Last week I was looking for a quote from William Gibson's Cyberpunk epic novel Neuromancer. So after a Google Search I found a page that had the text to the book an old study guide to the book that I once read when the web was young and a Russian site that has MP3s made from William Gibson reading the books on tape version. That is very much in the spirit of the book.
Now I love this book and I own the book on tape version but it got eaten in an old tape player so it is damn good to have this in MP3. I wish they would put the book on tape version back in publication and bring it out on CD. The Book on tape version is almost un-abridged and William Gibson is quite a performer and reads it like it was beatnik poetry. I used to listen to this time after time in school while working on computer projects. I read Neuromancer when I was 9 when I was expecting a run of the mill Flash Gordon style book and it truly corrupted my young impressionable mind. I might actually watch sports and not work with computers if I didn't read this book.
When I re-read it in a class at Art college I had a teacher tell me that people who read that book are either really into computers or drugs. I told her I was a computer animator and she said "Ah.."
Neuromancer isn't just an incredible sci-fi book it is just an incredible book.
I have those MP3s to. found 'em a while back, but haven't made it all the way through yet. Of course I have read all of Gibson's writing throughout the years. Neuromancer in particular had the same effect on me, leading to re-reading it since several times. I tried to get my wife to read it once, but she just did NOT get into it at all. I think the future-spec lingo can put people off rather easily if they are not so inclined. She also felt it was vary "male".
A friend that I used to help edit a web-zine with a few years ago did an interview with him when he swung through San Francisco on a book tour. He was able to sell it to scifi.com, where you can still read it today: http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue146/interview.html
Gibson has a new novel on the way for first part of next year called 'Pattern Recognition', as does Bruce Sterling: 'Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years'. I'm looking forward to both quite fervently.
Neuromancer is a very male story. It is told from Case's perspective and it is a very Paranoid book. The rumor is that William Gibson was coping with recovering from a heroin addiction when he wrote it but you will not find that in any official press junket. I actually got to meet him and have him autograph my book when he was promoting Idoru. It was the first day I moved into Seattle and it was probably one of the most memorable days of my life. Bruce's new book doesn't sound like a novel. William Gibson autographed the motherboard to my first computer a 1984 Macintosh 128k It is precious to me.