Comment by johngossman a day ago
Somebody really should mention John Brunner. His "Stand on Zanzibar" and "The Sheep Look Up" predate Gibson and Sterling by a decade and both those authors have cited his influence on their works. I love Neuromancer but Zanzibar is also brilliant.
It has been a million years since I read Stand on Zanzibar, but that technique of giving a set of cultural snippets to paint a picture really stuck with me. These days I'll be reading news headlines or Reddit's front page and be struck by how easily I could compose one of those that would be perfect for a novel imagining our era.
And it turns out a lot of people apparently have these "curtains for Zoosha" moments:
Agree. Same experience. Zanzibar (1968) is almost eerie sometimes.
Totally agree. "Stand on Zanzibar" has a modern-world feel to it although some parts have been visited by the Suck Fairy. "Shockwave Rider" is also interesting - IIRC characters use their landline phones to access large computer systems. Because Brunner never really goes into too many techy details - it's just phones and computers - it's less jarring to read now than books where technology-heavy authors such as Arthur C Clarke tried to describe in detail what future computing devices might look like.