William Gibson’s Neuromancer: A Critical Companion

​William Gibson’s Neuromancer: A Critical Companion presents Gibson’s rise as an influential figure within and beyond the science fiction field. Gibson’s success with Neuromancer, the first novel to win the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, and Philip K. Dick Award, is in part a direct result of the rising popularity of cyberpunk in the early- to mid-1980s, although it could just as easily be said cyberpunk’s success was in no small part a direct result of Neuromancer’s explosion onto the science fiction scene.

Neuromancer’s ongoing relevance remains undiminished because we are effectively living in a technocultural age that is increasingly difficult to distinguish from Gibson’s novel. As Graham J. Murphy demonstrates in this companion, the novel remains instrumental in thinking through the ongoing explorations of the posthuman: transhumanism, the Utopia/Anti-Utopia dynamic, and capitalist realism, to name a few of themore significant critical vehicles with which to better understand and contextualize our technocultural age and Neuromancer’s role in both shaping it and responding to it. This book provides a critical introduction to Neuromancer and cyberpunk culture.

Graham J. Murphy is Professor with the School of English and Liberal Studies at Seneca Polytechnic, Canada. He is co-editor of Fifty Key Figures in Cyberpunk Culture (2022), The Routledge Companion to Cyberpunk Culture (2020), Cyberpunk and Visual Culture (2018), and Beyond Cyberpunk: New Critical Perspectives (2010) and co-author of Ursula K. Le Guin: A Critical Companion (2006).