Neuromancer, English edition

Chapter 1

 

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

            It s not like I m using, Case heard someone say, as he shouldered his way through the crowd around the door of the Chat. It s like my body s developed this massive drug deficiency. It was a Sprawl voice and a Sprawl joke. The Chatsubo was a bar for professional expatriates; you could drink there for a week and never hear two words in Japanese.

            Ratz was tending bar, h is prosthetic arm jerking monotonously as he filled a tray of glasses with draft Kirin. He saw Case and smiled, his teeth a webwork of East European steel and brown decay. Case found a place at the bar, between the unlikely tan on one of Lonny Zone s whores and the crisp naval uniform of a tall African whose cheekbones were ridged with precise rows of tribal scars. Wage was in her early, with two joeboys, Ratz said, shoving a draft across the bar with his good hand. Maybe some business with you, Case?

            Case shrugged. The girl to his right giggled and nudged him.

            The bartender s smile widened. His ugliness was the stuff of legend. In an age of affordable beauty, there was something heraldic about his lack of it. The antique arm whined as he reached for another mug. It was a Russian military prosthesis, a seven-function force-feedback manipulator, cased in grubby pink plastic. You are too much the artiste, Herr Case. Ratz grunted; the sound served him as laughter. He scratched his overhang of white-shirted belly with the pink claw. You are the artiste of the slightly funny deal.

            Sure, Case said, and sipped his beer.

William Gibson’s first novel, Neuromancer, won the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the Philip K. Dick Award. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Count Zero, Burning Chrome, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrow’s Parties, Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, Zero History, Distrust That Particular Flavor, and The Peripheral. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with his wife.

Praise for Neuromancer

Freshly imagined, compellingly detailed, and chilling in its implications. The New York Times
 
Kaleidoscopic, picaresque, flashy, decadent...an amazing virtuoso performance. The Washington Post
 
Science fiction of exceptional texture and vision...Gibson opens up a new genre, with a finely crafted grittiness. San Francisco Chronicle
 
Epic in scale...shimmers like chrome in a desert sun. The Wall Street Journal
 
A revolutionary novel. Publishers Weekly
 
In with the ruthless violence, the hyperreality, the betrayal and death, is an unquenchable love of language. Gibson has that in common with Le Guin and with J. G. Ballard. Neuromancer sings to us as a collage of voices, a mixed chorus, some trustworthy and others malicious, some piped through masks. James Gleick
 
Streetwise SF... one of the most unusual and involving narratives to be read in many an artificially induced blue moon. London Times
 
Unforgettable...the richness of Gibson s world is incredible. Chicago Sun-Times