(19) NEUROMANCY (CYBERMANCY)
“What’s your name? Your Turing code. What is it?”
“Neuromancer…Neuro from the nerves, the silver paths. Romancer. Necromancer”.
I didn’t make this one up – the godfather of cyberpunk, William Gibson, did.
Well, technically, he only made up Neuromancer for the title (and titular character) of his landmark 1984 book, but I can’t compile a top ten and special mentions for -mancy without featuring it.
Neuromancer is an AI, in the SF superintelligence sense but neuromancy might well be regarded as the cyberspace hacking that drives the plot and is the forte of the protagonist console cowboy.
Or think the Matrix, since the film franchise borrowed much from Neuromancer, including the term matrix. Of course, it’s not actual magic but technology and skill – in Neuromancer at least, not so sure about the Matrix.
As a method of divination or type of magic, it is essentially cybermancy, which in turn is effectively a subset of technomancy narrowed to computers and computing.
Oh – and Neuromancer wasn’t kidding about the necromancer part, metaphorically at least, since it can create sentient copies or simulations of people’s consciousness in cyberspace, potentially persisting beyond the original.
RATING: 4 STARS****
X-TIER (WILD TIER)