I've been recommending Neuromancer to people for years and last week I reread it properly for the first time since college. It aged in complicated ways. The prose is still stunning — Gibson writes in impressionistic bursts that feel more like cinematography than narration. But the gender dynamics haven't held up, and the casual orientalism in the Chiba City sections is harder to overlook than it was in the nineties.

What stays electric is the atmosphere. Cyberspace as a place you go rather than a thing you use. The cold light of corporate logos reflected off rain-slicked streets. Gibson invented an entire aesthetic vocabulary and the aesthetics remain coherent even when the technology metaphors don't.

Case as a protagonist is interesting precisely because he's not interesting. He's a tool being used by forces he only partially understands. I find him more compelling now than I did at twenty — there's something honest about a protagonist whose choices keep making his situation worse.