SOURCE: Punday, Daniel. “The Narrative Construction of Cyberspace: Reading Neuromancer, Reading Cyberspace Debates.” College English 63, no. 2 (November 2000): 194-213.

In the following essay, Punday explores the relationship between cyberspace and narrative form in Neuromancer, arguing that the novel “offers us a way to negotiate the conventional discursive elements used within online communication.”

The Internet seems to have spawned a community with fundamentally new conditions for social interaction. As Shawn Wilbur notes,

“Virtual community” is certainly among the most used, and perhaps abused phrases in the literature of computer-mediated communication. This should come as no surprise. An increasing number of people are finding their lives touched by collectivities which have nothing to do with physical proximity. A space has opened up for something like community on computer networks, at a time when so many forms of “real life” community seem under attack.

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Where traditionally individuals have interacted with each other...