First Lines: Neuromancer

William Gibson’s Neuromancer tells the story of a washed up hacker, who’s been given a second chance. Now he has to hack into a staggeringly advanced Artificial Intelligence. Whether he succeeds is completely besides the point. (Spoiler: he does.) This book kicked off cyberpunk, an entire new branch of Science Fiction.* It also brought the term cyberspace to the main stream. And while I’m pretty sure I didn’t get everything out of the story that’s in there, I got a pretty good kick out of it.

And as far as first lines go, boy, it’s a classic:

William Gibson — Neuromancer
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

* Cyberpunk is where science and technology meets philosophy. (more) (back)