Neuromancer

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

A 1984 noir novel by William Gibson, and Trope Codifier for an entire generation of Sci Fi stories. Neuromancer is the primary example of Cyberpunk, showcasing the cynical use of technology so characteristic of that genre. Most modern stories related to Cyberpunk, Cyberspace and related tropes can be largely traced back to this one story. It is also the first of Gibson's famous "Sprawl Trilogy" (followed by Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive).

Henry Dorsett Case was a "console cowboy", a hacker for hire in the dystopian future city of Chiba, Japan. During a job, his employer caught him stealing, and retaliated with a mycotoxin that destroyed his ability to jack into the matrix (not that Matrix). Now, he's a useless waste of space on a self-destructive course -- until a mysterious Street Samurai by the name of Molly shows up to hire him for one more job.

Molly turns out to have some of her own skeletons in the closet, and her own backstory intertwines with Case's disjointed adventure of drugs, self-destruction, hazy sex, virtual reality, Techno Babble and really cool ninja fight scenes.

Neuromancer has been compared to impressionist Beat poetry. When it first came out, very little of the lingo used in the narration made sense to the target audience. The fact that it's somewhat easier for a modern-day reader is solely because fiction writers and scientists alike started using Gibson's words for actual things. (Jerry Holkins once aptly described it as "a book that travelled back in time of its own accord, a book written for people in the future in their own Goddamn language".) Although the novel arguably foregoes characterization in favor of Scenery Porn and gratuitous sex scenes -- a view acknowledged, and ultimately shared, by Gibson -- it succeeded at building an impressively intricate world, and coining much of modern Sci Fi's vocabulary.


 * Cyberspace: With the short story "Burning Chrome", which led to this novel being written. Also the Trope Codifier, along with Tron.
 * Street Samurai: Molly is the Trope Namer.

""Neuro from the nerves, the silver paths. Romancer. Necromancer. I call up the dead.""
 * Action Duo: Molly and Case, although moreso her than him.
 * Action Girlfriend: Molly. Unlike most boyfriends in this trope, Case isn't totally helpless or any sort of naïf.
 * A.I. Is a Crapshoot:
 * And I Must Scream: Flatlining, or being killed by ice (Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics) software while connected to cyberspace, is a very real danger for hackers. The Dixie Flatline, Case's mentor, is famous for being one of the few to survive it.
 * Anti-Hero: Basically everyone; Case in the classical sense, Molly in the modern sense.
 * Annoying Laugh: For Case, the Dixie construct's laughter, which just sounds plain wrong. He doesn't quite hear it, in fact, so much as he feels it -- as an uncomfortable tingle down his spine.
 * Artificial Gravity: The spinning version on Freeside. This becomes a plot point as the heroes enter deeper into the city's underground sections and cross its axis.
 * Artificial Limbs: Ratz, the bartender at the Chatsubo, has a bionic arm.
 * Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence:
 * Badass: Molly, a Street Samurai of the "razorgirl" variety. She has mirrored lenses surgically implanted over her eyes that allow her to see in the dark. She is incapable of crying since her tear ducts were re-routed into her mouth. Crying for Molly means spitting, which actually tells you a lot about her. She has cybernetically-enhanced reflexes, retractable double-edged scalpel blades under her fingernails, and is a deadly shot with a flechette-pistol firing poison or explosive darts. Surprisingly she
 * Hideo, Tessier-Ashpool's cloned ninja assassin.
 * Badass Longcoat: Armitage.
 * Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted. Molly takes fairly brutal damage.
 * Beige Prose: Very much part of the style and very much keeps the book sharp and focused. The only details that you get are ones that build the characters and the limited parts of the world they inhabit. The narration is as bleak and cynical as the characters, and occasionally just point-blank refuses to elaborate on anything outside the plot. This kind of use has shades of Chekhov's Gun about it, since almost anything that the narration lands on for more than a few seconds is going to be important on some level.
 * Big Eater: Molly, who is more frequently described eating (even if it's only quick snacks) than the other characters, and at one point even eats Case's dinner on top of hers when he's too hung over to enjoy it. Presumably those jacked-up reflexes cranked up her metabolism too.
 * Blasting It Out of Their Hands: Hideo does this to Maelcum's shotgun with a bow and arrow.
 * Blond Guys Are Evil: Riviera.
 * Bondage Is Bad: Riviera has elements of this, actually betraying his lovers in horrific ways instead of finding more ethical ways to get off. (see Chronic Backstabbing Disorder below). Molly's experience as a meat puppet prostitute plays the trope straight.
 * Brain-Computer Interface: Practically the Trope Codifier.
 * Brain Uploading: The source of the Dixie Flatline ROM construct.
 * Break Out the Museum Piece: Maelcum is a peaceful Rastafarian, but keeps an ancient shotgun behind a hidden panel in his ship anyway, which he takes to confront Riviera and Lady 3Jane.
 * Bring News Back: Subverted.
 * The Caper: Case is originally recruited to participate in a caper, but it is only the tip of the iceberg.
 * Catch Phrase: Molly's "It's just the way I'm wired", her explanation for her motivations.
 * Chekhov's Gun: Averted with the shuriken Molly gives Case. Symbolic, but not plotworthy. Played straight with Riviera's holoprojector implant. When explained to the gang, the Finn notes immediately how easy it would also be to burn somebody's eyes out with a concentrated laser pulse from the projector.
 * The new drug that Case buys from Cath and Bruce, capable of bypassing his modified pancreas and liver, later helps keep him from being flatlined by Neuromancer.
 * The Chessmaster:
 * Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Part of Riviera's background is that he has a bizarre sexual fetish for betrayal. He even had a deal worked out with the Turkish Secret Police in Istanbul where he would seduce women suspected of being dissidents, turn them in, and be allowed to watch as they are tortured in exchange.
 * City in a Bottle: The arcologies of Chiba and the Sprawl are like this, being domed, weatherproof habitats.
 * The City Narrows: The docks in Chiba are not a nice place to be. Neither is the seedy underbelly of the Sprawl or Istanbul.
 * The Cracker: Case.
 * Creator Backlash: Though Gibson acknowledges that the novel had a huge influence on the sci-fi genre, he now considers it "an adolescent's book," saying of himself at the time he wrote it, "I'd buy the man a drink, but I probably wouldn't lend him any money."
 * Creepy Child: Neuromancer's form in his private cyberspace realm.
 * Culture Chop Suey: All over the place (see Japan Takes Over the World), but especially in Freeside, which is a space colony patronized by all sorts of different nationalities.
 * Curb Stomp Battle: Any fight with Molly tends to be this, although she's no match for Hideo.
 * Cyberpunk: Trope Codifier and Genre Popularizer.
 * Cyberpunk with a Chance of Rain: See the opening quote.
 * Dark and Troubled Past: Nearly every character. Case is a burned-out drug addict and washed-up former hacker whose girlfriend was murdered by gangsters; Molly is a former prostitute who was abused and who grew up in poverty (whose boyfriend was murdered by gangsters); Armitage was a high-ranking army officer who participated in a catastrophically failed raid on the Soviet Union, and so on.
 * Death Seeker: Case, to begin with. One interpretation is this is why Case is after during the climax of the novel and why he is so powerful during his run. Also, the Dixie Flatline's life as a construct is implied to be a hollow, chilly experience, which is why he asks to be erased after the job is done.
 * Decoy Hiding Place: When Molly is pursuing Case in Chiba, Case pulls a scene right out of a noir detective novel: racing into an videogame parlour, he runs upstairs and kicks open a locked door. He then sneaks into a nearby open room and readies his weapon.
 * Deus Est Machina:
 * Disposable Woman: Linda Lee.
 * Divided States of America: In the novel's backstory, America no longer exists, but has fragmented in several smaller states. The Sprawl consists of the heavily populated and industrialized eastern seaboard.
 * Do Not Adjust Your Set: Wintermute does this to Case, appearing on monitors and generally creeping him out whenever he wants to talk to him.
 * Don't Sneak Up On Me Like That: Case forgets to knock when dropping in on Molly. It's not a good idea.
 * Dude, She's Like, in a Coma: A special service at a brothel Molly used to work at.  Notably, said service is first described in "Burning Chrome".
 * EMP: The Russian military protects their AIs with EMP weapons, which destroyed the unit of Colonel Willis Corto (Armitage). Also, EMP bombs are built into all AIs: in case of rampant self-extention, break glass.
 * Empty Shell: Armitage, to some extent. He sets up the job with efficiency and skill, but according to Molly, he just sits down and stares at the wall when he is not working.
 * Electronic Eyes: Molly's ocular implants.
 * Establishing Character Moment: Just about every character's introduction, but especially Case's first encounter with Molly.
 * Everybody Smokes
 * The Everyman: Case. It is even lampshaded by Riviera.
 * Expendable Clone:
 * Exploring the Evil Lair: Molly's infiltration of the Villa Straylight, which Case watches via an uplink, but cannot communicate with her.
 * Explosive Leash: Hold the explosives. Armitage has several sacs of poison implanted in Case's blood vessels - the same poison that was first used to cripple him. Unless Case completes the mission in time, those sacs will dissolve and he will again lose his ability to jack into cyberspace.
 * Every AI has a built-in EMP bomb set to go off the nanosecond they attempt to figure out how to become smarter. The team's mission turns into an attempt to break Wintermute free of its programming constraints without triggering the bomb.
 * The Finn mentions a "cortical bomb" when scanning Molly and Case for non-biological implants (he can't do biological scans).
 * Extreme Graphical Representation: In cyberspace. Programs appear as brightly coloured geometric shapes, and viruses are shown as literally penetrating layers of security. As well, everything seems to be 3D.
 * Eye Scream:
 * Molly puts a single dart into the eye of Ashpool when she encounters him in his bedchamber.
 * Later, this is reversed when Molly's glasses are damaged in a fight and her eye has to be bandaged.
 * Riviera blinds Hideo with his hologram projector, although this doesn't stop him from being able to fight.
 * Fail O'Suckyname: Case makes up some pretty lame aliases for himself in Chiba.
 * Fake Memories
 * Fantastic Drug: Case starts out addicted to various drugs, including cocaine and amphetamines. Armitage has his liver and pancreas modified so that they will no longer affect him, but while on Freeside, he is introduced to a new drug that can bypass those organs.
 * Faux Action Girl: Molly comes uncomfortably close: she gets her leg broken by a (possibly unenhanced) security guard during the raid on Sense/Net and never really recovers.
 * Five-Man Band: Armitage's crew.
 * The Leader (Type I): Armitage
 * The Hero: Case
 * The Lancer: Molly
 * The Smart Guy: The Dixie Flatline
 * The Chick/Token Evil Teammate: Riviera
 * Later on, Maelcum becomes The Big Guy and helps Case take on Lady 3Jane.
 * Flechette Storm: Molly's Weapon of Choice is a flechette gun which can be set to single-shot or full auto. When she uses it on one thug who tries to kill Case, the results aren't pretty.
 * Forgets to Eat: Case, when he's hacking.
 * A Form You Are Comfortable With: Not having much of a personality of his/its own, Wintermute assumes the identity and, to some extent, the personality of people from the protagonists' pasts in order to interact with them.
 * Freudian Excuse: It's implied that Riviera's overall monstrousness is a result of his horrific childhood in the ruined remnants of Bonn.
 * Future Food Is Artificial: See Only Electric Sheep Are Cheap.
 * Future Slang: All over the place, eg. "deck" for computer, "ice" for cybersecurity and so on.
 * General Ripper: Armitage served under one in Russia.
 * Great Offscreen War: Between the USA and Russia, heavily implied to have been World War Three. Both sides appear to have lost.
 * The Great Politics Mess-Up: The United States lost the Cold War through economic collapse. Nuclear weapons were used on Bonn and perhaps elsewhere, but it is unclear why; a full-scale exchange seems to have been averted.
 * Assuming that there really was a 'Tank War Europa' and it's not just a cool name for an arcade game, then we can probably assume that a nuclear weapon was used by a collapsing NATO to prevent being overrun by Russians (or vice versa), and thus to create an opportunity for peace talks. Although never explicitly stated, both sides probably would have used nuclear weapons in a defensive role like that, smashing bridgeheads and buying time. That'd also explain why it didn't result in a strategic nuclear exchange. One side had already won the war but with political masters unwilling to surrender the generals did their best to protect what was left. In doing so they sent the message about what would happen if they continued to lose ground. The other side accepted that they either needed to find a workable treaty, or face a full nuclear exchange.
 * It's hard to know what side really won. America was its own downfall, and Europe doesn't seem to have any lingering Communists kicking around.
 * Groin Attack: Molly does this to some mook in Sense/Net headquarters.
 * Gun Stripping: Molly habitually takes apart her fletcher and reassembles it, showing her familiarity with the weapon.
 * Hell-Bent for Leather: Molly's outfits.
 * Hollywood Cyborg: Molly. How the heck does she store four-centimeter-long blades inside her fingers?
 * Hollywood Hacking: Co-Trope Maker with WarGames. William Gibson is a prose poet with very little technical experience of computers. The absence of concrete details has prevented much of his work from dating.
 * Hookers and Blow: Both are available in abundance everywhere in the future.
 * Human Popsicle:
 * Idle Rich: Marie-France's original plan takes this to extremes. They wouldn't even have to think for themselves, their A Is would do their thinking for them.
 * I Have Many Names: Both Molly and Armitage go by aliases. Armitage is actually
 * I'm a Humanitarian: One of the nightmarish images that Riviera projects is of a gang of cannibalistic children in Bonn eating a human corpse.
 * Immune to Drugs: Case's failing liver is altered to make him incapable of metabolizing cocaine or amphetamines. It is one way to cure an addiction. However, he can still take drugs that go directly to the brain, which he inevitably does.
 * Improbable Aiming Skills: Hideo the ninja, and also Molly to some extent, thanks to her Super Reflexes.
 * Incest Is Relative: See Expendable Clone.
 * Industrial Ghetto: The Sprawl.
 * Inside a Computer System: One of the pioneering examples.
 * Instant Awesome, Just Add Ninja: Ninja are highly sought after as hired assassins, such as Hideo.
 * Invisibility Cloak: The "mimetic polycarbon suit" of the Panther Moderns.
 * It Is Pronounced "Tro-PAY": Case, having never heard a word of Armenian before going to Istanbul, mispronounces Terzibashjian's name as "Jersey Bastion."
 * It's Personal: Case's motives for helping Molly and Armitage -- cracking the T.A. construct, and finding out who killed Linda Lee.
 * Japan Takes Over the World: Japanese culture and economy seem to dominate the world. The international currency is the New Yen, and massive Japanese corporations rule the marketplace. The Yakuza are an international power. Popular culture oozes with Japanese influence, from noodle shops to "Street Samurai."
 * Japanese Tourist
 * Knowledge Broker: The Finn. Case and Molly visit him for information and to use his full-body scanner and eavesdrop-proof back room.
 * Left Field Description: The opening sentence, quoted at the top of the page.
 * Loss of Identity:
 * The Lost Lenore: Linda Lee, for Case.
 * Mandatory Unretirement: Case, after being contacted by Molly.
 * Master of Illusion: Peter Riviera, who utilizes an extremely expensive hologram projector implant to make David Lynch-esque works.
 * The Man Behind the Man: and later . Repeatedly.
 * Mega City: The Sprawl. Greater Tokyo and Istanbul probably count as well.
 * Mega Corp: Many of them, but the Tessier-Ashpools are the most prominent and figure the most highly in the plot.
 * Mercy Kill: Molly's killing of Ashpool, who is a broken old man at the time she meets him and just short of committing suicide.
 * Named After Somebody Famous: The Turing Registry, an NGO Superpower that keeps track of A Is and has near-untouchable policing powers.
 * Negated Moment of Awesome: Tough luck about that broken leg, Molly.
 * Neural Implanting: Quite possibly the Trope Maker. Chips called "microsofts" can be inserted into skull jacks which act as memory extensions and a quick way to learn new skills.
 * Ninja: Hideo, Lady 3Jane's Battle Butler.
 * Non-Action Guy: Case, at least compared to Molly.
 * The Not-So-Harmless Punishment: In Case's backstory, his former employers let him keep the money he stole from them... because he would need every cent after their brand of retribution damages his nervous system, leaving him unable to access the matrix (and therefore unemployable). He burns through it in a hurry trying to find a cure.
 * Only Electric Sheep Are Cheap: Most food is genetically modified, including cloned meat. Molly even chides Case for not eating a steak that Armitage ordered for his dinner, since real meat is so expensive.
 * Averted with horses, which were driven extinct by an equine plague; attempts to clone them have proven both expensive and unsuccessful.
 * Our Graphics Will Suck in the Future: If the descriptions of cyberspace are anything to go by. The computer on the Marcus Garvey has pretty basic graphics, as well.
 * Pinball Protagonist: Case spends the entire book being shoved around by forces larger than himself. This is true of most of Gibson's protagonists.
 * Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Hideo. He's the shortest character in the book, but the most deadly.
 * Popcultural Osmosis: The Cyberpunk tropes the book popularized (along with Blade Runner, though the similarities between the two are coincidental) can be recognized in everything from Ghost in the Shell (Batou's eyes, for instance) to Inception (just about everything) to Shadowrun (mercs and hackers taking jobs for megacorps).
 * Power Walk: Molly has one that "channeled all the action heroes and movie badasses" when she prepares to confront 3Jane and Riviera.
 * Pretty in Mink: Justified. Furs are grown from tissue, possibly because some animals were driven to extinction by a combination of pandemic disease and environmental degradation. Although cloning furs is a good way to avert Fur and Loathing it is doubtful this hard world has any such concerns.
 * Psycho for Hire: Riviera. Arguably, Molly too.
 * Red Herring: "Operation Screaming Fist" arguably counts as one. With all the tantalizing references to it, it seems like it will be crucial to the mission in some way. As it turns out, the only important thing about it is.
 * The shuriken that Molly buys for Case seems like it will be a Chekhov's Gun, but he never uses it. Case even lampshades this himself when he throws it at the TV before leaving his hotel room for the last time.
 * Rich Boredom: What 3Jane complains of.
 * Room Full of Crazy: Inside the Villa Straylight.
 * Salaryman: Not a major plot point, but frequently mentioned.
 * Sanity Slippage:
 * Sawed-Off Shotgun: Maelcum has one.
 * Scary Shiny Glasses: Molly's surgical implants over her eye sockets.
 * Science Marches On: Gibson wrote most of his early works on a typewriter. A copy of Neuromancer printed in 1994 includes an afterword by the author on that subject. Included in the afterword is a reminder to his modern readers that the typewriter was the high-tech whizbang of the the day. In 1981, the hottest computer on the mass market was the Apple II (not even the IIe, yet), and that cost a bundle.
 * Case starts out trying to sell "three megabytes of hot RAM" in a world where Brain Computer Interfaces are commonplace. At the time the novel was written, the Apple II came with 64 kilobytes of RAM. It is possible that it was the contents of the RAM that was really important, but this possibility isn't even suggested until much later in the book, and even then would only make slightly more sense to a modern audience.
 * The book famously begins by likening the colour of the sky to that of a television tuned to a dead station. This originally conveyed a gray, dreary day, the colour of analogue static; nowadays, most TV sets default, ironically, to a blue screen when there isn't a channel or anything to display.
 * And you have a fantastic future of neural implants, orbital cities, domed weather control, and hyperintelligent A Is ... but neither mobile phones nor anything like VoIP exists, and airports have banks of pay phones.
 * Shell-Shocked Veteran: It's revealed over time that Armitage, aka, was mentally scarred by his participation in Operation Screaming Fist, and never really recovered from it.
 * Shown Their Work: Despite the liberties otherwise taken, Gibson gets one very strange and niche detail right - the throwaway mention of a Nan Hai Hotel in Bencoolen Street, Singapore. Such a place, with a very minor alternate romanization, actually did exist at the time of writing.
 * Shrouded in Myth: Molly's backstory. Even after her confessions to Case about being a "meat puppet" and a few tidbits about her childhood, most about her remains unclear.
 * Skyscraper City
 * Split Personality Takeover:.
 * Stay in the Kitchen: Terzibashjian disapproves of Molly's tomboyish nature, stating that "women are still women in Turkey". This causes her to take a strong dislike to him, to say the least.
 * Sunglasses at Night: Molly. To be fair, they are permanently attached to her face, and as it's later revealed, don't actually dim light at all.
 * Technology Marches On: Why is Case so desperate to find a modem? Heck, what's a modem?
 * It also kinda makes a mockery of the payphone scene, which is genuinely creepy... as long as you're willing to accept that a bank of payphones exists.
 * Made extra ironic in that Case is amused by the anachronism of using coins in a vending machine, since cash mostly isn't used for legitimate business anymore, when the vending machine is right next to a rank of pay phones.
 * Ironically, as Augmented Reality becomes closer to fruition, the less likely it is that it will look anything like Gibson's vision of cyberspace. Most computers are also much smaller and lighter than Case's Hosaka (although possibly not more powerful yet).
 * Terrorists Without a Cause: The Panther Moderns, who have no agenda aside from some weird, postmodern statement on terrorism as reason for their devastating pranks.
 * There Are No Good Executives: The only member of the Tessier-Ashpool clan with any sense of ethics was Lady 3Jane's mother.
 * Thrown Out the Airlock:
 * Try to Fit That on A Business Card: Lady 3Jane Marie-France Tessier-Ashpool.
 * Two-Keyed Lock: Lady 3Jane has to say a password in a special room at the same time as Case breaks protections in cyberspace to remove the Restraining Bolt on Wintermute.
 * And the only key to enter that room has been lying in a drawer for 20 years - forgotten to everyone except Wintermute, who guides Molly straight to it.
 * The Un-Reveal: Even when her Cool Shades are broken, the readers never discover the color of Molly's eyes. Also, the readers (and possibly Case) never learn the code word that.
 * Unusual Euphemism: "Flipping" between views in cyberspace, "jacking" into the matrix and all sorts of other techy-sounding jargon.
 * Used Future
 * The Verse: The novel is a part of Gibson's "Sprawl" series, which all take place in the same universe. Neuromancer contains some crossover characters:
 * Molly also appears in the short story "Johnny Mnemonic" going by the name Molly Millions. In Neuromancer, she reveals Johnny's ultimate fate. She is also the main character of Mona Lisa Overdrive, now going by Sally Shears.
 * Automatic Jack, the narrator of Gibson's short story, "Burning Chrome", is implied to have been the only other survivor of the ill-fated Operation Screaming Fist. He fared significantly better than Corto afterwards. The story's secondary protagonist, Bobby Quine, is mentioned to be one of Case's hacker mentors.
 * Viewers Are Geniuses: Given a choice between a ten-word, easily-understood description and a two-word description that forces the reader to stop and figure out what he means, Gibson will go with the shorter one.
 * Virtual Ghost: The Dixie Flatline, a "construct" (or simulation) of Case's former hacker friend. See Brain Uploading.
 * Voice with an Internet Connection: Played with. When watching Molly while jacked into his computer, Case can see her, but has no way to communicate with her. She can talk to him, however.
 * Waif Fu: Molly looks like a slender young woman, but she is packed to bursting with synthetic reflexes that make her a holy terror in a fight. In an almost unheard-of departure, Molly gets badly hurt in a fight. Twice.
 * Whatevermancy: Actually a good use of the "mancer" suffix - a "Neuromancer" "divines information" with a "neural interface", albeit through the use of technology rather than magic. His name relates to his ability to recall dead people as software.


 * Xanatos Speed Chess: the AI Wintermute describes himself this way: "I try to plan, in your sense of the word, but that isn't my basic mode, really. I improvise. It's my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans, you see..." The plot of the book never makes a big point of this, though: when Molly decides to take a detour and when, he doesn't manage to stop them.
 * Yakuza: The most feared gang in Japan, especially their ninja assassins.
 * Year Inside, Hour Outside: When jacked into the matrix (ie. Inside a Computer System), Case spends several days with Linda Lee in a VR simulation created by Neuromancer, but to Maelcum it only appears to be a few minutes. This is also why being "flatlined" (trapped inside the matrix) is so feared (see And I Must Scream).
 * You Are Number Six: The Tessier-Ashpools, being clones, are assigned numbers to go with their names, eg. 3Jane, 6Jean, etc.
 * You Gotta Have Pink Hair: Lupus Yonderboy of the Panther Moderns.
 * You Killed My Father: 3Jane to Molly.
 * Zeerust: See Science Marches On, Tech Marches On.
 * Zen Survivor: Armitage.
 * Zeroes and Ones: Sort of. Wintermute identifies himself when communicating with Case by printing out several rows of the number 0.