Original artwork, not a still
Neuromancer · 1984
Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation.
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
Gibson described cyberspace as a hallucination everyone agrees to share, years before most people owned a modem. He later said he picked the word because it sounded effective and meant nothing, which is part of why it stuck. The line is what writers cite for the moment the internet got its name and its mythology.
Context reviewed
In context
Spoilers for NeuromancerShow the scene
The definition appears in chapter 3 of Neuromancer (Ace Books, July 1984), William Gibson's debut novel, in which burned-out hacker Case is enlisted by a powerful AI and a traumatised former soldier for a high-stakes heist. It is delivered as narration that sounds like a television explainer: cyberspace as a graphic representation of data drawn from every computer in the human system, lines of light like city lights. Gibson had coined the word in his 1982 short story Burning Chrome, but this passage is the one quoted whenever the term's origin comes up.
Sources (3)
- Sprawl trilogy on WikiquoteNeuromancer (1984), Chapter 3Reference checked
- Cyberspace (Wikipedia)History sectionReference checked
- Neuromancer (Wikipedia)Intro and WritingReference checked
Context reviewed
