William Gibson · 1984 · global

William Gibson's 1984 debut, the novel that named cyberspace and launched cyberpunk. Case, a washed-up hacker, is hired for one last impossible run that carries him from the neon streets of Chiba City to the Sprawl, to Istanbul, and finally to an orbital habitat where a caged artificial intelligence plots its own liberation. Dense, noirish and prophetic, it imagined the matrix a decade before the web. Its final destination, Freeside, hangs in orbit, off the edge of any earthly map.

1. 1
   Chiba City

   Case, a burned-out console cowboy whose nervous system was wrecked as punishment for stealing, drifts through the neon underworld of Chiba City, hustling and waiting to die.

2. 2
   The Sprawl

   A mysterious employer repairs him and pulls him back to the Sprawl, the Boston-Atlanta megalopolis, teamed with the razor-fingered Molly for a job he does not understand.

3. 3
   Istanbul

   To Istanbul, to collect a sadistic illusionist, as it dawns on Case that his real employer is an artificial intelligence trying to set itself free.

4. 4
   Freeside

   And up to Freeside, the orbital pleasure-spindle of the Tessier-Ashpool clan and the Villa Straylight, for the run that will remake what it means to be a mind.