In an effort to catch up on this challenge, I am making my third post on the heels of my second. Hope no one minds! Anyhoo, here’s my third selection for the books that have inspired me the most.
But first, a little book keeping. Here are the rules of this challenge!
- Thank whoever nominated you with big, bold print. If they have a blog, link to the post where you got tagged there.
- Explain the rules.
- Post the cover of a book that was influential on you or that you love dearly.
- Explain why it was so influential to you.
- Tag someone else to do the challenge, and let them know they’ve been tagged.
Thanks again to RAMI UNGAR for the nomination, and you can find him at ramiungarthewriter.com. And here’s my second selection for the challenge, the cyberpunk classic Neuromancer!
This book, which was published in 1982, is the first book in the Sprawl Trilogy – so named because all three take place predominantly in the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis (BAMA). Also known as the Sprawl, this mega-city extends along the entire eastern seaboard and is contained by geodesic domes. The story takes place in a semi-dystopian 21st century where the world is controlled by multinational corporations, the Cold War continues, their is a massive divide between the rich and the poor, and the criminal underworld consists of cyberjockeys, cyberninjas and Yakuza assasins.
This book was immensely influential on me because it introduced me to the world of cyberpunk, with its combination of high tech and low life! I got an introduction to these elements from movies like Akira and Johnny Mnemonic (which is based on a short story by William Gibson, btw), but it was not until I read this book that I really got what it was all about. It also illustrated for me what Gibson brilliantly said (I’m paraphrasing): “All science fiction novels are about the period in which they are written.”
Also, interesting fact, William Gibson coined the term cyberspace in this novel. Yes, roughly a decade before the internet became a reality, Gibson predicted what a global network of free-flowing information would look like. And his vision was incredibly influential, as exemplified by the countless movies that pictured the internet as some massive virtual environment filled with neon icons and streaming lines of code (think Hackers, the Matrix, and any movie involving internet crime combined). As he described it in the story:
“Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts… A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding…”
I strongly recommend this book for anyone who would like to learn where many of the concepts that have become a staple of science fiction came from. And now for my nomination, I choose you, Phyllis Moore, aka. the MythRider!
Stories by Williams 