SOURCE: Voller, Jack G. “Neuromanticism: Cyberspace and the Sublime.” Extrapolation 34, no. 1 (spring 1993): 18-29.

In the following essay, Voller explores how Neuromancer portrays cyberspace as a realm of sublime transcendence devoid of spiritual implications.

William Gibson's “matrix” works—Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, two or three stories—mark, for many science fiction readers, something close to the cutting edge of the genre. As innovative and revolutionary as cyberpunk may be, however, it shares with all other varieties of SF a profound indebtedness to the Romantic/Gothic tradition. The manifold complexities of this inheritance are beyond the scope of any single essay, but we gain insight into Gibson's works and their significance by considering the extent to which the concept of cyberspace, central to the above-mentioned works, is an extension of and comment upon one of the most significant elements of Romantic aesthetics, the sublime. There is more to...