City of Night

Some authors' writings flow like poetry, and William Gibson is a master of description, particularly his early work. He is the first science fiction author to have concretely conceptualized the modern idea of the matrix or cyberspace, aligning his metaphors with the external architectural grid of the city. His work broke ground because it moved away from old style science fiction and focused instead on the inner directed spaces. In raw gritty detail, he described a world neurally hooked up to a "consensual hallucination." His flawed characters are endearing exactly because of their spunkiness and ferality. Their willingness to stand against systems of control and pay the consequences.

A year here and he still dreamed of cyberspace, hope fading nightly. All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he'd cut in Night City, and he'd still see the matrix in his sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless void… The Sprawl was a long strange way home over the Pacific now, and he was no console man, no cyberspace cowboy. Just another hustler, trying to make it through. But the dreams came on in the Japanese night like livewire voodoo, and he'd cry for it, cry in his sleep, and wake alone in the dark, curled in his capsule in some coffin hotel, his hands clawed into the bedslab, temperfoam bunched between his fingers, trying to reach the console that wasn't there.

William Gibson, Neuromancer

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