Neuromancer

 

Canadian fictioneers have not been prolific coiners of new words. But Vancouver 's king of cyberfiction, William Gibson, is no slouch in the neology stakes. Neuromancer, title of his first novel in 1984, winner of the highest prizes in sci-fi (the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, The Philip K. Dick Award, etc.) illustrates Gibson's playful word-making.

Gibson coined the word neuromancer on the analogy of the much older word necromancer, one who divines the future by consulting the black arts, often by summoning the dead back to earth from the shady realms for the purpose of telling the future or influencing the present. Gibson’s neuromancer is one who foretells the future by reading neurons, the nerve cells of the human body.

The endings -mancer or –mancy appear on a number of somewhat obscure English words, obscure but part of many readers’ vocabularies. There is chiromancy, telling one’s future by reading one’s palms. Consider too oneiromancy, guessing the future by interpreting dreams. All of these pursuits are as silly as horoscopy, where the stars are said to influence human fate and behaviour. Shakespeare had a compelling squelch to horoscope readers in his play Julius Caesar, where the Roman dictator says, “The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves, than we are underlings.”

The root of these –mancy nouns in English is manteia, the ancient Greek word for divination or prophesy, borrowed into Latin as mantia, into Old French as –mancie , and thence into Middle English as –mancie or –mauncie. An interesting related word is our insect name, the praying mantis. Mantis is a Greek word for prophet. So the gangly stick insect appeared to be a praying prophet.

Look at the word necromancy, ultimately from the Late Greek noun nekromanteia. Nekros is Greek for dead. In medicine, necrotic tissue has died. A designation for a cemetery often used as a euphemism in modern English is necropolis, a city of the dead, using the Greek word for city, polis.

Other words from Gibson’s pioneering cyberpunk novel Neuromancer gained currency too. There was a computer virus called "Screaming Fist" and the internet is commonly referred to as cyberspace or the Matrix.

 

                      photo Credit: Karen Moskowitz

 

Some of William Gibson’s novels and collections of stories

Neuromancer 1984

Count Zero 1986

Burning Chrome 1986

Mona Lisa Overdrive 1988

The Difference Engine (written with bruce Stirling ) 1991

Virtual Light 1993

Idoru 1996

Gibson's story "Johnny Mnemonic" was made into a 1995 film.

All Tomorrow’s Parties 1999

Pattern Recognition 2003

William Gibson also wrote an episode of The X-Files and a film script for Aliens 3.

 

Visit William Gibson’s website:

 

http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com

 

 

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