Open Culture:

Who can call themselves fans of cyberpunk, or even modern science fiction, without having experienced William Gibson’s Neuromancer? That 1984 novel, which many see as the defining work of the sci-fi subgenre where, as Gibson himself put it, “high tech meets low life,” has gone through many print runs in many languages.

But you don’t need to read it to get to know its distinctive reality — its Japanese megalopolis setting of Chiba City, its characters like “console cowboy” Case and “street samurai” Molly Millions, its technologies like advanced artificial intelligence, electromagnetic pulse weapons, a virtual reality space called, yes, the Matrix. You can also hear it.

Blew my mind when I first read it and I’ve devoured everything by him since. One of my great joys was seeing him in a local pub (he lives here in Vancouver) and being able to buy him a pint.