Neuromancer - William Gibson

Wow! What a crazy ride this book is. The fact that William Gibson wrote Neuromancer in 1984 cannot be underscored enough. 

So Case is a hacker, a "cowboy." At some point he tries to steal from his own employer who then chemically castrates him, preventing him from entering "The Matrix", a virtual reality cyberspace where networks appear as objects, as does the "ice" which protects it from hackers. Barred from the only job he loves, Case becomes a low level drug dealer in Chiba City, Japan. He encounters Molly, a leather clad ninja bad ass who recruits him to work with her boss Armitage. They offer to fix his condition in return for his work hacking the Tessier-Ashpool family mainframe.

In their pursuits, Case and Molly must break into Sense/Net and steal the stored memory of Case's mentor, Dixie Flatline, so named because he flatlined while in the Matrix and died, thus allowing his memory to be stored. Along the way, Case and Molly discover Armitage is an alter-ego for Colonel Corto, who was the sole survivor of an attempted attack on Russia's network. 

If this all sounds like the movie, The Matrix, and it sounds like it could have been written today, you are completely right. There's no doubt this book serves as the foundation for so many concepts, images, and terms we are familiar with today. This is a book that should be re-read because I'm sure it's so much easier to understand the second time around. I lost track of minor characters from the beginning who later became important and I think this would be cleared up reading it a second time. Also, there is no grounding character in the book to introduce you to Case's world, so the reader has to figure it out as the book goes along and that can take a lot of energy. 

4/5 Stars (If I ever re-read this book I'll revisit this rating because I have a feeling it will improve).