William Gibson recommended

Having never read any William Gibson, not even the much-hyped genre-sparker Neuromancer, I had a shallow delve into his work recently. Neuromancer itself impressed me greatly, as I'd gone to it with the idea that the more talk there is about a book the less likely it is to be worth reading (Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman had been recommended to me, and I'd heard from several sources it was good. I found it dated, prejudiced chick lit. I have enjoyed other Atwood novels, aside from abrupt endings). If Neuromancer's as far into Gibson as you've got, try some of his short stories - I recommend The Belonging Kind, and The Winter Market in particular. His style made me think of Raymond Chandler (high praise indeed): spare, dark and wry, the way I'd love to write (but am far too verbose to manage. As you'll have noticed). His pacing is fast, chopping frequently from present to past, often from one paragraph to the next. I will be returning to his pages before long; I have some catching up to do.