Neuromancer

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

That is the first line to the science fiction work, Neuromancer, by William Gibson. It is the line that captured me and drew me in for the rest of the book. The line that still captures me every time I read it. That one line sets up the whole story, is indicative the aura the story gives off. It was published in 1984 and is a strong example of the "cyberpunk" genre, which I can only describe as a science fiction genre that is set in more the underworld, gritty back allies, and illegal technology. It seems kind of like the world seen in the Bladerunner movie.

And while Neuromancer is someone graphic at times (that is my word of caution), Gibson's broad strokes create the environment beautifully and display the rushing, frantic, underworld in a story where society and the larger happenings of the world do not matter and seem to just pass by in a flurry. He has an interesting style in that he uses descriptions that almost seem dreamlike in their difficulty to create a direct picture in my mind, but come together in my subconsciousness to compose the intricacies of the dark world he's created.

Look at one of the descriptions of the area he sets the story in.

"Night City was like a deranged experiment in social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button. Stop hustling and you sank without a trace, but move a little too swiftly and you'd break the fragile surface tension of the black market; either way, you were gone, with nothing left of you but some vague memory in the mind of a fixture like Ratz, though heart or lungs or kidneys might survive in the service of some stranger with New Yet for the clinic tanks.

Biz here was a constant subliminal hum, and death the accepted punishment for laziness, carelessness, lack of grace, the failure to heed the demands of an intricate protocol."

It is almost like a painting to me, each sentence laying out the scene with more than just words or pictures, but with a feeling, an atmosphere. You can feel the desperation, the speed, the harshness of the underworld. When I think of good sci-fi, I think of this book. Being able to set a scene like this (and he continues with the description of characters so you can know them far beyond their physical looks) is something I aspire to. Not in the same way, obviously, but being able to tell so much more than just what a place looks like. His writing actually brings you there.