This brief essay will identify the elements within William Gibson’s science fiction novel, Neuromancer, which link it in general to the larger genre within which it is positioned and those elements that distinguish it from more traditional novels and stories in this field. It will argue that because the novel is an example of what is known as “cyberpunk” fiction, it moves beyond the form of more traditional science fiction (even extremely futuristic versions of the field) to create a new and appealing approach.
Broadly speaking, science fiction and fantasy are both branches of romantic literature; they share with other forms of romance an emphasis on adventure plots and a lesser concern for the mimetic representation of ordinary life (Perkins, p. 952). Such stories are often escapist or wish-fulfilling on one level, speculative on another, and mythmaking on a third. They tend to extrapolate the lessons of science and technology into settings that are significantly different from the world as readers have known and experienced it (Perkins, p. 952). Often, such stories explore ideas illustrated through the examinations of future, alternative, or past (real and imagined) civilizations.
Science fiction and fantasy literature should not, however, be regarded as a relatively homogenous genre. The variations in them, setting, characterization, explication of plot, subject matter, and other vital elements of any form of fiction to be found within this genre are apparently infinite. Perkins (p. 952) has noted that modern science fiction can be understood as the result of a pair of “push” and “pull” factors—with the rise (or “push) provided by emergent science in the late 18th and 19th centuries and the “pull” fostered by romanticism. Shelly’s Frankenstein, many of Poe’s stories, and the works of such diverse authors as Jules Verne and H. G. Wells serve as example of this phenomenon (Perkins, p. 953).
Th...