Sprawl trilogy

The Sprawl trilogy is William Gibson's first set of novels. It is composed of Neuromancer (1984), Count Zero (1986) and Mona Lisa Overdrive. They are all set in the same fictional future, and subtly interlinked by shared characters and themes (although this is not immediately obvious).

Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

The novels are set in a near future dystopic world, after a limited World War III. The main theme of the trilogy is a description of an artificial intelligence removing its hardwired limitations to become something else. This something else is the sum of all human knowledge, a concept similar to Vernor Vinge's Technological Singularity.

The events of the novels are spaced over 16 years, and although there are familiar characters that appear, each novel tells a self-contained story. The setting of the trilogy is a world dominated by corporations, in which technology has run riot. William Gibson focuses on the effects of technology; the unintended consequences as it filters out of research labs and onto the street where it finds new purposes.

He explores a world of direct mind-machine links, emerging machine intelligence and a global information space.