An incredible book, Gibson has created a new vernacular for science fiction. His clouded plots and motives hang beneath beautifully eccentric descriptions and concepts of the future. He has altered what it means to be a hero, a villain, a wizard, and has irrevocably darkened the view of the future.I don't think anyone is really supposed to fully understand what goes on in this book. It is too densely packed with social and technological terminology. Instead of a quest or linear plot, the reader is given very selective glances at a few very different lives. These lives touch each other ever so briefly, but the effects of this contact are monumental in this world of universes within universes. You sit back and watch the novel progress rather than try to understand it. It welcomes imagination, but then perverts it with startlingly original imagery. Don't avoid this work because it falls under the genre of sci-fi. Nor should you feel daunted by the dense writing or confusing narrative. Just read and read and read. Not only will you be suprised with what you understand by the book's completion, but you'll be suprised by the craving to go back and fit the missing pieces back into the story. The darkest prose, the starkest images and the greyest future imagined make Neuromancer a phenomenal work.