William Gibson's Neuromancer: Cyberpunk and the End of Humanity/William Gibson'in Neuromancer Adli Eseri: Siberpunk Ve Insanligin Sonu (Critical Essay‪)‬

William Gibson's Neuromancer starts out in Chiba City in Japan with Henry Dorsett Case, a hustler in a dystopian world, getting caught stealing from his employer and having his nervous system damaged by a wartime Russian mycotoxin that deprives him of ability to use his brain-computer interface to hack into global computer network of cyberspace. Case, who is now unemployable, was addicted to drugs and alcohol and even suicidal, but now searches for the Chiba "black clinics" for a miracle cure of his mycotoxin and other problems. At the end of chapter one, Molly Millions, a razorgirl street samurai with extensive cybernetic modifications--including retractable 4 cm double-edged blades hidden under her fingernails, mirrorshades implanted over her eyes and an enhance reflex system--helps Case by offering to cure him in exchange for his service as a hacker and inviting him to work for her employer, Armitage. Case accepts the offer to become a console cowboy, but neither he nor Molly know Armitages' real plans. Case's nervous system is partially repaired through a new technology provided for a clinic by Armitage, but he soon learns that he still has sacs of poison in his blood vessels. If he completes his work, Armitage promises to have the sacs removed before they burst and disable him again. The clinic also replaces Case's pancreas and grafts new tissue into his liver, which makes him incapable of metabolizing cocaine or amphetamines and thus ending his addiction. As Case realizes, "[a] part of him knew that the arc of his self-destruction was glaringly obvious to his customers, who grew steadily fewer" (Neuromancer 7) until he starts working for Armitage. Chiba City overflows with advanced technology and cyborgs who belong to a subculture involved in hacking computers and theft. Case's body has become almost an alien entity that he feels out of synchrony with and that serves merely as a case for his mind to enter cyberspace. Flesh in Neuromancer is called "meat," and many of Case's friends have mechanical modifications of their meat, such as Ratz, a bartender, who has stainless steel teeth. When at the bar, Case sees his girlfriend Linda Lee, who he no longer wants to be with. Before meeting Molly, Case operated on a permanent adrenaline high and "jacked into a custom cyberspace deck that projected his disembodied consciousness into the consensual hallucination that was the matrix" (5). As a thief, he worked for wealthier thieves who provided software needed to penetrate the walls of corporate systems. When he first arrived in Chiba, he killed two men and a woman for money, the amount of which now seemed ludicrous. He also sensed that burgeoning technologies required outlaw zones, even though they had become globalized in the world of Neuromancer. His acquaintance Julius Deane was 135 years old thanks to his metabolism being warped by serums and hormones. As we can see, Gibson's novel uses bionic technology not to enhance one's inner dimension but rather to facilitate hacking and theft in a world of cyberspace, which Gibson defines as a realm of consensual hallucinations. The drugs Case uses make him feel "like a run in the matrix", which allows him to see "Ninsei [a district in Chiba] as a field of data, the way the matrix had once reminded him of proteins linking to distinguish cell specialties" (16). When he finally meets Molly, she says, "Cept I do hurt people sometimes, Case. I guess it's just the way I'm wired" (25). Before taking Case to the Chiba Hilton to meet Armitage in chapter two, she releases her blades and then withdraws them slowly. Armitage was a former Green Beret, Colonel Willis Corto, who took part in a secrete operation called Screaming Fist, a maneuver that tried to "burn this Russian nexus with virus programs" (28), but he was badly injured both physically and psychologically. Armitage was then reconstructed through an experimental computer-mediated psychotherapy by Wintermute, an artificial intelligenc