Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson is the novel that defined cyberpunk. Set in a near-future global sprawl, it follows Case, a washed-up hacker navigating megacorporations, AI entities, black markets, and a hallucinatory digital realm Gibson famously named cyberspace.

The book fuses high tech with low life: console cowboys, body modification, corporate power, fractured identities, and disembodied minds. More than a plot, Neuromancer is an atmosphere—where information is capital, reality is optional, and human agency is constantly negotiated with machines.