Hugo Award no relation William Gibson
Neuromancer is a 1984 science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson. Considered one of the earliest and best-known works in the cyberpunk genre, it is the only novel to win the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award. It was Gibson's debut novel and the beginning of the Sprawl trilogy. Set in the future, the novel follows Henry Case, a washed-up hacker hired for one last job, which brings him in contact with a powerful artificial intelligence.Literary and cultural significance
Dave Langford reviewed Neuromancer for White Dwarf #59, and stated that "I spent the whole time on the edge of my seat and got a cramp as a result. In a way Gibson's pace is too frenetic, so unremitting that the reader never gets a rest and can't see the plot for the dazzle. Otherwise: nice one."Dave Langford also reviewed Neuromancer for White Dwarf #80, and stated that "You may not believe in killer programs which invade the brain, but Neuromancer, if you once let it into your wetware, isn't easily erased."Neuromancer's release was not greeted with fanfare, but it hit a cultural nerve, quickly becoming an underground word-of-mouth hit. It became the first novel to win  the Nebula, the Hugo, and Philip K. Dick Award for paperback original, an unprecedented achievement described by the Mail & Guardian as "the sci-fi writer's version of winning the Goncourt, Booker and Pulitzer prizes in the same year". The novel thereby legitimized cyberpunk as a mainstream branch of science fiction literature. It is among the most-honored works of science fiction in recent history, and appeared on Time magazine's list of 100 best English-language novels written since 1923. The novel was also nominated for a British Science Fiction Award in 1984.Neuromancer is considered "the archetypal cyberpunk work". Outside science fiction, it gained unprecedented critical and popular attention as an "evocation of life in the late 1980s", although The Observer noted that "it took the New York Times 10 years" to mention the novel. By 2007 it had sold more than 6.5 million copies worldwide.The novel has had significant linguistic influence, popularizing such terms as cyberspace and ICE (Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics). Gibson himself coined the term "cyberspace" in his novelette "Burning Chrome", published in 1982 by Omni magazine, but it was through its use in Neuromancer that it gained recognition to become the de facto term for the World Wide Web during the 1990s. The portion of Neuromancer usually cited in this respect is: