Science Fiction Novel: The Neuromancer, By William Gibson

William Gibson's The Neuromancer is particularly important for the relationship it depicts between science and society. The novel, published in 1984, is prescient in the fact that it portrays a world in which the most powerful proponents of technology are not the governments, but rather corporate entities driven by conventional notions of greed and self-serving hegemony (which are the same impetuses for most governments, interestingly enough). Yet there is a degree of relevance in this aspect of the novel that reverberates in contemporary society, particularly in light of today's economic crisis and illustrations of socio-economic abuse by corporations such as Enron. Quite simply, the degree of autonomy and influence that corporations are able to exact today are not possible without government intervention and aid. In Gibson's novel this process is alluded to the point of extremity, with corporations directly in control of...
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