Neuromancer

William Gibson’s Neuromancer begins with the main character, Case, at a bar in the Night City Zone of Chiba City, Japan. It is obvious that the place is a little bit “sketchy,” as we later learn the type of person that Case is. The people he encounters, consequently those that frequent the bar, just in the first two chapters, are criminals up to no good. The bar also has call girls at every corner; its description does not give the reader a good impression of the kind of place it is.

Night City is where the bar is located, which is apparently an area full of chaos. There seem to be no laws in this part of town, and technology is being sold and bought. Case, an ex-cyber cowboy, continues to do business in this part of town. Case moves between the bar, to visit Julian, to his cheap hotel (where he sleeps in a “coffin”), and more. He has an operation performed in this cybernetic world, and he ends up watching a knife fight as entertainment. The places he travels to are strangely familiar but completely different than the way we see and experience them.

In this novel, the descriptions leave the reader with the impression that the current world the characters are apart of is hazardous, poisonous, and unpleasant. The first line describes Chiba City, stating the sky was “the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." From the start, we see that this is something unusual to most, because nature is typically seen and expressed as something beautiful. Nature is described with technology, which are very apparently two contrasting ideas. Gibson continuously suggests there was recently a war, most likely with nuclear weapons that have destroyed the surroundings. Gibson uses descriptions that are very new and unusual to most readers, and this unconventional approach helps to draw the reader in. Nature is really no longer around, instead everything has become very urban.