Neuromancer

William Gibson's debut novel follows Henry Dorsett Case, once the sharpest data thief in the business, whose nervous system was crippled by people he crossed, shutting him out of cyberspace. Case is hired by a mysterious new employer for a last-chance run at an artificial intelligence of almost unthinkable power that orbits Earth in the service of the Tessier-Ashpool clan, with Molly, a street samurai with mirrored eyes, watching his back. The novel opened the Sprawl trilogy and defined the terms of cyberpunk, from cyberspace to jacking in and ICE, setting technological progress against social decay and crime. It remains the only novel to have won the Hugo, the Nebula and the Philip K. Dick Award.

Damien Mulley, owner of Mulley Communications, read it as a teenager and says it turned computers into something rock stars used and possibly nudged him toward things he was not meant to do with them. Snappies founder Burly Vinson, a self-described sci-fi nerd, was reading it without expecting much entrepreneurial insight.