15: Neuromancer, by William Gibson.
This is the book that started the Cyberpunk vibe. It didn’t invent it – Philip K. Dick did it with his electric sheep, (which is one of the reasons why he’s ranked a bit higher) but Neuromancer most definitely consolidated it into a recognizable genre.
Gibson’s book is a gritty mix of IT and noir action film, set amid the crawling streets and undergrounds of the near future, in the shadow of shifty corporations and corrupt governments.
Here is the blurb of the very first book to win Hugo, Nebula AND Philip K. Dick awards, (which, arguably, not even Philip K. Dick himself ever won):
Case was the sharpest data-thief in the matrix—until he crossed the wrong people and they crippled his nervous system, banishing him from cyberspace. Now a mysterious new employer has recruited him for a last-chance run at an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence. With a dead man riding shotgun and Molly, a mirror-eyed street-samurai, to watch his back, Case is ready for the adventure that upped the ante on an entire genre of fiction.
Neuromancer was the first fully-realized glimpse of humankind’s digital future—a shocking vision that has challenged our assumptions about technology and ourselves, reinvented the way we speak and think, and forever altered the landscape of our imaginations.
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