Burning Chrome

Note: This was my first encounter with W Gibson.

This was not the easiest collection of short stories to read, because the author's descriptions of the future are so vivid, manic, and unapologetically hard-core specific you get disoriented at the world he's painting. In his world(s), social divides are magnified and the synthetic get woven into the real, reinforcing rather than mitigating human flaws. The stories buzz with energy, the characters are gritty, emotive, and the science seems just out-there plausible.

Three of the 10 stories are author collaborations. Favourites are New Rose Hotel (corporate espionage in a way I've never read), Red Star, Winter Orbit (Russian astronauts in space), and Burning Chrome (which has the most beautiful descriptions of computer hacking, and viruses).

Will pick up Gibson's Neuromancer soon.