First-reader field glossary
What did that mean?
RAM? Mycotoxin? Flip-flop switch? Memory Lane? Gibson explains his future by momentum. These pages stop, identify the detail, and then put it back into the scene.
Small nouns, full pages
No stub definitions.
Every entry follows the object or phrase through the novel, distinguishes what the text establishes from reader inference, and links back to the people, chapter, and system around it. Spoiler badges warn before late-book explanations.
Start with RAM- Long-form prose
- 92,463 words
- Recorded searches
- 970 across 110 entries
- Consulted links
- 2,175 source trail
01 / Memory & machines
Computers the novel never pauses to unpack.
Separate hot RAM from personality RAM, a pocket computer from a deck, Case’s Ono-Sendai from Finn’s switch, and a Hosaka précis from the machine that composes it.
RAM in Neuromancer
The novel's two very different uses of RAM: Case's stolen memory commodity in Chiba and his later analogy for Neuromancer's changeable personality archive.
Open field noteCase’s Hitachi Pocket Computer
The small Hitachi unit Case stores in Cheap Hotel, frequently confused with both a cyberspace deck and the coffin room's built-in communications terminal.
Open field noteOno-Sendai Cyberspace Seven
The professional cyberspace deck Armitage supplies to Case, including its dermatrode interface, Finn modification, and uncertain physical design.
Open field noteFlip-Flop Switch
The Finn-installed deck module that lets Case alternate between cyberspace and Molly's live simstim sensorium without ending his matrix connection.
Open field noteHosaka Computers
The branded general-purpose computers that research, summarize, store, and coordinate information around Case's operation, distinct from his named cyberspace deck.
Open field notePrécis
The five-minute multimedia briefing Case requests from a Hosaka to identify the Panther Moderns before the Sense/Net operation.
Open field noteMicrosofts
Removable slivers of neural software worn in a carbon socket behind the ear, used for specialist information, perceptual analysis, work, and subcultural display.
Open field note02 / Street kit
Weapons, toxins, drugs, clothing, and pocket-sized clues.
Ten objects whose names arrive faster than their explanations—from Case’s mycotoxin and Cobra to derms, the shuriken, and Hideo’s bamboo bow.
Mycotoxin
The unnamed wartime toxin that first excludes Case from cyberspace and later becomes Armitage’s biological enforcement mechanism.
Open field noteCobra: Weapon, Not Drug
The collapsible spring baton Case buys in Chiba, often mistaken for a fictional narcotic because its scene is intercut with his use of dex octagons.
Open field noteDex, Dextroamphetamine, and Octagons
Case's Chiba stimulant, clarifying that dex refers to real dextroamphetamine while octagon describes the pink pill form sold on the street.
Open field noteThe Mimetic Polycarbon Suit
The adaptive camouflage garment used by Molly and the Panther Moderns, with a visible lag that distinguishes concealment from perfect invisibility.
Open field noteDerms and Dermadisks
Adhesive transdermal patches used for analgesia, sleep, stimulation, and emergency revival, distinct from neural dermatrodes despite the similar name.
Open field noteBlue Nine / Grievous Angel
The outlawed psychoactive agent that the Panther Moderns falsely claim has contaminated Sense/Net, turning a feared drug into an information weapon.
Open field noteYeheyuan Cigarettes
The fictional cigarette brand shared by Linda and Case, carrying ordinary addiction and social ritual from Chiba into the novel's orbital future.
Open field noteThe Freeside Microlight Attack
The small electric biplane Wintermute turns into a weapon during Case's Turing arrest, demonstrating how an AI can assemble a temporary body from resort infrastructure.
Open field noteHideo’s Bamboo Bow and Arrows
The museum-quality bamboo bow and modern alloy quiver Hideo uses inside Straylight, where training and orbital physics matter more than technological novelty.
Open field noteCase’s Shuriken
The nine-pointed steel star Molly gives Case, carried unused across the operation and transformed at the end into a marker of attachment and refusal.
Open field note03 / Street coordinates
Four addresses inside the urban blur.
Three Chiba stops and the Sprawl’s Memory Lane show how Gibson builds a street map from encounters rather than directions.
Chiba Hilton
The luxury hotel where Molly brings Case to meet Armitage and receive the offer that converts his private desperation into the novel’s central operation.
Open field noteJarre de Thé
The mirrored Ninsei teashop where Case takes the night’s first stimulant and Linda warns him that Wage intends to have him killed.
Open field noteThe Namban
The minimally described Chiba venue associated with Wage, where his joeboys wait and Case later uses Armitage’s cash to settle his debt.
Open field noteMemory Lane
The Sprawl software market where Molly contacts Larry and the Panther Moderns, and where Johnny once worked as a human data courier.
Open field note04 / Freeside addresses
The resort behind the postcard surface.
Restaurants, clubs, streets, and hotels reveal how the orbital resort channels pleasure, money, surveillance, and pursuit.
Le Restaurant Vingtième Siècle
Freeside’s intimate floating restaurant, where Riviera turns an elite dinner into the performance that secures his route toward Lady 3Jane.
Open field noteEmergency
The cramped Freeside tourist bar where Case tests his newly recovered anger and reconnects with Cath shortly before the Turing intervention.
Open field noteDesiderata Street
Freeside’s lengthwise avenue, a useful coordinate beneath the resort spectacle and the setting of Case’s drugged wandering and Wintermute’s attack on the Turing agents.
Open field noteIntercontinental, Freeside
The crew’s luxury Freeside hotel and operational base, whose balconies, roof meadow, room systems, and records become part of the unfolding run.
Open field note05 / Language & culture
Words Gibson expects you to catch in motion.
Decode joeboy, sarariman, New Yen, and the Steppin’ Razor dub motif without flattening them into invented lore.
Joeboy
Street slang for a junior male helper, used both for a cowboy’s apprentice and for the subordinate muscle surrounding a criminal operator such as Wage.
Open field noteSarariman
Gibson’s spelling of the Japanese salaryman label, used to mark corporate employment, dress, status, and bodily ownership across Chiba and Freeside.
Open field noteNew Yen
The obsolete Japanese paper currency that persists as portable, anonymous value throughout the Sprawl’s international black markets.
Open field noteSteppin’ Razor and Zion Dub
The Zionite title applied to Molly and the dub music that frames prophecy, solidarity, AI imitation, and Case’s return from Neuromancer’s beach.
Open field note06 / Minor operators
Small names inside large criminal systems.
Smith and Jimmy show how a stolen object moves from burglary through an art fence and into Tessier-Ashpool’s recovery machinery.
Smith
The silicon-augmented art dealer and fence whose encounter with a stolen Tessier-Ashpool terminal gives the Finn his first trail into the family behind Wintermute.
Open field noteJimmy
The offstage burglar who steals Tessier-Ashpool’s talking-head terminal, passes it to Smith, and dies after the family’s clone assassin follows the object’s chain of custody.
Open field note07 / Fandom cross-check · Characters
The people a fast first read can lose.
Messengers, dealers, operators, doctors, agents, witnesses, and remembered acquaintances whose brief actions keep the larger plot moving.
Ali
The Istanbul supplier whose alley shop makes Riviera’s drug dependence part of Molly’s capture plan.
Open field noteAngelo
A soft-spoken Panther Modern whose conspicuous grafts make subcultural body design visible before the Sense/Net raid.
Open field noteBrood
The Panther Modern link operator who synchronizes Molly’s physical entry with Case’s matrix run during the Sense/Net theft.
Open field noteDr. Gerald Chin
The discreet Baltimore clinician whose anonymous capsule clinic repairs Molly after the Sense/Net extraction.
Open field noteDr. Virginia Rambaldi
The media sociologist whose dense interview dominates Case’s failed request for a useful Panther Modern précis.
Open field noteElroy
Dixie Flatline’s fellow prisoner whose missing-thumb itch becomes the novel’s clearest analogy for memory without an original body.
Open field noteKurt
The young Chatsubo bartender whose enormous riot gun briefly checks Wage’s men without turning the bar into a shootout.
Open field noteLarry
The software clerk and Panther Modern who detects Case riding Molly’s simstim feed before agreeing to hear her proposal.
Open field noteMarlene
A woman from Case’s youth whose demand to destroy a wasp nest supplies his later model for Tessier-Ashpool’s sealed social form.
Open field noteMatsuga
The vanished Ninsei businessman whose abandoned office gives Case a desperate escape route through the arcade building.
Open field noteMichele
The senior-looking-young Turing agent who interrogates Case and becomes the sole survivor of Wintermute’s Freeside counterattack.
Open field noteMona of Night City
The Night City acquaintance whose warning reaches Linda and confirms that Wage’s people are closing around Case.
Open field notePierre
The confrontational Turing agent whose interrogation tactics and death expose both Registry coercion and Wintermute’s physical reach.
Open field noteRoland
The ostensibly reasonable Turing interrogator whose treaty lecture ends when Wintermute drops a gardening robot onto him.
Open field noteRollo
The absent biker whose flamboyant flamethrower turns Case’s adolescent wasp-killing attempt into a dangerous failure.
Open field noteShin
The market waiter and hourly weapons contact who rents Case an old, multiply copied Walther pistol.
Open field noteSnake Man
Case’s unreliable buyer for a cooler of pituitary glands, whose cash-flow failure pushes the stolen biotech toward Wage.
Open field noteTally Isham
The simstim celebrity whose packaged adventures define the mass-market sensorium industry surrounding Sense/Net.
Open field noteThe Congressional Aide
The unnamed political operative who repairs Corto for televised testimony, then becomes the first recorded victim of Corto’s postwar collapse.
Open field note08 / Fandom cross-check · Places
The street map beneath the itinerary.
Markets, airports, districts, cities, and matrix coordinates—from Night City and Istanbul to Berne, Rio, and L-5.
Baltimore in the Sprawl
The old Sprawl hub where Molly recovers inside Dr. Gerald Chin’s discreet modular clinic.
Open field noteBerne
The Swiss location of Wintermute’s physical mainframe and the banking-sector matrix cube Case probes from orbit.
Open field noteBeyoğlu
The layered Istanbul district through which the crew moves between airport hotels, markets, and Riviera’s capture.
Open field noteBrooklyn
The enclosed Sprawl borough the Finn invokes to explain why Istanbul’s open vistas make him uncomfortable.
Open field noteChina in Neuromancer
A dispersed national reference associated with Kuang software, weapons supply chains, and characters’ uneven technological stereotypes.
Open field noteCumhuriyet Caddesi
The rainy Istanbul avenue linking the crew’s Hilton base to a streetscape of hotels, police cars, and voiceprinter scribes.
Open field noteIstanbul Hilton
The crew’s polished Istanbul base, where old payment systems and global hotel conventions surround the Riviera operation.
Open field noteLos Angeles in Neuromancer
A lightly sketched node in Molly and Armitage’s recruitment travels and in Zion’s founding diaspora.
Open field noteNew Jersey in Neuromancer
The Sprawl location from which Brood routes the Panther Moderns’ hijacked satellite link during the Sense/Net raid.
Open field noteNew York in the Sprawl
A former city still named inside BAMA, containing the Finn’s shop, Sense/Net’s corporate presence, and matrix landmarks.
Open field noteOrly
The aging Paris airport complex where terrestrial travel hands the crew to JAL’s orbital shuttle system.
Open field noteParis in Neuromancer
A transit, craft, fashion, and legal reference point connecting Riviera’s route, the jeweled head, and Turing authority.
Open field noteRio de Janeiro
The Brazilian city and matrix sector anchoring Neuromancer’s physical core behind dense white ICE.
Open field noteShiga Market in Night City
The market area where Case negotiates with Shin among sushi, mutant fish, insects, horseradish tins, and hidden weapons.
Open field noteShinjuku
A Tokyo underworld coordinate associated with Snake Man, invoked more than physically explored in Case’s Chiba crisis.
Open field noteSikkim and the Steel Combine
A Himalayan name attached to pink matrix spheres, showing how remote industry becomes navigable visual form for Case.
Open field noteSwitzerland in Neuromancer
The banking and AI-law jurisdiction that anchors Wintermute in Berne and gives numbered accounts recurring power.
Open field noteThe Copenhagen Grid
The low-security university sector where pirates post stolen Bell Europa access codes in luminous public view.
Open field noteThe Grand Bazaar
The monumental Istanbul market whose exterior landmarks orient the crew on the way to Riviera’s smaller Spice Bazaar circuit.
Open field noteThe L-5 Archipelago
The orbital region containing Freeside, Zion, transit terminals, and the traffic through which the final operation is assembled.
Open field noteThe London Grid
The matrix sector hiding Armitage’s private archive of Screaming Fist records and Corto’s reconstructed identity.
Open field noteThe Ninsei Arcade
The crowded game hall where Case remembers meeting Linda and later uses the offices above it to evade Molly.
Open field noteThe Spice Bazaar
The old Istanbul market where software, perfume, animals, drugs, and Riviera’s routine occupy one dense commercial system.
Open field noteTopkapı Palace
The palace garden where Molly and Case decompress after Riviera’s capture and compare the present operation with Armitage’s hidden past.
Open field noteToulon
The French institutional setting where Corto’s catatonia becomes an experiment in computer-mediated psychotherapy.
Open field noteTurkey in Neuromancer
The national frame for the Istanbul episode, where global hotels, old markets, secret policing, and uneven infrastructure intersect.
Open field noteYenişehir Palas Oteli
The Istanbul hotel where Riviera performs for tourists while local police attention makes the management nervous.
Open field noteYeşilköy
The Istanbul airport district from which the assembled crew leaves Turkey for Paris and the orbital stage of the mission.
Open field noteZurich
The financial and craft reference point linking numbered accounts, matrix banking geometry, and the makers of the jeweled head.
Open field note09 / Fandom cross-check · Organizations
Companies, sects, carriers, and public infrastructure.
The named institutions hidden inside access codes, subsidiaries, satellite links, energy systems, and international travel.
Bell Europa
The telecommunications company whose perpetually stolen codes give Case a route from Copenhagen’s pirate board into London.
Open field noteBockris Systems GmbH
The Frankfurt subsidiary named in the coded transfer accompanying Kuang Grade Mark Eleven.
Open field noteChristian Scientists in the Sprawl
A briefly glimpsed proselytizing pair whose approach makes three cosmetically altered office workers visibly uneasy.
Open field noteEastern Seaboard Fission Authority
A power authority whose privileged inspection probes and scarlet matrix pyramid make public infrastructure useful camouflage.
Open field noteFuji Electric Company
A real Japanese industrial name glimpsed as an enormous holographic logo in Chiba’s obstructed commercial skyline.
Open field noteJulius Deane Import Export
Deane’s warehouse-front business, where preserved goods, antique furniture, and global contraband meet behind Ninsei.
Open field noteMitsubishi-Genentech
The biotechnology megacorporation whose executive implant turns a salaryman’s body into monitored corporate property.
Open field noteNew York Public Library
A public information institution represented by relatively simple ICE, used by Case as a matrix landmark while riding Molly’s simstim.
Open field noteReinhold Scientific A.G.
The Berne-based Tessier-Ashpool subsidiary above Bockris Systems in the corporate chain attached to Kuang.
Open field noteSons of Christ the King
The obscure satellite-owning sect whose identity and comsat the Panther Moderns hijack for the Sense/Net hoax.
Open field noteThe JAL Orbital Shuttle
The commercial carrier whose Orly-to-L5 service turns Case’s first trip to orbit into regulated mass transport and bodily distress.
Open field note10 / Fandom cross-check · Technology
The overlooked hardware, chemistry, vehicles, and media.
Small devices and branded systems explained by what they do in the scene, with real-world names kept separate from fictional specifications.
Akai Transdermal Inducer
The branded medical unit connected to Molly’s transparent cast after the Sense/Net escape.
Open field noteArab Horse Reconstruction
The Finn’s joke about scientists rebuilding extinct horses with contaminated DNA, a tiny clue to the novel’s biotechnology and prejudice.
Open field noteBank Chips
Portable credentials that join identity, payment, and service access in Freeside’s cashless resort economy.
Open field noteBetaphenethylamine (‘Beta’)
The powerful stimulant Case takes on Freeside after his modified metabolism blocks familiar drugs.
Open field noteBraun in Neuromancer
A familiar consumer brand spanning coffee makers, audiovisual systems, holographic models, and Wintermute’s repurposed microdrone.
Open field noteBruce’s Honda Trike
The three-wheeled hydrogen vehicle that carries Case through Freeside’s curved resort streets and nightlife circuit.
Open field noteCase’s Walther PPK Copy
The old copied .22 pistol Shin rents to Case, a weapon whose layered provenance matters more than prestige.
Open field noteCitroën in Istanbul
A real automobile marque attached to dull converted sedans used by Turkish officers during the Riviera operation.
Open field noteCray Computers
A supercomputer brand used as casual performance shorthand in a world where corporate computing has become environmental scale.
Open field noteDreaming Real
The projection art form that moves from truckloads of gear to Riviera’s implanted, intimate, and weaponized performance.
Open field noteGardening Robots
Crablike maintenance machines that shift from background landscaping to one of Wintermute’s improvised weapons.
Open field noteHsG
A skeletal-growth substance whose alarming news report becomes raw material for the Panther Moderns’ Sense/Net panic broadcast.
Open field noteMelanin Boosting
The cosmetic tanning process used to design fashionable skin patterns and disguise Sprawl pallor on Freeside.
Open field noteNightwing Assault Parafoils
The radar-transparent microlights stripped and overloaded for Screaming Fist’s doomed cybernetic assault on Kirensk.
Open field noteSmith & Wesson Riot Gun
Kurt’s oversized lightweight bar weapon, loaded with subsonic impact cartridges rather than ordinary bullets.
Open field noteSpace Adaptation Syndrome (SAS)
The real space-medicine condition that makes Case’s first journey into microgravity physically disorienting and operationally difficult.
Open field noteTank War Europa
The holographic arcade war game Linda plays when Case meets her, turning European nuclear destruction into casual entertainment.
Open field noteThe Automatic Mercedes
The rented autonomous car that gives Molly and Case private, continuous mobility through Istanbul’s surveillance landscape.
Open field noteWizard’s Castle
The dungeon arcade game Linda’s simulated counterpart recalls, tying Case’s memory to ordinary shared play.
Open field note11 / Fandom cross-check · Themes
Background events with present-tense consequences.
Historical forces that survive through veterans, tools, institutions, and the novel’s damaged political memory.