ENGLISH: William Gibson’s Seminal Novel Neuromancer: An Analysis of Post-Modernist Element of Virtual Reality

Abstract

William Gibson’s seminal work Neuromancer (1984) paved the way for the cyberpunk movement. Cyberpunk has almost all the elements we would love to figure out with regard to the Post-modern period of hyper reality and virtual reality. Neuromancer provides the best example of how the modern man is puzzled between the real and virtual. There are characters which force us to suspend our beliefs. This paper aims to ascertain as to how virtual reality has been manipulated in cyberpunk novel Neuromancer and how it corresponds to one of the overriding themes of Post-modernism called Virtual reality. Moreover, it is also indispensable to note that the power of virtual world as delineated in Neuromancer has been detrimental to the warmth of natural life. This virtual reality of the cyberspace has been the source to the postmodern idea of the blurring of reality. This specific feature of the cyberpunk novel Neuromancer brings it in line with one of chief elements of postmodernism such as hyperreality.