Summary
Henry Dorsett Case sits at a bar in the dystopian Chiba City, Japan. The bar is grungy and as Case drinks his beer, he reminisces on the time he spent in cyberspace (also known as the matrix); now, unable to reach the console, he can only try to replicate the exhilarating feelings he had in the matrix by taking drugs or hoping for neurosurgery that could repair his nervous system. Now he works as a low-grade hustler in Chiba City.
Case has a flashback—we learn that he is twenty-four. At twenty-two, Case had been a “console cowboy”: a thief tapped into cyberspace, working on contract for other thieves who gave him the complex software needed to get into corporate data systems. But after Case stole from his employers, they punished him by giving him a nervous system-damaging drug. Case would never be able to access cyberspace again.
After his nervous system was damaged, Case tried to find a cure in Japan, where criminal and underground surgeries, implants, and medical procedures thrive—the “techno-criminal” sector. Case quickly spent all of his money on failed examinations and consultations, with each doctor telling him that the damage is irreparable. At first, Case had tried to work as a for-hire assassin, killing two men and a woman. But the exertion of the work wore him down. Now, confined to the outskirts of society, Case lives on the edge of Night City with little money, hustling in whatever way he can to get by.
The bartender teases Case by mentioning that he ran into Linda Lee, who he presumes is Case’s girlfriend. Case had found Linda Lee one night in an arcade as he tried to execute a drug delivery. They spent the night together and began a relationship characterized by intense highs as a result of drug use. However, Linda’s addiction eclipsed their relationship and they broke up.
As Case reminisces on his relationship with Linda, Linda walks into the bar. She warns him that his employer, Wage, wants to kill him because Case owes him money. Case gives Linda some money to pass along to Wage and tells her he’ll get the rest of his debt soon. After leaving the bar and wandering the streets of Night City for a while, Case decides to visit Julius Deane: a one-hundred-thirty-five-year-old man who uses gene therapy to prolong his life. Case asks Julius whether he’s heard any rumors about Wage wanting to kill him, but Julius says that he hasn’t heard anything about the supposed plan.
When Case leaves Julius’s, he realizes that someone is following him. He tries to rent a gun but fails at first, wandering around looking for another weapon. Case goes to another bar—the Chat—in order to find out if anyone’s seen Wage, but no one has. After circling around the streets one more time, he finally gets the gun from Shin. Case encounters the woman who was tailing him, but before he can catch her she disappears. Case returns to the Chat, where he finally runs into Wage. Wage tells Case he has no plans to kill him and Case realizes that Linda lied to him in order to get money out of him and has stolen his RAM—random access memory, used to store memories that can be read by the CPU, central processing unit—from the man he rented his gun from, Shin.
Case returns to the coffin hotel (a series of coffins located on the outskirts of the city) where he lives and finds that the woman who was tailing him is there waiting for him. She introduces herself as Molly and tells him that she’s here because her employer wants to talk to him. They go to the Chiba Hilton, a luxury hotel, to meet Armitage—Molly’s boss. Armitage tells Case that if he continues to live the way he has been, he’ll either kill himself or need a pancreas transplant due to failing health, which Armitage figured out by running simulations off of Case’s data profile. Instead, Armitage tells Case that he can fix Case’s neural damage, so long as Case works for him as a hacker.
Case agrees and his neural damage is fixed through a procedure that places fluid in his spine. He wakes up with Molly lying next to him, and the two have sex. Case is able to pay off his debt to Wage with the cash that Armitage gives him. Case and Molly go to Sammi’s, a fight club. Case feels nauseous and leaves Molly; he runs into a thug who tries to kill him, but Molly is able to fight the thug off. However, the thug kills Linda, who dies at Case’s feet.
Analysis
The first chapters of Gibson’s Neuromancer establish what the novel has since become best-known for: the cyberpunk tone, which later went on to form a genre of its own within the science and dystopian fiction genres. The narrative is a dizzying stream of description and narration in the close third-person voice, which follows Henry Dorsett Case (referred to by his last name throughout the novel). The novel reveals that it is as much about the world, city, and time it takes place in as it is about Case, focusing much of its narrative attention on the dystopian Chiba City, Japan.
Unlike most prior science fiction, which depicted the future as a potential space for optimistic advancement in technology and quality of life, Gibson’s version of the future is much darker. In Chiba City, crime thrives; underground fight clubs, violence, gangs, mafia, and drugs dominate the urban landscape. Part of the pessimism presented in Neuromancer stems from the novel’s focus on altered perception or reality. We are first introduced to Case as he laments his loss of access to the matrix, which is what makes his reality now seem so bleak. He chases the high of altering his experience by taking copious amounts of drugs. However, when he regains access to the matrix following his surgery, he can no longer feel the high from drugs because the procedure blocks the narcotics’ effects on his body.
The novel pushes us to ask: what kind of world forces its citizens into continuously chasing an altered experience of life? In Chiba City, the experience of day-to-day life is characterized in terms of discomfort and destitution. Case lives in a “coffin hotel,” coffin-like beds and structures that are built along the outskirts of the city for the poor and criminals. Case, himself, often expresses a nihilistic attitude towards life, stating at one point that he “no longer carried a weapon” or “took basic precautions” to protect his safety, presumably because he no longer cares about preserving his life (7). Case’s only pleasure comes from chasing the high of either the matrix or drugs.
These first chapters also establish the importance of crime within Chiba City. Cybercrime dominates and we learn that Case is one of its most skilled practitioners as a hacker and “console cowboy.” He is, in fact, so good that Armitage—who once fought in a war that predates Case’s time and is mysteriously alluded to when the two first meet—recruits him for a job. Many of the other characters we meet are somehow linked or directly involved with crime in Chiba City. As Case walks through the streets, he notes members of the mafia and different neighborhoods where gangs dominate. He even rents a gun from an underground weapons vendor, allowing us to see how illegality and crime form a constant backdrop for the city’s existence.
One of the final, crucial themes that the novel’s first two chapters establish is the nature of relationships within this world. Almost all of Case’s friendships and relationships are functional; we meet two men who contract him out for work (Wage and Armitage), and whose relationships with Case are defined by money, debt, or the surgery that Armitage provides for Case as payment for his hacking services. Although Molly and Case have sex, the nature of their relationship is entirely superficial and dictated by the fact that both of them work for Armitage; the two speak minimally and share little emotional connection or even conversation. The only woman who Case expresses some form of feeling towards, Linda, exploits Case and later dies as a result of the unfettered crime within Chiba City, a casualty that is given only a few sentences of description before Case must move on in order to save his own life.
