jesus' Son, and when I first read Crime and Punishment. All such different books... all incredibly powerful, and driven by authors with exacting sensibilities that pushed readers to see differently, and maybe even learn differently.I can't wait to read it again.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Sometimes the author is so descriptive it's had to follow the story. It's like a giant SF poem, painting each page with complex narratives.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A cyberspace heist, set in a not-too-distant future. This story is wonderfully imaginative - as expected from a book that defined the word cyberspace - and fairly bleak. Drugs, the matrix, cosmetic surgery, and the growing humanity of artificial constructs all make the people in the story into side-line characters, who are each exactly and only the same as their jobs. In its way, this allows for a sneaky sort of commentary on identity, and the possibility that the AI in this future world are just as human as the people. The writing itself is engaging, though the individual relationships between characters (especially male-female) are horribly dated and eye-rollingly 70's-esque, which creates an entertaining frisson given the way erudite references to technology and science create an overall futuristic landscape. It's the type of narrative that would make a flashy and easily adapted film - the kind with lots of style, but not any character-building (but isn't that kind of the point, anyway?).
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I actually really enjoyed this book, just don't ask me exactly what it was about!It took a little time to get into, as the copy I read had very small text and the writing style is quite detail oriented. It also didn't help that the tale is quite complex, with may futuristic elements that weren't very well explained, but sort of just dropped in, leaving you to fend for yourself.I found the characters rich and compelling, including the mysterious AI Wintermute. Both Molly and Case were excellently written and I found myself genuinely interested in them and their welfare.It's not a gentle read, so as long as you go into it expecting it not to be, I would recommend it quite highly.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Heralding the onset of the cyberpunk sub-genre, Neuromancer hits all the bells and whistles one expects. A dark and convoluted world where AI makes reality and the matrix (heh) brush shoulders so closely that one can't be sure where one ends and the other begins.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A thrilling cyberpunk book that has plenty of action and weirdness. Loved the writing and narration as the protagonist shows us this future world (with an alternate history) filled with technological wonders that is wonderfully imagined before technology really took off, including technological samurai, AI, and the matrix. Great book worthy of all its awards.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    it had some good qualities but just dragged along without any overwhelming characters; left too much on the table for me
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I don't quit books easily, or lightly. I started this one under the impression that it was one of the best of new scifi - unfortunately, I deem it one of the worst. I really don't know how it can be seen otherwise.



    I am not sure what language Gibson used to write the book - I gave up trying to figure it out after 100 pages or so. Some sort of cross between ganster rap and Jim Rome's glossary of smack. Perhaps if Gibson had included a dictionary, it wouldn't have been as bad. So abandoning the translation, I tried to look at the characters and plot. No dice; dimensionless, thoroughly unlikeable characters and overly convoluted and poorly written pseudoplot clouded by the bizarre terms introduced without any reference frame, this book can only appeal to those pretentious pseudo-intellectuals desiring to spout nonsense about how deep the work is, or what the artist was trying to convey in his/her painting, or how the scuplture evokes feelings of motion. Tripe.



    I tend to be pretty stubborn about books. I'll set aside a book for a year or more, placed marked, of course, to eventually get through it. I cannot do that with this book. Halfway through, I found nothing to redeem the lost time I invested in reading that far. More's the pity because Neuromancer is touted as a revitalization of the genre. I guess I'm wrong in my opinion that the genre needed no jumpstart. Certainly not in a form such as this.



    Whatever cyberpunk is, this is the nadir and not the apex, and it's a sure thing I'll not be reading any more of it. Maybe a long shower will wash away the residue and I can get back to some real science fiction. I want to give it a half-star, but I'll give Gibson another half for his decidedly warped imagination.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Essential reading.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I do believe the future's gonna feel/look/read like this. This brilliant book is a landmark in the history of science fiction.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Man, what a trip -- and I loved every bit of it. It was almost disorienting at first because you're tossed into this character's life in a world so far into the future it's almost hard to recognize it as ours and stuff starts happening nownownow and they don't give you a glossary. The more you read, the easier it is to get what's going on, what everybody's talking about. You just get into the rhythm of it and it starts to make sense. And it's easy to see why it's such a classic in its genre, or any genre for that matter. On its own level, man.Though, obviously, any book that contains ninjas, cyberspace, artificial intelligences with kick-ass names like Wintermute and Neuromancer, orbital colonies, personality constructs (of dead people, no less), cryogenically frozen crazy people, holographic art shows, and, yes, Rastafarians chilled out on ganja, is bound to be made of awesome.I have to say Molly was my favorite character by far. Professional street samurai, also called a razorgirl? No contest.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Computers are fascinating. Maybe it’s because I’m not good with computers and it’s the allure of the unknown. Either way, Neuromancer has enough technology to keep anyone happy, and what’s most impressive about it was that it was written before the Internet, so Gibson was foretelling the future like Tiresias of old.Neuromancer is about Case, a troubled hacker in Japan who gets hired by a mysterious employer, later revealed to be an AI. He meets up with razorgirl Molly and off start their crazy adventures. Neuromancer is the great granddaddy of cyberpunk, and its world is gritty, dangerous, and verging on posthuman. There’s a lot of jargon here, and the writing isn’t the best I’ve ever read, making it a difficult read. It’s hard to keep up with what’s going on (when they’re in space, I don’t even realize it), but all its flaws aside, go read this book. It spawned an entire genre. It’s a piece of history.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    God. Enthralling and complexly beautiful, a must read. I recommend reading with lit charts analysis and summarizations because the book can be hard to understand sometimes, but nonetheless a work of art.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Truly prescient. this is a good book regardless of when it was written; not overly dramatic and doesn't stoop to explain every little thing. makes it more genuine, though bit hard to get-into the first chapters.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It's easy to see how heavily Neuromancer influences the cyberpunk genre to this day. All the tropes and aesthetics are present, but it still holds up. Unlike sometimes where a foundational piece of a genre feels cliched because so many others came along and copied it, Gibson's work still manages to stay engaging. At times the technical babble is a little hard to follow, and some of the slang meanings take a while to pick up on, but that doesn't detract overall from the book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Liked it a lot more the second time around. 3.5
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Imagine Raymond Chandler and Philip K. Dick had a child born in the 21st century and you get a sense of early William Gibson. This is a novel whose style is more compelling than the plot. You have to read it as if the concepts of cyberspace, jacking in, and the entire idea of cyberpunk haven't been invented yet. Because Gibson largely invented them himself in his fiction.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    adult science fiction. Not very accessible to a light/reluctant sci-fi reader; I probably wouldn't recommend it to any teens (even if it is one of the titles on the high school summer reading list). There is definitely more to this book than can be grasped on the first reading.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book was strange and confusing. I think a great deal of sff owes a debt to this book, but it was sometimes hard to keep track of what was even happening. This also felt very much like A White Man Wrote This.