In 1983 I was ten years old. The PC era had dawned. I spent hours writing BASIC code for the Commodore Vic-20, on paper, typing it in to my friend's machine whenever I got the chance. What enthralled me about programming was the potential to do something really neat. Whether the code I wrote actually was neat didn't matter- I just knew it was possible.
In that same year William Gibson, whose imagination was far more sophisticated than my own small brain, saw enormous potential. At the time the internet was primarily a device for trading pornography (the more things change...), but Gibson saw a virtual universe, a matrix of data, and coined the term cyberspace long before the invention of HTTP and the world-wide-web.
The output of Gibson's creative brainfart was Neuromancer, without doubt my favourite sci-fi novel of all time. Neuromancer is simultaneously visionary and baffling. I have read it several times and each time I think to myself- what just happened here? Gibson is a master at storytelling and leaves no detail uncovered. At the same time, there's so much action, and so much happening, it's easy to miss the punchline.
What is hard to miss is the clear inspiration Neuromancer provided for the likes of The Matrix (Trinity==Molly, Case==Neo, without question), not to mention Gibson's foresight concerning things like the web, wearable computing, and even Oakley shades. This book will no doubt go down in history as a watershed for an entire vein of sci-fi, as well as a marker by which we can gaugue our progress as the net evolves.