"Neuromancer" by William Gibson

Title: Neuromancer

Author: William Gibson (@greatdismal.bsky.social)

Cover artist: Steve Crisp

Publisher: Grafton Books (1984)

ISBN13: 978-0586066454

Recommended audience: adult and older teens

Link to publisher book page: https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/william-gibson/neuromancer/9781473217386/

About Big Bearded Bookseller:

My real name is Stephen Baird and I've been book blogging for as long as I've been a children's bookseller which as of August 1st was ten years, and an expert children's bookseller for the last three years of that.

I can be found over on Bluesky @bigbeardedbookseller.com and on my blog https://www.bigbeardedbookseller.com, I've participated on the Waterstones Children's Book Prize for 10 years and was on the final jury in 2017.

What I liked about the book:

At the time that I read this I had been on a steady diet of Tolkien and Asimov and other high fantasy and space opera writing, all since the mid 70s really, and though I really enjoyed it it was getting a bit stale.

This brought the heist genre to quite a noir near-future science fiction setting, it had an extremely dark outlook for this near future and explained this really well but it also delved into this disparate group of individuals with very damaged personalities to see what made them tick, or in some cases countdown to unravelling.

It was much more in common with the Mickey Spillane books I'd sneaked from my Uncle, the language and world building was spot on for me at the time and this has become on of my regular rereads, at least once a year.

How I found this book:

It was at my favourite Edinburgh bookshop, James Thin on the South Bridges where I had built up a great relationship with two or three of their booksellers.

I had gone in for my usual look around the SFF section to see what took my fancy and one of them pointed me in the direction of this and talked about it so enthusiastically emphasising how much I would love it.

This is the beauty of a physical bookshop with good booksellers who love their job, personalised recommendations based on personal knowledge.

Since they had never let me down before I jumped right in and 41 years later William Gibson is still one of my favourite authors who I will buy their latest book without thinking about it.