The Defender
“The journey to Bakka Books was the reason for my parents to first let me travel an hour and a half by transit to Queen West in downtown Toronto at age 13. Bakka specialized in science fiction and fantasy books and would post reviews of new releases and organize readings with authors. I bought many books from their used section. One day, one of the owners knowing my reading preferences said to me, ‘You have to read this novel.’ To which I protested that I was going to wait until it was in the used section. He replied that almost no one sells them back and if they do they are sold the next day. Neuromancer was one of the first books I had bought new. The novel was thrilling and enchanting and spoke of the world to come, what could be, and what was happening already.
When asked to select a novel to defend, I thought of many novels and was inevitably drawn to Neuromancer as it is still highly relevant today – almost 30 years later. Some of what was predicted has come to pass and are now so common we cannot remember a time when they were a dream in a writer’s mind. And other predictions have not yet come to pass while philosophers and futurists debate whether it is truly wise for us to allow them to come to be.
I looked through my book collection for it and found it in my database and not on my shelf. And then I remembered…15 years ago, I was showing Neuromancer to a friend and I told her, ‘You have to read this novel.'”
Edward Henley is the Director of Finance and Treasurer for Clearview Township. He is a self-professed bibliophile who has moved across the country four times and always packs his 1,000+ book collection first.
The Book
Here is the novel that started it all, launching the cyberpunk generation, and the first novel to win the holy trinity of science fiction: the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award and the Philip K. Dick Award. With Neuromancer, William Gibson introduced the world to cyberspace–and science fiction has never been the same.
Case was the hottest computer cowboy cruising the information superhighway–jacking his consciousness into cyberspace, soaring through tactile lattices of data and logic, rustling encoded secrets for anyone with the money to buy his skills. Then he double-crossed the wrong people, who caught up with him in a big way–and burned the talent out of his brain, micron by micron. Banished from cyberspace, trapped in the meat of his physical body, Case courted death in the high-tech underworld. Until a shadowy conspiracy offered him a second chance–and a cure–for a price….
Visit http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/books/neuromancer.asp for more information on this book and author.
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Library Contact: Michele McKenzie
(705) 466-3011 / publicprogramming@clearview.ca
www.clearview.library.on.ca