Posthuman Blues

"Pattern Recognition"...William Gibson is at his best. "PR" is better than "All Tomorrow's Parties," suffused with a sense of paranoia and future-chic. When I read "Neuromancer," my world was irrevocably changed. I write science fiction. I've even sold some. (Some critics will inevitably argue that my forthcoming speculative nonfiction book is, in truth, science fiction...) "Neuromancer" redefined what I always knew science fiction could be, in the same sort of way that my elementary-school fixation with Max Headroom plucked prescient chords. Discovering William Burroughs had a similar effect.

I can't even recall when, exactly, I read "Neuromancer." But I remember that I purchased it in Florida, in a strip mall a walk away from my hotel at Cocoa Beach. Gibson upgraded my appreciation for the genre and his influence has had a considerable cascading effect on my creative life. He is the only author I regularly buy in hardback and almost certainly the most important living fiction writer, unmatched in style and cultural relevance.