I take it most of us started with neuromancer. I found my copy, quite fittingly, on my brother's pc. I was 12 and that was the first unabridged book (or rather e-book, if one may call a .txt file a book) I read in english.

and do you have any geeky traits? I for one thing tend to speak in quotes. "the sky above the port" and all that "the net is vast and infinite" stuff...

I had a very, very geeky introduction to cyberpunk. I discovered it through role playing games. My older cousin introduced me to the whole thing and I think I bought the Cyberpunk game before even reading Neuromancer. For my circle of rpg friends, Cyberpunk was by far our favourite. Been an unconditional Gibson fan ever since.

I found out about it when my Dad handed me a copy of "Burning Chrome." A lot of awesome short stories in that one. Gibson and Sterling are still my favorite cyberpunkers.

i was feeding on the sci-fi section of the local library (a very small one).
Stumbled upon Neuromancer.
Love at first sight.

I read an article on a magazine about a novel in wich the protagonist die in the first page.
It was Count zero by William Gibson.
I bought it and became addicted :D
It was in the late eighties

Xander Lavelle: It's odd, though count zero is really an independent book I've always percieved it as a fixed part of a set, so my first thought was 'well, he kinda' started in the middle'.

and btw, I just got a .pdf of burning chrome and was so disappointed when it turned out to be only the short story, not the whole bc collection...

in my opinion count zero is so not and independent book... i think is part of a trilogy with neuromancer and mona lisa overdrive. I may be wrong, but i'm quite sure i am not.

But perhaps you meant it was independent in some other way...

it is indeed a part of a trilogy, but it can be read separately, because it has a finished, independent plot

i see...

well, perhaps that is true for every gibson's book. One may not fully understand all the references to events/characters from other books, but still he would be able to follow the plot

Gibson seems to like the trilogy thing. The Neuromancer/Count Zero/Mona Lisa trilogy is called the Sprawl Trilogy and the next three are part of the Bridge Trilogy.

Having just finished Spook Country (very good), it looks like we might have another Gibson trilogy in the making as one of the characters appears in both Spook Country and Pattern Recognition. Maybe it will be named the "Blue Ant Trilogy".

Of course Count Zero is the midle of a trilogy.
But I did not knew at the time.
And it can be read easily alone.
Neuromancer is wonderful and could help understand some things in CZ, but it is not so important. Mona Lisa overdrive is impossible to read without the other two.

i definitely agree on that

Hello guys, I discovered cyberpunk with Neuromancer (translated edition, I'm Italian). Then I red Mirrorshades, other Gibson's script, Sterling, Dick and Akira Mishima. Actually I try to follow cp in several area, such as anime, film and smiling when I look at my old copy of GURPS Cyberpunk :D
Have good readings.

When I was eleven I found a copy of Virtual Light in a box of books my (much) older sister was chucking out. It took a couple of years before I realised there was a whole genre of similar writing. The funny thing is, I'm not sure my sister actually ever read it - she doesn't know what she's missing!

An older friend of mine had just started university (I was still in high school). He told me that this bit of sci-fi (Neuromancer) was actually studied in his Modern English class. That caught my attention and I've never looked back.

"neuromancer" in modern literature classes. neat.

I personally had a lot of fun while explaining the genre to an elderly professor who knew only that there was this guy, and he coined the term "cyberspace" and wrote some novels about whatever it was. professor by the way was extremely inquisitive.