What are you reading in 2026?

[Autumnal]

Apropos of nothing, it would be very easy to make Neuromancer cosmic horror, if one were so inclined. As Ashpool tells Molly in part 4:

“For thirty years. You weren’t born, when last I lay me down to sleep. They told us we wouldn’t dream, in that cold. They told us we’d never feel cold, either. Madness, Molly. Lies. Of course I dreamed. The cold let the outside in, that was it. The outside. All the night I built this to hide us from. Just a drop, at first, one grain of night seeping in, drawn by the cold. . . . Others following it, filling my head the way rain fills an empty pool.”

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Apropos of nothing, it would be very easy to make Neuromancer cosmic horror, if one were so inclined. As Ashpool tells Molly in part 4:

“For thirty years. You weren’t born, when last I lay me down to sleep. They told us we wouldn’t dream, in that cold. They told us we’d never feel cold, either. Madness, Molly. Lies. Of course I dreamed. The cold let the outside in, that was it. The outside. All the night I built this to hide us from. Just a drop, at first, one grain of night seeping in, drawn by the cold. . . . Others following it, filling my head the way rain fills an empty pool.”

There's a lot of alien, existential dread in Gibson's writings. Whether it's the Tessier-Ashpools, Josef Virek, Wintermute, or the Loa, his worlds are filled with inhuman beings, some of which once were human, some not.

His short story Hinterlands is another example.