SOURCE: Huntington, John. “Newness, Neuromancer, and the End of Narrative.” Essays and Studies 43 (1990): 59-75.

In the following essay, Huntington argues that the alienated characters who populate Neuromancer represent a form of resistance to dominant cultural mores.

I

The dynamic by which science fiction discovers and defines the ‘new’ has been depicted by the practitioners of the genre itself as a triumph of rational art. In fact it is a much less rational process than is pictured. In addition to the usual sources of conflict that enliven any group or genre—personal envy, political disagreement, generational rivalry—science fiction, by its very nature, must create disagreement about what it is and why it is important. This special level of disagreement is particularly resistant to discussion because the rational terms by which the genre usually formulates its own importance obscure essential social dynamics of the argument and of science fiction's...