Neuromancer Part 1: Chiba City Blues

William Gibson’s Neuromancer catapults one into a futuristic, technological driven world. In part one, in addition to introducing the main characters, Gibson focuses on the setting and atmosphere of this surrealistic sci-fi world. It is apparent that society is broken up into two extremes: the technological geniuses all competing to invent the latest programs and reap in the billions in profits, and the technology rejects who turn to drugs, alcohol, and cheap hotels to stay alive in a society far too advanced for them. A morbid twist in the cheap hotels is that instead of rooms, they sleep in coffins, hinting that those in the slums are destined for death. The key element in this world is how fast paced every aspect of society has to move in order to keep up with everything else. While Gibson is describing the Sprawl, it quickly becomes apparent that many businesses from present society have vanished. Places such as parks and bookstores are absent from this new world because they were simply too leisurely to survive in such a fast-paced society. Instead, this world is left with bars with drugs and pimps, street vendors renting out guns, and arcades churning out new games just as they are invented. The streets are packed with neon and holograms, causing people to grow accustomed to technology’s ever-growing presence. There is of course one other “activity” in this new world to help pass the time: the matrix.
Although Gibson does not physically enter the matrix in part one, he introduces it through the thoughts of the protagonist, Case. Case is trapped in the poorer half of society after double crossing his company with the matrix. In Chiba City, he became adapted to the misfortunate Ninsei Night life crowd. It is a pathetic place that he admitted allowed him to commit crimes he never would have believed that he could commit. At one point, when he was being tailed, he actually grew excited like he used to about the matrix. Clearly, his current settings were not acceptable to him if he had to be in a gun chase to get a rush of excitement. The geography of the city is clearly quite confined, since he walks everywhere, and that may be one of the main differences it has from the matrix. It can be inferred that the reason he is trying to kill himself through drugs is because he feels trapped in the city, where as in the matrix he had the liberty and freedom to explore. The matrix and cyberspace is portrayed as a fantasy land with its “bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless void.” Descriptions like these emphasize that life outside cyberspace is nothing in comparison and that the external world is just a way to catch your breath in between plugging in.