I have to disagree with both. I help a colleague teach a class in which students often read necromancer, and it often has a deep impact on them. The cloned ninjas and laser weapons are uninteresting to them for the reasons mentioned above, but the Necromancer + Wintermute dynamic and central plot is fascinating to them.

I think it’s slightly different. Tolkein made fairy tales grow up, but people already had some familiarity with these things. Tolkien gave them a new way to think about those things.

Gibson’s strength was that he could describe—in an accessible way—concepts that were quite foreign to most people at the time.