I don't know if it's of any help, but I offer my own experience:
I read Neuromancer as a teenager, and it had a profoundly transformative effect on my life (probably more than any other book). It first introduced me to the idea that a person like a hacker existed. That it was a viable thing to become. I may have discovered this at a later time on my own, but I'll never know.
I was so enraptured by the ideas contained in it, that I was able to look past what was mechanically, a style of writing that I really didn't like (the prose felt very disjointed).
When I moved on to Count Zero, I found that the story wasn't sufficiently enthralling to make up for the issues I had with the style, so I could never get through it.
About ten years later, somehow or another I came to find myself in possession of Gibson's Pattern Recognition (I don't remember if I bought it because of a good review, or just wanted to give him another shot).
For whatever reason, I found that I didn't have any of the issues with his style getting in the way for me. I don't know if his writing actually changed (a possibility, as it was his 7th novel), of if I was just a different person by that point, and now more able to appreciate the way he writes.
I ended up liking Pattern Recognition immensely (and both of the other novels in that trilogy), even though people have made valid complaints about the actual plot of the novels.
I then went back and re-read the rest of the Sprawl trilogy, and found it easier to digest this time.
So you might also find that his later work is less confusing.
I don't really have an opinion as to how it relates to SciFi as a whole, as I really don't like SciFi as a genre in and of itself (as a contrast, I actually hated Enders Game when I read it as a kid).
I think that basically he just always writes novels set in the sociotechnical landscape of approximately 2015, (space station and strong AI excluded).
As we approach 2015, his novels become less and less far-flung. In ca. 2005, I used to find myself in Gibsonesque situations about once or twice a year, now it's monthly...
INTERVIEWER: You’ve written that science fiction is never about the future, that it is always instead a treatment of the present.
GIBSON: There are dedicated futurists who feel very seriously that they are extrapolating a future history. My position is that you can’t do that without having the present to stand on. Nobody can know the real future. And novels set in imaginary futures are necessarily about the moment in which they are written. As soon as a work is complete, it will begin to acquire a patina of anachronism. I know that from the moment I add the final period, the text is moving steadily forward into the real future.
I'd like to find myself in a city where Gibsonesque situations are the default entertainment. And the job of an entertainer might then become close to a calling.
I read Neuromancer as a teenager, and it had a profoundly transformative effect on my life (probably more than any other book). It first introduced me to the idea that a person like a hacker existed. That it was a viable thing to become. I may have discovered this at a later time on my own, but I'll never know.
I was so enraptured by the ideas contained in it, that I was able to look past what was mechanically, a style of writing that I really didn't like (the prose felt very disjointed).
When I moved on to Count Zero, I found that the story wasn't sufficiently enthralling to make up for the issues I had with the style, so I could never get through it.
About ten years later, somehow or another I came to find myself in possession of Gibson's Pattern Recognition (I don't remember if I bought it because of a good review, or just wanted to give him another shot).
For whatever reason, I found that I didn't have any of the issues with his style getting in the way for me. I don't know if his writing actually changed (a possibility, as it was his 7th novel), of if I was just a different person by that point, and now more able to appreciate the way he writes.
I ended up liking Pattern Recognition immensely (and both of the other novels in that trilogy), even though people have made valid complaints about the actual plot of the novels.
I then went back and re-read the rest of the Sprawl trilogy, and found it easier to digest this time.
So you might also find that his later work is less confusing.
I don't really have an opinion as to how it relates to SciFi as a whole, as I really don't like SciFi as a genre in and of itself (as a contrast, I actually hated Enders Game when I read it as a kid).