Uoči otvaranja British Library's science fiction exhibition Out of this World, novinar Guardiana pitao je vodeće SF pisce da izaberu omiljeno djelo ovog žanra.
Britanska književnica Scarlett Thomas, koju je dnevni list The Independent 2001. uvrstio među 20 najboljih mladih književnika, autorica romana Kraj gospodina T. Ajne odabrala je nagrađivani roman privijenac Williama Gibsona, Neuromancer.
Njeno obrazloženje prenosimo u originalu.
I first read Neuromancer when I was living in Torquay in 1999. For me it was a time of cheap junk food, cigarettes, videogames, arcades and Hello Kitty hairbands. The novel was just the right thing for the time, and its post-industrial Japanese wastelands didn't feel so remote. There's so much trivia about Neuromancer, and everything it inspired, from the name "Microsoft" to the Matrix films ? perhaps even the whole internet. But what I've always loved about Gibson are the same things I love about Jane Austen and Chekhov. Gibson uses small, precise details to build a world in which people are defined by their contemporary technologies, fashions and material culture. In Neuromancer, as in Gibson's other books, you always know what the characters are wearing. Here, one character turns up dressed in a "suit of gunmetal silk and a simple bracelet of platinum on either wrist". A woman's hairband "might have represented microcircuits, or a city map".
I'm surprised Gibson is seen as a highly masculine writer, given the focus on fashion and the consistently romantic plots. Yes, there's hot RAM (the fact that people are trading RAM in megabytes in the "future" is one of very few details that date the novel), a military outfit called Screaming Fist and simstim consoles. But there's also the uber-cool razorgirl Molly, kicking ass in her "cherry red cowboy boots". Gibson's prose style is in the tradition of Chekhov, Carver, Chandler, Burroughs and Hemingway. Lots of verbs, lots of nouns ? things ? as opposed to feelings, over-explanation and exposition. Before I began writing The End of Mr Y, I put three books on my desk as lucky charms, and this was one of them. My novel isn't cyberpunk, but I wanted my readers to feel something of what I felt when I first read Neuromancer.
