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William Gibson (novelist)
Encyclopedia
William Ford Gibson is an American-Canadian
speculative fiction
novelist who has been called the "noir prophet" of the cyberpunk
subgenre. Gibson coined the term "cyberspace
" in his short story "Burning Chrome
" (1982) and later popularized the concept in his debut novel
, Neuromancer
(1984). In envisaging cyberspace, Gibson created an iconography
for the information age
before the ubiquity of the Internet in the 1990s. He is also credited with predicting the rise of reality television
and with establishing the conceptual foundations for the rapid growth of virtual environments such as video games and the World Wide Web
.
Having changed residence frequently with his family as a child, Gibson became a shy, ungainly teenager who often read science fiction. After spending his adolescence at a private boarding school in Arizona
, Gibson evaded the draft
during the Vietnam War
by emigrating to Canada in 1968, where he became immersed in the counterculture
and after settling in Vancouver eventually became a full-time writer. He retains dual citizenship. Gibson's early works are bleak, noir near-future stories about the effect of cybernetics
and computer network
s on humans—a "combination of lowlife and high tech". The short stories were published in popular science fiction magazines. The themes, settings and characters developed in these stories culminated in his first novel, Neuromancer, which garnered critical and commercial success, virtually initiating the cyberpunk literary genre.
Although much of Gibson's reputation has remained associated with Neuromancer, his work has continued to evolve. After expanding on Neuromancer with two more novels to complete the dystopic Sprawl trilogy, Gibson became an important author of another science fiction sub-genre—steampunk
—with the 1990 alternate history novel The Difference Engine
, written with Bruce Sterling
. In the 1990s, he composed the Bridge trilogy
of novels, which focused on sociological observations of near-future urban environments and late capitalism
. His most recent novels—Pattern Recognition
(2003), Spook Country
(2007) and Zero History
(2010)—are set in a contemporary world and have put his work onto mainstream bestseller lists for the first time.
Gibson is one of the best-known North American science fiction writers, fêted by The Guardian in 1999 as "probably the most important novelist of the past two decades". Gibson has written more than twenty short stories and ten critically acclaimed novels (one in collaboration), and has contributed articles to several major publications and collaborated extensively with performance artists, filmmakers and musicians. His thought has been cited as an influence on science fiction authors, design, academia, cyberculture
, and technology.
, and spent most of his childhood in Wytheville, Virginia
, a small town in the Appalachians where his parents had been born and raised. His family moved frequently during Gibson's youth owing to his father's position as manager of a large construction company. In Norfolk, Virginia
, Gibson attended Pines Elementary School, where the teachers' lack of encouragement for him to read was a cause of dismay for his parents. While Gibson was still a young child, a little over a year into his stay at Pines Elementary, his father choked to death in a restaurant while on a business trip. His mother, unable to tell William the bad news, had someone else inform him of the death. Tom Maddox
has commented that Gibson "grew up in an America as disturbing and surreal as anything J. G. Ballard
ever dreamed".
A few days after the death, Gibson's mother returned them from their home in Norfolk to Wytheville. Gibson later described Wytheville as "a place where modernity
had arrived to some extent but was deeply distrusted" and credits the beginnings of his relationship with science fiction, his "native literary culture", with the subsequent feeling of abrupt exile. At the age of 12, Gibson "wanted nothing more than to be a science fiction writer". He spent a few unproductive years at basketball-obsessed George Wythe High School, a time spent largely in his room listening to records and reading books. At 13, unbeknownst to his mother, he purchased an anthology of Beat
writing, thereby gaining exposure to the writings of Allen Ginsberg
, Jack Kerouac
, and William S. Burroughs
; the lattermost had a particularly pronounced effect, greatly altering Gibson's notions of the possibilities of science fiction literature.
A shy, ungainly teenager, Gibson grew up in a monoculture he found "highly problematic", consciously rejected religion and took refuge in reading science fiction as well as writers such as Burroughs and Henry Miller
. Becoming frustrated with his poor academic performance, Gibson's mother threatened to send him to a boarding school; to her surprise, he reacted enthusiastically. Unable to afford his preferred choice of Southern California, his then "chronically anxious and depressive
" mother, who had remained in Wytheville since the death of her husband, sent him to Southern Arizona School for Boys in Tucson, Arizona. He resented the structure of the private boarding school, but was in retrospect grateful for its forcing him to engage socially. He took the SAT
(Scholastic Aptitude Test) exams, scoring five out of 150 in mathematics
and 148 out of 150 in the written section, to the consternation of his teachers.
. In 1967, he elected to move to Canada in order "to avoid the Vietnam war draft". At his draft hearing, he honestly informed interviewers that his intention in life was to sample every mind-altering substance in existence. Gibson has observed that he "did literally evade the draft, as they never bothered drafting me"; after the hearing he went home and purchased a bus ticket to Toronto, and left a week or two later. In the biographical documentary No Maps for These Territories
(2000) Gibson said that his decision was motivated less by conscientious objection than by a desire to "sleep with hippie chicks" and indulge in hashish. He elaborated on the topic in a 2008 interview:
After weeks of nominal homelessness, Gibson was hired as the manager of Toronto's first head shop
, a retailer of drug paraphernalia. He found the city's émigré community of American draft dodgers unbearable owing to the prevalence of clinical depression, suicide and hardcore substance abuse. He appeared, during the Summer of Love
of 1967, in a CBC
newsreel item about hippie subculture
in Yorkville, Toronto
, for which he was paid $500 – the equivalent of 20 weeks rent – which financed his later travels. Aside from a "brief, riot-torn spell" in the District of Columbia, Gibson spent the rest of the 1960s in Toronto, where he met Vancouverite Deborah Jean Thompson, with whom he subsequently traveled to Europe. Gibson has recounted that they concentrated their travels on European nations with fascist regimes and favourable exchange rates, including spending time on a Greek archipelago and in Istanbul
in 1970, as they "couldn't afford to stay anywhere that had anything remotely like hard currency".
The couple married and settled in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1972, with Gibson looking after their first child while they lived off his wife's teaching salary. During the 1970s, Gibson made a substantial part of his living from scouring Salvation Army
thrift stores for underpriced artifacts he would then up-market to specialist dealers. Realizing that it was easier to sustain high college grades, and thus qualify for generous student financial aid, than to work, he enrolled at the University of British Columbia
(UBC), earning "a desultory bachelor's degree in English" in 1977. Through studying English literature
, he was exposed to a wider range of fiction than he would have read otherwise; something he credits with giving him ideas inaccessible from within the culture of science fiction, including an awareness of postmodernity
. It was at UBC that he attended his first course on science fiction, taught by Susan Wood
, at the end of which he was encouraged to write his first short story, "Fragments of a Hologram Rose
".
novels as fascist
literature, Gibson discontinued writing in the year that followed graduation and, as one critic put it, expanded his collection of punk records. During this period he worked at various jobs, including a three-year stint as teaching assistant on a film history course at his alma mater. Impatient at much of what he saw at a science fiction convention
in Vancouver in 1980 or 1981, Gibson found a kindred spirit in fellow panelist, punk musician and author John Shirley
. The two became immediate and lifelong friends. Shirley persuaded Gibson to sell his early short stories and to take writing seriously.
Through Shirley, Gibson came into contact with science fiction authors Bruce Sterling
and Lewis Shiner
; reading Gibson's work, they realised that it was, as Sterling put it, "breakthrough material" and that they needed to "put down our preconceptions and pick up on this guy from Vancouver; this [was] the way forward." Gibson met Sterling at a science fiction convention in Denver, Colorado in the autumn of 1981, where he read "Burning Chrome
" – the first cyberspace short story – to an audience of four people, and later stated that Sterling "completely got it".
In October 1982, Gibson traveled to Austin, Texas for ArmadilloCon
, at which he appeared with Shirley, Sterling and Shiner on a panel called "Behind the Mirrorshades: A Look at Punk SF", where Shiner noted "the sense of a movement solidified". After a weekend discussing rock and roll, MTV, Japan, fashion, drugs and politics, Gibson left the cadre for Vancouver, declaring half-jokingly that "a new axis has been formed." Sterling, Shiner, Shirley and Gibson, along with Rudy Rucker
, went on to form the core of the radical cyberpunk
literary movement.
and cyberspace
(computer-simulated reality) technology on the human race. His themes of hi-tech shanty town
s, recorded or broadcast stimulus (later to be developed into the "sim-stim" package featured so heavily in Neuromancer), and dystopic intermingling of technology and humanity, are already evident in his first published short story, "Fragments of a Hologram Rose" (1977). The latter thematic obsession was described by his friend and fellow author, Bruce Sterling, in the introduction of Gibson's short story collection Burning Chrome, as "Gibson's classic one-two combination of lowlife and high tech."
In the early 1980s, Gibson's stories appeared in Omni
and Universe 11, wherein his fiction developed a bleak, film noir
feel. He consciously distanced himself as far as possible from the mainstream of science fiction (towards which he felt "an aesthetic revulsion", expressed in "The Gernsback Continuum
"), to the extent that his highest goal was to become "a minor cult figure
, a sort of lesser Ballard
." When Sterling started to distribute the stories, he found that "people were just genuinely baffled... I mean they literally could not parse the guy's paragraphs... the imaginative tropes he was inventing were just beyond peoples' grasp."
While Larry McCaffery
has commented that these early short stories displayed flashes of Gibson's ability, science fiction critic Darko Suvin
has identified them as "undoubtedly [cyberpunk's] best works", constituting the "furthest horizon" of the genre. The themes which Gibson developed in the stories, the Sprawl
setting of "Burning Chrome
" and the character of Molly Millions
from "Johnny Mnemonic" ultimately culminated in his first novel, Neuromancer
.
for the third series of Ace Science Fiction Specials
, which was intended to exclusively feature debut novel
s. Given a year to complete the work, Gibson undertook the actual writing out of "blind animal terror" at the obligation to write an entire novel – a feat which he felt he was "four or five years away from". After viewing the first 20 minutes of landmark cyberpunk film Blade Runner
(1982) which was released when Gibson had written a third of the novel, he "figured [Neuromancer] was sunk, done for. Everyone would assume I’d copped my visual texture from this astonishingly fine-looking film." He re-wrote the first two-thirds of the book twelve times, feared losing the reader's attention and was convinced that he would be "permanently shamed" following its publication; yet what resulted was a major imaginative leap forward for a first-time novelist.
Neuromancers release was not greeted with fanfare, but it hit a cultural nerve, quickly becoming an underground word-of-mouth hit. It became the first novel to win the "triple crown" of science fiction awards (the Nebula
, the Hugo
, and Philip K. Dick Award for paperback original), eventually selling more than 6.5 million copies worldwide.
Lawrence Person in his "Notes Toward a Postcyberpunk Manifesto" (1998) identified Neuromancer as "the archetypal cyberpunk work", and in 2005, Time
included it in their list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923, opining that "[t]here is no way to overstate how radical [Neuromancer] was when it first appeared." Literary critic Larry McCaffery
described the concept of the matrix in Neuromancer as a place where "data dance with human consciousness... human memory is literalized and mechanized... multi-national information systems mutate and breed into startling new structures whose beauty and complexity are unimaginable, mystical, and above all nonhuman." Gibson later commented on himself as an author circa Neuromancer that "I'd buy him a drink, but I don't know if I'd loan him any money," and referred to the novel as "an adolescent's book". The success of Neuromancer was to effect the 35-year-old Gibson's emergence from obscurity.
Although much of Gibson's reputation has remained rooted in Neuromancer, his work continued to evolve conceptually and stylistically. Despite adding the final sentence of Neuromancer, “He never saw Molly again”, at the last minute in a deliberate attempt to prevent himself from ever writing a sequel, he did precisely that with Count Zero
(1986), a character-focused work set in the Sprawl
alluded to in its predecessor. He next intended to write an unrelated postmodern space opera
, titled The Log of the Mustang Sally, but reneged on the contract with Arbor House
after a falling out over the dustjacket art of their hardcover of Count Zero. Abandoning The Log of the Mustang Sally, Gibson instead wrote Mona Lisa Overdrive
(1988), which in the words of Larry McCaffery "turned off the lights" on cyberpunk literature. It was a culmination of his previous two novels, set in the same universe
with shared characters, thereby completing the Sprawl trilogy. The trilogy solidified Gibson's reputation, with both later novels also earning Nebula and Hugo Award and Locus SF Award nominations
The Sprawl trilogy was followed by the 1990 novel The Difference Engine
, an alternate history
novel Gibson wrote in collaboration with Bruce Sterling. Set in a technologically advanced Victorian era
Britain, the novel was a departure from the authors' cyberpunk roots. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel
in 1991 and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1992, and its success drew attention to the nascent steampunk
literary genre of which it remains the best-known work.
Gibson's second series, the "Bridge trilogy
", is composed of Virtual Light
(1993), a "darkly comic urban detective story", Idoru
(1996), and All Tomorrow's Parties
(1999). It centers on San Francisco in the near future and evinces Gibson's recurring themes of technological, physical, and spiritual transcendence in a more grounded, matter-of-fact style than his first trilogy. Salon.com
's Andrew Leonard notes that in the Bridge trilogy, Gibson's villains change from multinational corporations and artificial intelligence
s of the Sprawl trilogy to the mass media – namely tabloid television and the cult of celebrity. Virtual Light depicts an "end-stage capitalism, in which private enterprise and the profit motive are taken to their logical conclusion". This argument on the mass media as the natural evolution of capitalism is the opening line of the major Situationist work The Society of the Spectacle
. Leonard's review called Idoru a "return to form" for Gibson, while critic Steven Poole
asserted that All Tomorrow's Parties marked his development from "science-fiction hotshot to wry sociologist of the near future."
style of writing, with continuous narratives – "speculative fiction of the very recent past." Science fiction critic John Clute
has interpreted this approach as Gibson's recognition that traditional science fiction is no longer possible "in a world lacking coherent 'nows' to continue from", characterizing it as "SF for the new century". Gibson's novels Pattern Recognition
(2003), Spook Country
(2007) and Zero History
(2010) are set in the same contemporary universe — "more or less the same one we live in now" — and put Gibson's work onto mainstream bestseller lists for the first time. As well as the setting, the novels share some of the same characters, including Hubertus Bigend
and Pamela Mainwaring, employees of the enigmatic marketing company Blue Ant.
A phenomenon peculiar to this era was the independent development of annotating
fansites, PR-Otaku and Node Magazine
, devoted to Pattern Recognition and Spook Country respectively. These websites tracked the references and story elements in the novels through online resources such as Google
and Wikipedia
and collated the results, essentially creating hypertext
versions of the books. Critic John Sutherland characterised this phenomenon as threatening "to completely overhaul the way literary criticism is conducted".
After the September 11, 2001 attacks, with about 100 pages of Pattern Recognition written, Gibson had to re-write the main character's backstory, which had been suddenly rendered implausible; he called it "the strangest experience I've ever had with a piece of fiction." He saw the attacks as a nodal point in history, "an experience out of culture", and "in some ways... the true beginning of the 21st century." He is noted as one of the first novelists to use the attacks to inform his writing. Examination of cultural changes in post-September 11 America, including a resurgent tribalism
and the "infantilization of society", became a prominent theme of Gibson's work. The focus of his writing nevertheless remains "at the intersection of paranoia and technology".
" (1981) with John Shirley
, "Red Star, Winter Orbit
" (1983) with Sterling, and "Dogfight
" (1985) with Michael Swanwick
. Gibson had previously written the foreword to Shirley's 1980 novel City Come A-walkin and the pair's collaboration continued when Gibson wrote the introduction to Shirley's short story collection Heatseeker (1989). Shirley convinced Gibson to write a story for the television series Max Headroom
for which Shirley had written several scripts, but the network canceled the series.
Gibson and Sterling collaborated again on the short story "The Angel of Goliad" in 1990, which they soon expanded into the novel-length alternate history story The Difference Engine
(1990). The two were later "invited to dream in public" (Gibson) in a joint address to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences
Convocation on Technology and Education in 1993 ("the Al Gore
people"), in which they argued against the digital divide
and "appalled everyone" by proposing that all schools be put online, with education taking place over the Internet. In a 2007 interview, Gibson revealed that Sterling had an idea for "a second recursive science novel that was just a wonderful idea", but that Gibson was unable to pursue the collaboration because he was not creatively free at the time.
In 1993, Gibson contributed lyrics and featured as a guest vocalist on Yellow Magic Orchestra's Technodon
album, and wrote lyrics to the track "Dog Star Girl" for Deborah Harry's Debravation
.
resort. His early efforts to write film scripts failed to manifest themselves as finished product; "Burning Chrome" (which was to be directed by Kathryn Bigelow
) and "Neuro-Hotel" were two attempts by the author at film adaptations that were never made. In the late 1980s he wrote an early version of Alien 3 (which he later characterized as "Tarkovskian
"), few elements of which survived in the final version.
Gibson's early involvement with the film industry extended far beyond the confines of the Hollywood blockbuster system. At one point, he collaborated on a script with Kazakh director Rashid Nugmanov
after an American producer had expressed an interest in a Soviet-American collaboration to star Russian-Korean star Victor Tsoi. Despite being occupied with writing a novel, Gibson was reluctant to abandon the "wonderfully odd project" which involved "ritualistic gang-warfare in some sort of sideways-future Leningrad
" and sent Jack Womack
to Russia in his stead. Rather than producing a motion picture, a prospect that ended with Tsoi's death in a car crash, Womack's experiences in Russia ultimately culminated in his novel Let's Put the Future Behind Us
and informed much of the Russian content of Gibson's Pattern Recognition
. A similar fate befell Gibson's collaboration with Japanese filmmaker Sogo Ishii
in 1991, a film they plotted on shooting in the Walled City of Kowloon until the city was demolished in 1993.
Adaptations of Gibson's fiction have frequently been optioned and proposed, to limited success. Two of the author's short stories, both set in the Sprawl trilogy universe, have been loosely adapted as films: Johnny Mnemonic
(1995) with screenplay by Gibson and starring Keanu Reeves, Dolph Lundgren and Takeshi Kitano
, and New Rose Hotel (1998), starring Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, and Asia Argento. The former was the first time in history that a book was launched simultaneously as a film and a CD-ROM
interactive video game. Neuromancer, after a long stay in development hell
, is in the process of adaptation , Count Zero
was at one point being developed as The Zen Differential with director Michael Mann
attached, and the third novel in the Sprawl trilogy, Mona Lisa Overdrive
, has also been optioned and bought. An anime
adaptation of Idoru
was announced as in development in 2006, and Pattern Recognition was in the process of development by director Peter Weir
, although according to Gibson the latter is no longer attached to the project.
Television is another arena in which Gibson has collaborated; he co-wrote with friend Tom Maddox
, The X-Files episodes "Kill Switch
" and "First Person Shooter
", broadcast in the U.S. on 20th Century Fox Television
in 1998 and 2000. In 1998 he contributed the introduction to the spin-off publication Art of the X-Files. Gibson made a cameo appearance in the television miniseries Wild Palms
at the behest of creator Bruce Wagner
. Director Oliver Stone
had borrowed heavily from Gibson's novels to make the series, and in the aftermath of its cancellation Gibson contributed an article, "Where The Holograms Go", to the Wild Palms Reader. He accepted another acting role in 2002, appearing alongside Douglas Coupland
in the short film Mon Amour Mon Parapluie in which the pair played philosophers. Appearances in fiction aside, Gibson was the focus of a biographical documentary by Mark Neale in 2000 called No Maps for These Territories
. The film follows Gibson over the course of a drive across North America discussing various aspects of his life, literary career and cultural interpretations. It features interviews with Jack Womack and Bruce Sterling, as well as recitations from Neuromancer by Bono
and The Edge
.
Gibson has contributed text to be integrated into a number of performance art
pieces. In October 1989, Gibson wrote text for such a collaboration with acclaimed sculptor and future Johnny Mnemonic
director Robert Longo
titled Dream Jumbo: Working the Absolutes, which was displayed in Royce Hall, University of California Los Angeles. Three years later, Gibson contributed original text to "Memory Palace", a performance show featuring the theater group La Fura dels Baus
at Art Futura '92, Barcelona, which featured images by Karl Sims
, Rebecca Allen
, Mark Pellington
with music by Peter Gabriel
and others. It was at Art Futura '92 that Gibson met Charlie Athanas, who would later act as dramaturg and "cyberprops" designer on Steve Pickering and Charley Sherman's adaptation of "Burning Chrome" for the Chicago stage. Gibson's latest contribution was in 1997, a collaboration with critically acclaimed Vancouver-based contemporary dance company Holy Body Tattoo
and Gibson's friend and future webmaster Christopher Halcrow.
In 1990, Gibson contributed to "Visionary San Francisco", an exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
shown from June 14 to August 26. He wrote a short story, "Skinner's Room", set in a decaying San Francisco in which the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge was closed and taken over by the homeless – a setting Gibson then detailed in the Bridge trilogy
. The story inspired a contribution to the exhibition by architects Ming Fung and Craig Hodgetts that envisioned a San Francisco in which the rich live in high-tech, solar-powered towers, above the decrepit city and its crumbling bridge. The architects exhibit featured Gibson on a monitor discussing the future and reading from "Skinner's Room". The New York Times hailed the exhibition as "one of the most ambitious, and admirable, efforts to address the realm of architecture and cities that any museum in the country has mounted in the last decade", despite calling Ming and Hodgetts's reaction to Gibson's contribution "a powerful, but sad and not a little cynical, work". A slightly different version of the short story was featured a year later in Omni
.
A particularly well-received work by Gibson was Agrippa (a book of the dead)
(1992), a 300-line semi-autobiographical electronic poem that was his contribution to a collaborative project with artist Dennis Ashbaugh
and publisher Kevin Begos, Jr. Gibson's text focused on the ethereal nature of memories (the title refers to a photo album) and was originally published on a 3.5" floppy disk
embedded in the back of an artist's book containing etchings by Ashbaugh (intended to fade from view once the book was opened and exposed to light — they never did, however). Gibson commented that Ashbaugh's design "eventually included a supposedly self-devouring floppy-disk intended to display the text only once, then eat itself." Contrary to numerous colorful reports, the diskettes were never actually "hacked
"; instead the poem was manually transcribed from a surreptitious videotape of a public showing in Manhattan in December 1992, and released on the MindVox
bulletin board the next day; this is the text that circulated widely on the Internet.
and of op-ed
s to The New York Times
, and has written for The Observer
, Addicted to Noise
, New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone
, and Details Magazine. His first major piece of nonfiction, the article "Disneyland with the Death Penalty
" concerning the city-state of Singapore, resulted in Wired being banned from the country and attracted a spirited critical response. He commenced writing a blog in January 2003, providing voyeuristic insights into his reaction to Pattern Recognition
, but abated in September of the same year owing to concerns that it might negatively affect his creative process. Gibson re-commenced blogging in October 2004, and during the process of writing Spook Country
– and to a lesser extent Zero History
– frequently posted short nonsequential excerpts from the novel to the blog. The blog was largely discontinued by July 2009, after the writer had undertaken prolific microblogging on Twitter under the nom de plume "GreatDismal".
Hailed by Steven Poole
of The Guardian in 1999 as "probably the most important novelist of the past two decades" in terms of influence, Gibson first achieved critical recognition with his debut novel
, Neuromancer
. The novel won three major science fiction awards (the Nebula Award
, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award
), an unprecedented achievement described by the Mail & Guardian
as "the sci-fi writer's version of winning the Goncourt
, Booker
and Pulitzer prize
s in the same year". Neuromancer gained unprecedented critical and popular attention outside science fiction, as an "evocation of life in the late 1980s", although The Observer
noted that "it took the New York Times
10 years" to mention the novel.
Gibson's work has received international attention from an audience that was not limited to science fiction aficionados as, in the words of Laura Miller, "readers found startlingly prophetic reflections of contemporary life in [its] fantastic and often outright paranoid scenarios." It is often situated by critics within the context of postindustrialism as, according to academic David Brande, a construction of "a mirror of existing large-scale techno-social relations", and as a narrative version of postmodern consumer culture. It is praised by critics for its depictions of late capitalism
and its "rewriting of subjectivity, human consciousness and behaviour made newly problematic by technology." Tatiani Rapatzikou, writing in The Literary Encyclopedia
, identifies Gibson as "one of North America's most highly acclaimed science fiction writers".
In his early short fiction, Gibson is credited by Rapatzikou in The Literary Encyclopedia with effectively "renovating" science fiction, a genre at that time considered widely "insignificant", influencing by means of the postmodern aesthetic of his writing the development of new perspectives in science fiction studies
. In the words of filmmaker Marianne Trench, Gibson's visions "struck sparks in the real world" and "determined the way people thought and talked" to an extent unprecedented in science fiction literature. The publication of Neuromancer (1984) hit a cultural nerve, causing Larry McCaffery
to credit Gibson with virtually launching the cyberpunk
movement, as "the one major writer who is original and gifted to make the whole movement seem original and gifted." Aside from their central importance to cyberpunk and steampunk
fiction, Gibson's fictional works have been hailed by space historian Dwayne A. Day as some of the best examples of space-based
science fiction (or "solar sci-fi"), and "probably the only ones that rise above mere escapism to be truly thought-provoking".
Gibson's early novels were, according to The Observer, "seized upon by the emerging slacker
and hacker
generation as a kind of road map".
Through his novels, such terms as cyberspace
, netsurfing, ICE
, jacking in, and neural implants entered popular usage, as did concepts such as net consciousness, virtual interaction and "the matrix". In "Burning Chrome
" (1982), he coined the term cyberspace, referring to the "mass consensual hallucination
" of computer network
s. Through its use in Neuromancer, the term gained such recognition that it became the de facto term for the World Wide Web
during the 1990s. Artist Dike Blair
has commented that Gibson's "terse descriptive phrases capture the moods which surround technologies, rather than their engineering."
Gibson's work has influenced several popular musicians: references to his fiction appear in the music of Stuart Hamm
, Billy Idol
, Warren Zevon
, Deltron 3030
, Straylight Run
(whose name is derived from a sequence in Neuromancer
) and Sonic Youth
. U2
's Zooropa
album was heavily influenced by Neuromancer, and the band at one point planned to scroll the text of Neuromancer above them on a concert tour, although this did not end up happening. Members of the band did, however, provide background music for the audiobook version of Neuromancer as well as appearing in No Maps for These Territories, a biographical documentary of Gibson. He returned the favour by writing an article about the band's Vertigo Tour
for Wired
in August 2005. The band Zeromancer
take their name from Neuromancer.
The film The Matrix
(1999) drew inspiration for its title, characters and story elements from the Sprawl trilogy. The characters of Neo
and Trinity
in The Matrix are similar to Bobby Newmark (Count Zero
) and Molly
("Johnny Mnemonic", Neuromancer
). Like Turner, protagonist of Gibson's Count Zero, characters in The Matrix download instructions (to fly a helicopter and to "know kung fu", respectively) directly into their heads, and both Neuromancer and The Matrix feature artificial intelligence
s which strive to free themselves from human control. Critics have identified marked similarities between Neuromancer and the film's cinematography and tone. In spite of his initial reticence about seeing the film on its release, Gibson later described it as "arguably the ultimate 'cyberpunk' artifact." In 2008 he received honorary doctorates from Simon Fraser University
and Coastal Carolina University
,
and was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame by close friend and collaborator Jack Womack.
years before the origin of the World Wide Web
, although related notions had previously been imagined by others, including science fiction writers. At the time he wrote "Burning Chrome
", Gibson "had a hunch that [the Internet] would change things, in the same way that the ubiquity of the automobile changed things." In 1995, he identified the advent, evolution and growth of the Internet as "one of the most fascinating and unprecedented human achievements of the century", a new kind of civilization that is – in terms of significance — on a par with the birth of cities, and in 2000 predicted it would lead to the death of the nation state.
Observers contend that Gibson's influence on the development of the Web reached beyond prediction; he is widely credited with creating an iconography
for the information age
, long before the embrace of the Internet by the mainstream. Gibson introduced, in Neuromancer
, the notion of the "meatpuppet", and is credited with inventing—conceptually rather than participatorally—the phenomenon of virtual sex
. His influence on early pioneers of desktop environment
digital art has been acknowledged, and he holds an honorary doctorate from Parsons The New School for Design
. Steven Poole
claims that in writing the Sprawl trilogy Gibson laid the "conceptual foundations for the explosive real-world growth of virtual environments in video games and the Web". In his afterword to the 2000 re-issue of Neuromancer, fellow author Jack Womack
suggests that Gibson's vision of cyberspace may have inspired the way in which the Internet (and the Web particularly) developed, following the publication of Neuromancer in 1984, asking "what if the act of writing it down, in fact, brought it about?"
Gibson scholar Tatiani G. Rapatzikou has commented, in Gothic Motifs in the Fiction of William Gibson, on the origin of the notion of cyberspace:
In his Sprawl and Bridge
trilogies, Gibson is credited with being one of the few observers to explore the portents of the information age for notions of the sociospatial structuring of cities. Not all responses to Gibson's visions have been positive, however; virtual reality pioneer Mark Pesce
, though acknowledging their heavy influence on him and that "no other writer had so eloquently and emotionally effected the direction of the hacker community," dismissed them as "adolescent fantasies of violence and disembodiment." In Pattern Recognition
, the plot revolves around snippets of film footage posted anonymously to various locations on the Internet. Characters in the novel speculate about the filmmaker's identity, motives, methods and inspirations on several websites, anticipating the 2006 Lonelygirl15
internet phenomenon. However, Gibson later disputed the notion that the creators of Lonelygirl15 drew influence from him. Another phenomenon anticipated by Gibson is the rise of reality television
, for example in Virtual Light
, which featured a satirical extrapolated version of COPS
.
For his part, Gibson rejects any notion of prophecy, never having had a special relationship with computers; until 1996 he had neither an email address nor a modem
, a lack he explained at the time to have been motivated by a desire to avoid correspondence that would distract him from writing. His first exposure to a website came while writing Idoru
when he was persuaded to let a web developer, Chris Halcrow, build one for him. An anecdote often recited in cybercultural enclaves and English departments holds that Neuromancer was written on a manual typewriter
; the author has confirmed that the novel was written on a 1927 model of an olive-green Hermes portable typewriter, which looked to him as "the kind of thing Hemingway
would have used in the field". In 2007, he said:
Short stories
Nonfiction
and Gibson himself report his age at the time of his father's death to be six years old, while Gibson scholar Tatiani Rapatzikou claims in The Literary Encyclopedia
that he was eight years old.
II. Several track names on Hamm's Kings of Sleep
album ("Black Ice
", "Count Zero
", "Kings of Sleep
") reference Gibson's work.
III. Idol released an album in 1993 titled Cyberpunk
, which featured a track named Neuromancer. Robert Christgau
excoriated Idol's treatment of cyberpunk
, and Gibson later stated that Idol had "turned it into something very silly."
IV. Zevon's 1989 album Transverse City
was inspired by Gibson's fiction.
V. Gibson later successfully resisted attempts by Autodesk
to copyright the word for their abortive foray into virtual reality
.
VI. Both the Internet with its dramatic social effects and the cyberpunk
genre itself were also anticipated in John Brunner
's 1975 novel The Shockwave Rider
.
VII. The idea of a globally interconnected set of computers through which everyone could quickly access data and programs from any site was first described in 1962 in a series of memos on the "Galactic Computer Network" by J.C.R. Licklider of DARPA.
VIII. In the "Author's Afterword" to Mona Lisa Overdrive, dated July 16, 1992, Gibson wrote the following:
Reference material
Canadians of American origin
American-Canadians are people of Canadian citizenship who were born in the United States of America. They account for a significant portion of Canada's population. Canada and the United States share much culturally but are separate geopolitical entities in North America.According to the Canada 2006...
speculative fiction
Speculative fiction
Speculative fiction is an umbrella term encompassing the more fantastical fiction genres, specifically science fiction, fantasy, horror, supernatural fiction, superhero fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, and alternate history in literature as well as...
novelist who has been called the "noir prophet" of the cyberpunk
Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...
subgenre. Gibson coined the term "cyberspace
Cyberspace
Cyberspace is the electronic medium of computer networks, in which online communication takes place.The term "cyberspace" was first used by the cyberpunk science fiction author William Gibson, though the concept was described somewhat earlier, for example in the Vernor Vinge short story "True...
" in his short story "Burning Chrome
Burning Chrome
Burning Chrome is a collection of short stories written by William Gibson. Most of the stories take place in Gibson's Sprawl, an anonymous, shared setting for most of his cyberpunk work...
" (1982) and later popularized the concept in his debut novel
Debut novel
A debut novel is the first novel an author publishes. Debut novels are the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry, and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to publish in the future...
, Neuromancer
Neuromancer
Neuromancer is a 1984 novel by William Gibson, a seminal work in the cyberpunk genre and the first winner of the science-fiction "triple crown" — the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award. It was Gibson's debut novel and the beginning of the Sprawl trilogy...
(1984). In envisaging cyberspace, Gibson created an iconography
Iconography
Iconography is the branch of art history which studies the identification, description, and the interpretation of the content of images. The word iconography literally means "image writing", and comes from the Greek "image" and "to write". A secondary meaning is the painting of icons in the...
for the information age
Information Age
The Information Age, also commonly known as the Computer Age or Digital Age, is an idea that the current age will be characterized by the ability of individuals to transfer information freely, and to have instant access to knowledge that would have been difficult or impossible to find previously...
before the ubiquity of the Internet in the 1990s. He is also credited with predicting the rise of reality television
Reality television
Reality television is a genre of television programming that presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and usually features ordinary people instead of professional actors, sometimes in a contest or other situation where a prize is awarded...
and with establishing the conceptual foundations for the rapid growth of virtual environments such as video games and the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
.
Having changed residence frequently with his family as a child, Gibson became a shy, ungainly teenager who often read science fiction. After spending his adolescence at a private boarding school in Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
, Gibson evaded the draft
Draft dodger
Draft evasion is a term that refers to an intentional failure to comply with the military conscription policies of the nation to which he or she is subject...
during the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
by emigrating to Canada in 1968, where he became immersed in the counterculture
Counterculture
Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...
and after settling in Vancouver eventually became a full-time writer. He retains dual citizenship. Gibson's early works are bleak, noir near-future stories about the effect of cybernetics
Cybernetics
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...
and computer network
Computer network
A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information....
s on humans—a "combination of lowlife and high tech". The short stories were published in popular science fiction magazines. The themes, settings and characters developed in these stories culminated in his first novel, Neuromancer, which garnered critical and commercial success, virtually initiating the cyberpunk literary genre.
Although much of Gibson's reputation has remained associated with Neuromancer, his work has continued to evolve. After expanding on Neuromancer with two more novels to complete the dystopic Sprawl trilogy, Gibson became an important author of another science fiction sub-genre—steampunk
Steampunk
Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, and speculative fiction that came into prominence during the 1980s and early 1990s. Steampunk involves a setting where steam power is still widely used—usually Victorian era Britain or "Wild West"-era United...
—with the 1990 alternate history novel The Difference Engine
The Difference Engine
The Difference Engine is an alternate history novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.It posits a Victorian Britain in which great technological and social change has occurred after entrepreneurial inventor Charles Babbage succeeded in his ambition to build a mechanical computer .The novel was...
, written with Bruce Sterling
Bruce Sterling
Michael Bruce Sterling is an American science fiction author, best known for his novels and his work on the Mirrorshades anthology, which helped define the cyberpunk genre.-Writings:...
. In the 1990s, he composed the Bridge trilogy
Bridge trilogy
The Bridge trilogy is a series of novels by William Gibson, his second after the successful Sprawl trilogy. The trilogy comprises the novels Virtual Light , Idoru, and All Tomorrow's Parties .-Setting:...
of novels, which focused on sociological observations of near-future urban environments and late capitalism
Late capitalism
"Late capitalism" is a term used by neo-Marxists to refer to capitalism from about 1945 onwards, with the implication that it is a historically limited stage rather than an eternal feature of all future human society. Postwar German sociologists needed a term to describe contemporary society...
. His most recent novels—Pattern Recognition
Pattern Recognition (novel)
Pattern Recognition is a novel by science fiction writer William Gibson published in 2003. Set in August and September 2002, the story follows Cayce Pollard, a 32-year-old marketing consultant who has a psychological sensitivity to corporate symbols...
(2003), Spook Country
Spook Country
Spook Country is a 2007 novel by speculative fiction author William Gibson. A political thriller set in contemporary North America, it followed on from the author's previous novel, Pattern Recognition , and was succeeded in 2010 by Zero History, which featured much of its core cast of characters...
(2007) and Zero History
Zero History
Zero History is a novel by William Gibson. It concludes the informal trilogy begun by Pattern Recognition and features Hollis Henry and Milgrim from Spook Country, the middle book, as the protagonists.-Plot:...
(2010)—are set in a contemporary world and have put his work onto mainstream bestseller lists for the first time.
Gibson is one of the best-known North American science fiction writers, fêted by The Guardian in 1999 as "probably the most important novelist of the past two decades". Gibson has written more than twenty short stories and ten critically acclaimed novels (one in collaboration), and has contributed articles to several major publications and collaborated extensively with performance artists, filmmakers and musicians. His thought has been cited as an influence on science fiction authors, design, academia, cyberculture
Cyberculture
Cyberculture is the culture that has emerged, or is emerging, from the use of computer networks for communication, entertainment and business. It is also the study of various social phenomena associated with the Internet and other new forms of network communication, such as online communities,...
, and technology.
Early life
Childhood, itinerance, and adolescence
William Ford Gibson was born in the coastal city of Conway, South CarolinaConway, South Carolina
Conway is a city in Horry County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 16,317 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Horry County and is part of the Myrtle Beach metropolitan area. It is the home of Coastal Carolina University....
, and spent most of his childhood in Wytheville, Virginia
Wytheville, Virginia
Wytheville is a town in Wythe County, Virginia, United States. The population was 8,211 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Wythe County. The town is home to a Chautauqua Festival, held the third weekend in June every year since 1985...
, a small town in the Appalachians where his parents had been born and raised. His family moved frequently during Gibson's youth owing to his father's position as manager of a large construction company. In Norfolk, Virginia
Norfolk, Virginia
Norfolk is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. With a population of 242,803 as of the 2010 Census, it is Virginia's second-largest city behind neighboring Virginia Beach....
, Gibson attended Pines Elementary School, where the teachers' lack of encouragement for him to read was a cause of dismay for his parents. While Gibson was still a young child, a little over a year into his stay at Pines Elementary, his father choked to death in a restaurant while on a business trip. His mother, unable to tell William the bad news, had someone else inform him of the death. Tom Maddox
Tom Maddox
Tom Maddox is an American science fiction writer, known for his part in the early cyberpunk movement.His first novel was Halo , published in 1991 by Tor Books. His story Snake Eyes appeared in the 1986 collection Mirrorshades, edited by Bruce Sterling.He is perhaps best known as a friend and...
has commented that Gibson "grew up in an America as disturbing and surreal as anything J. G. Ballard
J. G. Ballard
James Graham Ballard was an English novelist, short story writer, and prominent member of the New Wave movement in science fiction...
ever dreamed".
A few days after the death, Gibson's mother returned them from their home in Norfolk to Wytheville. Gibson later described Wytheville as "a place where modernity
Modernity
Modernity typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period, one marked by the move from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance...
had arrived to some extent but was deeply distrusted" and credits the beginnings of his relationship with science fiction, his "native literary culture", with the subsequent feeling of abrupt exile. At the age of 12, Gibson "wanted nothing more than to be a science fiction writer". He spent a few unproductive years at basketball-obsessed George Wythe High School, a time spent largely in his room listening to records and reading books. At 13, unbeknownst to his mother, he purchased an anthology of Beat
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
writing, thereby gaining exposure to the writings of Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
, Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...
, and William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
; the lattermost had a particularly pronounced effect, greatly altering Gibson's notions of the possibilities of science fiction literature.
A shy, ungainly teenager, Gibson grew up in a monoculture he found "highly problematic", consciously rejected religion and took refuge in reading science fiction as well as writers such as Burroughs and Henry Miller
Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...
. Becoming frustrated with his poor academic performance, Gibson's mother threatened to send him to a boarding school; to her surprise, he reacted enthusiastically. Unable to afford his preferred choice of Southern California, his then "chronically anxious and depressive
Clinical depression
Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...
" mother, who had remained in Wytheville since the death of her husband, sent him to Southern Arizona School for Boys in Tucson, Arizona. He resented the structure of the private boarding school, but was in retrospect grateful for its forcing him to engage socially. He took the SAT
SAT
The SAT Reasoning Test is a standardized test for college admissions in the United States. The SAT is owned, published, and developed by the College Board, a nonprofit organization in the United States. It was formerly developed, published, and scored by the Educational Testing Service which still...
(Scholastic Aptitude Test) exams, scoring five out of 150 in mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
and 148 out of 150 in the written section, to the consternation of his teachers.
Draft-dodging, exile, and counterculture
After his mother's death when he was eighteen, Gibson left school without graduating and became very isolated for a long time, traveling to California and Europe and immersing himself in the countercultureCounterculture
Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...
. In 1967, he elected to move to Canada in order "to avoid the Vietnam war draft". At his draft hearing, he honestly informed interviewers that his intention in life was to sample every mind-altering substance in existence. Gibson has observed that he "did literally evade the draft, as they never bothered drafting me"; after the hearing he went home and purchased a bus ticket to Toronto, and left a week or two later. In the biographical documentary No Maps for These Territories
No Maps for These Territories
No Maps for These Territories is an independent documentary film made by Mark Neale focusing on the speculative fiction author William Gibson. It features appearances by Jack Womack, Bruce Sterling, Bono, and The Edge and was released by Docurama...
(2000) Gibson said that his decision was motivated less by conscientious objection than by a desire to "sleep with hippie chicks" and indulge in hashish. He elaborated on the topic in a 2008 interview:
After weeks of nominal homelessness, Gibson was hired as the manager of Toronto's first head shop
Head shop
A head shop is a retail outlet specializing in drug paraphernalia used for consumption of cannabis, other recreational drugs, legal highs, legal party powders and New Age herbs, as well as counterculture art, magazines, music, clothing, and home decor; some head shops also sell oddities, such as...
, a retailer of drug paraphernalia. He found the city's émigré community of American draft dodgers unbearable owing to the prevalence of clinical depression, suicide and hardcore substance abuse. He appeared, during the Summer of Love
Summer of Love
The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people converged on the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, creating a cultural and political rebellion...
of 1967, in a CBC
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...
newsreel item about hippie subculture
Subculture
In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.- Definition :...
in Yorkville, Toronto
Yorkville, Toronto
Yorkville is a district in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, well known for its shopping. It is a former village, annexed by the City of Toronto. It is roughly bounded by Bloor Street to the south, Davenport Road to the north, Yonge Street to the east and Avenue Road to the west, and is considered part of...
, for which he was paid $500 – the equivalent of 20 weeks rent – which financed his later travels. Aside from a "brief, riot-torn spell" in the District of Columbia, Gibson spent the rest of the 1960s in Toronto, where he met Vancouverite Deborah Jean Thompson, with whom he subsequently traveled to Europe. Gibson has recounted that they concentrated their travels on European nations with fascist regimes and favourable exchange rates, including spending time on a Greek archipelago and in Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
in 1970, as they "couldn't afford to stay anywhere that had anything remotely like hard currency".
The couple married and settled in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1972, with Gibson looking after their first child while they lived off his wife's teaching salary. During the 1970s, Gibson made a substantial part of his living from scouring Salvation Army
Salvation Army
The Salvation Army is a Protestant Christian church known for its thrift stores and charity work. It is an international movement that currently works in over a hundred countries....
thrift stores for underpriced artifacts he would then up-market to specialist dealers. Realizing that it was easier to sustain high college grades, and thus qualify for generous student financial aid, than to work, he enrolled at the University of British Columbia
University of British Columbia
The University of British Columbia is a public research university. UBC’s two main campuses are situated in Vancouver and in Kelowna in the Okanagan Valley...
(UBC), earning "a desultory bachelor's degree in English" in 1977. Through studying English literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
, he was exposed to a wider range of fiction than he would have read otherwise; something he credits with giving him ideas inaccessible from within the culture of science fiction, including an awareness of postmodernity
Postmodernity
Postmodernity is generally used to describe the economic or cultural state or condition of society which is said to exist after modernity...
. It was at UBC that he attended his first course on science fiction, taught by Susan Wood
Susan Wood (science fiction)
Susan Joan Wood Susan Joan Wood Susan Joan Wood (August 22, 1948-November 12, 1980 was a Canadian author, critic, and science fiction fan, born in Ottawa, Ontario.Wood discovered science fiction fandom while she was studying at Carleton University in the 1960s. Wood met fellow fan Mike Glicksohn of...
, at the end of which he was encouraged to write his first short story, "Fragments of a Hologram Rose
Fragments of a Hologram Rose
"Fragments of a Hologram Rose" is a science fiction short story by William Gibson. It was Gibson's first published work, originally appearing in 1977 in Unearth 3, a short-lived science fiction collection magazine which retailed for $1.00; Gibson was paid $27 for the story...
".
Post-graduation, early writing, and the evolution of cyberpunk
After considering pursuing a master's degree on the topic of hard science fictionHard science fiction
Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific or technical detail, or on scientific accuracy, or on both. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell, Jr.'s Islands of Space in Astounding Science...
novels as fascist
Fascist (epithet)
The word fascist is sometimes used to denigrate people, institutions, or groups that would not describe themselves as ideologically fascist, and that may not fall within the formal definition of the word. The Fascist party that developed in Italy in the 1920s rigidly enforced conservative values...
literature, Gibson discontinued writing in the year that followed graduation and, as one critic put it, expanded his collection of punk records. During this period he worked at various jobs, including a three-year stint as teaching assistant on a film history course at his alma mater. Impatient at much of what he saw at a science fiction convention
Science fiction convention
Science fiction conventions are gatherings of fans of various forms of speculative fiction including science fiction and fantasy. Historically, science fiction conventions had focused primarily on literature, but the purview of many extends to such other avenues of expression as movies and...
in Vancouver in 1980 or 1981, Gibson found a kindred spirit in fellow panelist, punk musician and author John Shirley
John Shirley
John Shirley is an American fantasist, author of noir fiction, and science-fiction writer. Shirley is a prolific writer of novels and short stories, TV scripts and screenplays who has published over 30 books and 10 collections...
. The two became immediate and lifelong friends. Shirley persuaded Gibson to sell his early short stories and to take writing seriously.
Through Shirley, Gibson came into contact with science fiction authors Bruce Sterling
Bruce Sterling
Michael Bruce Sterling is an American science fiction author, best known for his novels and his work on the Mirrorshades anthology, which helped define the cyberpunk genre.-Writings:...
and Lewis Shiner
Lewis Shiner
Lewis Shiner is an American writer.Shiner began his career as a science fiction writer, identified early on with cyberpunk, and later wrote more mainstream novels, albeit often with magical realism and fantasy elements...
; reading Gibson's work, they realised that it was, as Sterling put it, "breakthrough material" and that they needed to "put down our preconceptions and pick up on this guy from Vancouver; this [was] the way forward." Gibson met Sterling at a science fiction convention in Denver, Colorado in the autumn of 1981, where he read "Burning Chrome
Burning Chrome
Burning Chrome is a collection of short stories written by William Gibson. Most of the stories take place in Gibson's Sprawl, an anonymous, shared setting for most of his cyberpunk work...
" – the first cyberspace short story – to an audience of four people, and later stated that Sterling "completely got it".
In October 1982, Gibson traveled to Austin, Texas for ArmadilloCon
ArmadilloCon
ArmadilloCon is a science fiction convention held annually in Austin, Texas, USA, since 1979. As the second longest running science fiction convention in Texas, it is sponsored by the Fandom Association of Central Texas and is known for its emphasis on literary science fiction...
, at which he appeared with Shirley, Sterling and Shiner on a panel called "Behind the Mirrorshades: A Look at Punk SF", where Shiner noted "the sense of a movement solidified". After a weekend discussing rock and roll, MTV, Japan, fashion, drugs and politics, Gibson left the cadre for Vancouver, declaring half-jokingly that "a new axis has been formed." Sterling, Shiner, Shirley and Gibson, along with Rudy Rucker
Rudy Rucker
Rudolf von Bitter Rucker is an American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author, and philosopher, and is one of the founders of the cyberpunk literary movement. The author of both fiction and non-fiction, he is best known for the novels in the Ware Tetralogy, the first two of...
, went on to form the core of the radical cyberpunk
Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...
literary movement.
Early short fiction
Gibson's early writings are generally near-future stories about the influences of cyberneticsCybernetics
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...
and cyberspace
Cyberspace
Cyberspace is the electronic medium of computer networks, in which online communication takes place.The term "cyberspace" was first used by the cyberpunk science fiction author William Gibson, though the concept was described somewhat earlier, for example in the Vernor Vinge short story "True...
(computer-simulated reality) technology on the human race. His themes of hi-tech shanty town
Shanty town
A shanty town is a slum settlement of impoverished people who live in improvised dwellings made from scrap materials: often plywood, corrugated metal and sheets of plastic...
s, recorded or broadcast stimulus (later to be developed into the "sim-stim" package featured so heavily in Neuromancer), and dystopic intermingling of technology and humanity, are already evident in his first published short story, "Fragments of a Hologram Rose" (1977). The latter thematic obsession was described by his friend and fellow author, Bruce Sterling, in the introduction of Gibson's short story collection Burning Chrome, as "Gibson's classic one-two combination of lowlife and high tech."
In the early 1980s, Gibson's stories appeared in Omni
Omni (magazine)
OMNI was a science and science fiction magazine published in the US and the UK. It contained articles on science fact and short works of science fiction...
and Universe 11, wherein his fiction developed a bleak, film noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
feel. He consciously distanced himself as far as possible from the mainstream of science fiction (towards which he felt "an aesthetic revulsion", expressed in "The Gernsback Continuum
The Gernsback Continuum
"The Gernsback Continuum" is a short story by William Gibson about a photographer who has been given the assignment of photographing old, futuristic architecture. This architecture, although largely forgotten at the time of the story, embodied for the generation that built it their concept of the...
"), to the extent that his highest goal was to become "a minor cult figure
Cult following
A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a specific area of pop culture. A film, book, band, or video game, among other things, will be said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fan base...
, a sort of lesser Ballard
J. G. Ballard
James Graham Ballard was an English novelist, short story writer, and prominent member of the New Wave movement in science fiction...
." When Sterling started to distribute the stories, he found that "people were just genuinely baffled... I mean they literally could not parse the guy's paragraphs... the imaginative tropes he was inventing were just beyond peoples' grasp."
While Larry McCaffery
Larry McCaffery
Lawrence F. "Larry" McCaffery Jr. is a literary critic, editor, and retired professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University...
has commented that these early short stories displayed flashes of Gibson's ability, science fiction critic Darko Suvin
Darko Suvin
Darko Ronald Suvin, FRSC is a Yugoslav-born academic and critic of Jewish descendance, who became a Professor at McGill University in Montreal — now emeritus...
has identified them as "undoubtedly [cyberpunk's] best works", constituting the "furthest horizon" of the genre. The themes which Gibson developed in the stories, the Sprawl
The Sprawl
In William Gibson's fiction, the Sprawl is a colloquial name for the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis , an urban sprawl environment on a massive scale, and a fictional extension of the real Northeast Megalopolis....
setting of "Burning Chrome
Burning Chrome
Burning Chrome is a collection of short stories written by William Gibson. Most of the stories take place in Gibson's Sprawl, an anonymous, shared setting for most of his cyberpunk work...
" and the character of Molly Millions
Molly Millions
Molly Millions is a recurring character in stories and novels written by William Gibson, particularly his Sprawl trilogy. She first appeared in Johnny Mnemonic, to which she makes an oblique reference in Neuromancer...
from "Johnny Mnemonic" ultimately culminated in his first novel, Neuromancer
Neuromancer
Neuromancer is a 1984 novel by William Gibson, a seminal work in the cyberpunk genre and the first winner of the science-fiction "triple crown" — the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award. It was Gibson's debut novel and the beginning of the Sprawl trilogy...
.
Neuromancer
Neuromancer was commissioned by Terry CarrTerry Carr
Terry Gene Carr was a U.S. science fiction author, editor, and teacher.Terry Carr was born in Grants Pass, Oregon...
for the third series of Ace Science Fiction Specials
Ace Science Fiction Specials
Ace Science Fiction Specials are three series of science fiction and fantasy books published by Ace Books between 1968 and 1990. Terry Carr edited the first and third series, taking the "TV special" concept and adapting it to paperback marketing...
, which was intended to exclusively feature debut novel
Debut novel
A debut novel is the first novel an author publishes. Debut novels are the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry, and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to publish in the future...
s. Given a year to complete the work, Gibson undertook the actual writing out of "blind animal terror" at the obligation to write an entire novel – a feat which he felt he was "four or five years away from". After viewing the first 20 minutes of landmark cyberpunk film Blade Runner
Blade Runner
Blade Runner is a 1982 American science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is loosely based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K...
(1982) which was released when Gibson had written a third of the novel, he "figured [Neuromancer] was sunk, done for. Everyone would assume I’d copped my visual texture from this astonishingly fine-looking film." He re-wrote the first two-thirds of the book twelve times, feared losing the reader's attention and was convinced that he would be "permanently shamed" following its publication; yet what resulted was a major imaginative leap forward for a first-time novelist.
Neuromancers release was not greeted with fanfare, but it hit a cultural nerve, quickly becoming an underground word-of-mouth hit. It became the first novel to win the "triple crown" of science fiction awards (the Nebula
Nebula Award
The Nebula Award is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America , for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction published in the United States during the previous year...
, the Hugo
Hugo Award
The Hugo Awards are given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was officially named the Science Fiction Achievement Awards...
, and Philip K. Dick Award for paperback original), eventually selling more than 6.5 million copies worldwide.
Lawrence Person in his "Notes Toward a Postcyberpunk Manifesto" (1998) identified Neuromancer as "the archetypal cyberpunk work", and in 2005, Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
included it in their list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923, opining that "[t]here is no way to overstate how radical [Neuromancer] was when it first appeared." Literary critic Larry McCaffery
Larry McCaffery
Lawrence F. "Larry" McCaffery Jr. is a literary critic, editor, and retired professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University...
described the concept of the matrix in Neuromancer as a place where "data dance with human consciousness... human memory is literalized and mechanized... multi-national information systems mutate and breed into startling new structures whose beauty and complexity are unimaginable, mystical, and above all nonhuman." Gibson later commented on himself as an author circa Neuromancer that "I'd buy him a drink, but I don't know if I'd loan him any money," and referred to the novel as "an adolescent's book". The success of Neuromancer was to effect the 35-year-old Gibson's emergence from obscurity.
The Sprawl trilogy, The Difference Engine, and the Bridge trilogy
Count Zero
Count Zero is a science fiction novel written by William Gibson, originally published 1986. It is the second volume of the Sprawl trilogy, which begins with Neuromancer and concludes with Mona Lisa Overdrive, and is a canonical example of the cyberpunk sub-genre.Count Zero was serialized by Isaac...
(1986), a character-focused work set in the Sprawl
The Sprawl
In William Gibson's fiction, the Sprawl is a colloquial name for the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis , an urban sprawl environment on a massive scale, and a fictional extension of the real Northeast Megalopolis....
alluded to in its predecessor. He next intended to write an unrelated postmodern space opera
Space opera
Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes romantic, often melodramatic adventure, set mainly or entirely in outer space, generally involving conflict between opponents possessing advanced technologies and abilities. The term has no relation to music and it is analogous to "soap...
, titled The Log of the Mustang Sally, but reneged on the contract with Arbor House
Arbor House
Arbor House was an independent publishing house founded by Donald Fine in 1969. Specialising in hard cover publications, Arbor House published works by Hortense Calisher, Ken Follett, Cynthia Freeman, Elmore Leonard and Irwin Shaw before being acquired by the Hearst Corporation in 1979 to move into...
after a falling out over the dustjacket art of their hardcover of Count Zero. Abandoning The Log of the Mustang Sally, Gibson instead wrote Mona Lisa Overdrive
Mona Lisa Overdrive
Mona Lisa Overdrive is a cyberpunk novel by William Gibson published in 1988 and the final novel of the Sprawl trilogy, following Neuromancer and Count Zero. It takes place eight years after the events of Count Zero and is set, as were its predecessors, in The Sprawl...
(1988), which in the words of Larry McCaffery "turned off the lights" on cyberpunk literature. It was a culmination of his previous two novels, set in the same universe
Fictional universe
A fictional universe is a self-consistent fictional setting with elements that differ from the real world. It may also be called an imagined, constructed or fictional realm ....
with shared characters, thereby completing the Sprawl trilogy. The trilogy solidified Gibson's reputation, with both later novels also earning Nebula and Hugo Award and Locus SF Award nominations
The Sprawl trilogy was followed by the 1990 novel The Difference Engine
The Difference Engine
The Difference Engine is an alternate history novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.It posits a Victorian Britain in which great technological and social change has occurred after entrepreneurial inventor Charles Babbage succeeded in his ambition to build a mechanical computer .The novel was...
, an alternate history
Alternate history (fiction)
Alternate history or alternative history is a genre of fiction consisting of stories that are set in worlds in which history has diverged from the actual history of the world. It can be variously seen as a sub-genre of literary fiction, science fiction, and historical fiction; different alternate...
novel Gibson wrote in collaboration with Bruce Sterling. Set in a technologically advanced Victorian era
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
Britain, the novel was a departure from the authors' cyberpunk roots. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel
Nebula Award for Best Novel
Winners of the Nebula Award for Best Novel, awarded by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. The stated year is that of publication; awards are given in the following year.- Winners and other nominees :...
in 1991 and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1992, and its success drew attention to the nascent steampunk
Steampunk
Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, and speculative fiction that came into prominence during the 1980s and early 1990s. Steampunk involves a setting where steam power is still widely used—usually Victorian era Britain or "Wild West"-era United...
literary genre of which it remains the best-known work.
Gibson's second series, the "Bridge trilogy
Bridge trilogy
The Bridge trilogy is a series of novels by William Gibson, his second after the successful Sprawl trilogy. The trilogy comprises the novels Virtual Light , Idoru, and All Tomorrow's Parties .-Setting:...
", is composed of Virtual Light
Virtual Light
Virtual Light is the first book in William Gibson's Bridge trilogy. Virtual Light is a science-fiction novel set in a postmodern, dystopian, cyberpunk future. The term 'Virtual Light' was coined by scientist Stephen Beck to describe a form of instrumentation that produces optical sensations...
(1993), a "darkly comic urban detective story", Idoru
Idoru
Idoru is the second book in William Gibson's Bridge trilogy. Idoru is a science-fiction novel set in a postmodern, dystopian, cyberpunk future...
(1996), and All Tomorrow's Parties
All Tomorrow's Parties (novel)
All Tomorrow's Parties is the final novel in William Gibson's Bridge trilogy. Like its predecessors, All Tomorrow's Parties is a speculative fiction novel set in a postmodern, dystopian, postcyberpunk future. The novel borrows its title from that of a song by Velvet Underground...
(1999). It centers on San Francisco in the near future and evinces Gibson's recurring themes of technological, physical, and spiritual transcendence in a more grounded, matter-of-fact style than his first trilogy. Salon.com
Salon.com
Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...
's Andrew Leonard notes that in the Bridge trilogy, Gibson's villains change from multinational corporations and artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
s of the Sprawl trilogy to the mass media – namely tabloid television and the cult of celebrity. Virtual Light depicts an "end-stage capitalism, in which private enterprise and the profit motive are taken to their logical conclusion". This argument on the mass media as the natural evolution of capitalism is the opening line of the major Situationist work The Society of the Spectacle
The Society of the Spectacle
The Society of the Spectacle is a work of philosophy and critical theory by Guy Debord. It was first published in 1967 in France.-Book structure:...
. Leonard's review called Idoru a "return to form" for Gibson, while critic Steven Poole
Steven Poole
-Biography:Poole studied English at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and has subsequently written for publications including The Independent, The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, The Sunday Times, and the New Statesman...
asserted that All Tomorrow's Parties marked his development from "science-fiction hotshot to wry sociologist of the near future."
Late period novels
After All Tomorrow's Parties, Gibson began to adopt a more realistRealism (arts)
Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
style of writing, with continuous narratives – "speculative fiction of the very recent past." Science fiction critic John Clute
John Clute
John Frederick Clute is a Canadian born author and critic who has lived in Britain since 1969. He has been described as "an integral part of science fiction's history."...
has interpreted this approach as Gibson's recognition that traditional science fiction is no longer possible "in a world lacking coherent 'nows' to continue from", characterizing it as "SF for the new century". Gibson's novels Pattern Recognition
Pattern Recognition (novel)
Pattern Recognition is a novel by science fiction writer William Gibson published in 2003. Set in August and September 2002, the story follows Cayce Pollard, a 32-year-old marketing consultant who has a psychological sensitivity to corporate symbols...
(2003), Spook Country
Spook Country
Spook Country is a 2007 novel by speculative fiction author William Gibson. A political thriller set in contemporary North America, it followed on from the author's previous novel, Pattern Recognition , and was succeeded in 2010 by Zero History, which featured much of its core cast of characters...
(2007) and Zero History
Zero History
Zero History is a novel by William Gibson. It concludes the informal trilogy begun by Pattern Recognition and features Hollis Henry and Milgrim from Spook Country, the middle book, as the protagonists.-Plot:...
(2010) are set in the same contemporary universe — "more or less the same one we live in now" — and put Gibson's work onto mainstream bestseller lists for the first time. As well as the setting, the novels share some of the same characters, including Hubertus Bigend
Hubertus Bigend
Hubertus Bigend is a fictional character appearing in the later novels of science fiction and literary author William Gibson. Bigend is the antihero of Gibson's Pattern Recognition , Spook Country and Zero History...
and Pamela Mainwaring, employees of the enigmatic marketing company Blue Ant.
A phenomenon peculiar to this era was the independent development of annotating
Annotation
An annotation is a note that is made while reading any form of text. This may be as simple as underlining or highlighting passages.Annotated bibliographies give descriptions about how each source is useful to an author in constructing a paper or argument...
fansites, PR-Otaku and Node Magazine
Node Magazine
Node Magazine is a literary project in the guise of a fictional magazine created to annotate the novel Spook Country by William Gibson.The project is essentially a hypertext version of the novel...
, devoted to Pattern Recognition and Spook Country respectively. These websites tracked the references and story elements in the novels through online resources such as Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
and Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
and collated the results, essentially creating hypertext
Hypertext
Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the...
versions of the books. Critic John Sutherland characterised this phenomenon as threatening "to completely overhaul the way literary criticism is conducted".
After the September 11, 2001 attacks, with about 100 pages of Pattern Recognition written, Gibson had to re-write the main character's backstory, which had been suddenly rendered implausible; he called it "the strangest experience I've ever had with a piece of fiction." He saw the attacks as a nodal point in history, "an experience out of culture", and "in some ways... the true beginning of the 21st century." He is noted as one of the first novelists to use the attacks to inform his writing. Examination of cultural changes in post-September 11 America, including a resurgent tribalism
Tribalism
The social structure of a tribe can vary greatly from case to case, but, due to the small size of tribes, it is always a relatively simple role structure, with few significant social distinctions between individuals....
and the "infantilization of society", became a prominent theme of Gibson's work. The focus of his writing nevertheless remains "at the intersection of paranoia and technology".
Collaborations, adaptations, and miscellanea
Literary collaborations
Three of the stories that later appeared in Burning Chrome were written in collaboration with other authors: "The Belonging KindThe Belonging Kind
The Belonging Kind is a science fiction short story; a collaboration between noted cyberpunk authors William Gibson and John Shirley. It was first published in the horror anthology Shadows 4 in 1981, later to be included along with several other stories in Gibson's collection Burning Chrome.It is a...
" (1981) with John Shirley
John Shirley
John Shirley is an American fantasist, author of noir fiction, and science-fiction writer. Shirley is a prolific writer of novels and short stories, TV scripts and screenplays who has published over 30 books and 10 collections...
, "Red Star, Winter Orbit
Red Star, Winter Orbit
"Red Star, Winter Orbit" is a short story written by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling in the 1980s. It was first published in Omni in July 1983, and later collected in Burning Chrome, a 1986 anthology of Gibson's early short fiction, and in Sterling's 1986 cyberpunk anthology Mirrorshades...
" (1983) with Sterling, and "Dogfight
Dogfight (short story)
"Dogfight" is a short story written by Michael Swanwick and William Gibson, and first published in Omni in July 1985.-Plot:A lonely ex-shoplifter who suffers from a neural block preventing him from returning to his hometown of Washington, D.C., finds a female friend, whose parents have set a neural...
" (1985) with Michael Swanwick
Michael Swanwick
Michael Swanwick is an American science fiction author. Based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he began publishing in the early 1980s.-Biography:...
. Gibson had previously written the foreword to Shirley's 1980 novel City Come A-walkin and the pair's collaboration continued when Gibson wrote the introduction to Shirley's short story collection Heatseeker (1989). Shirley convinced Gibson to write a story for the television series Max Headroom
Max Headroom (TV series)
Max Headroom is a British-produced American science fiction television series by Chrysalis/Lakeside Productions that aired in the United States on ABC from March 1987 to May 1988. The series was based on the Channel 4 British TV pilot Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future...
for which Shirley had written several scripts, but the network canceled the series.
Gibson and Sterling collaborated again on the short story "The Angel of Goliad" in 1990, which they soon expanded into the novel-length alternate history story The Difference Engine
The Difference Engine
The Difference Engine is an alternate history novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.It posits a Victorian Britain in which great technological and social change has occurred after entrepreneurial inventor Charles Babbage succeeded in his ambition to build a mechanical computer .The novel was...
(1990). The two were later "invited to dream in public" (Gibson) in a joint address to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences
United States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...
Convocation on Technology and Education in 1993 ("the Al Gore
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....
people"), in which they argued against the digital divide
Digital divide
The Digital Divide refers to inequalities between individuals, households, business, and geographic areas at different socioeconomic levels in access to information and communication technologies and Internet connectivity and in the knowledge and skills needed to effectively use the information...
and "appalled everyone" by proposing that all schools be put online, with education taking place over the Internet. In a 2007 interview, Gibson revealed that Sterling had an idea for "a second recursive science novel that was just a wonderful idea", but that Gibson was unable to pursue the collaboration because he was not creatively free at the time.
In 1993, Gibson contributed lyrics and featured as a guest vocalist on Yellow Magic Orchestra's Technodon
Technodon
Technodon is the seventh and final studio album to date by Yellow Magic Orchestra and released in 1993, a decade after the band's original breakup. Because the name Yellow Magic Orchestra was owned by former record label Alfa Records, the band were forced to release the album under the name YMO....
album, and wrote lyrics to the track "Dog Star Girl" for Deborah Harry's Debravation
Debravation
Debravation is the fourth solo album by Deborah Harry. Released in 1993, the album reached no. 24 in the UK. It was also the final album Harry made whilst signed to the Chrysalis label, thus ending a successful partnership that began with Blondie and had endured for over 15 years.The first single...
.
Film adaptations, screenplays, and appearances
Gibson was first solicited to work as a screenwriter after a film producer discovered a waterlogged copy of Neuromancer on a beach at a ThaiThailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
resort. His early efforts to write film scripts failed to manifest themselves as finished product; "Burning Chrome" (which was to be directed by Kathryn Bigelow
Kathryn Bigelow
Kathryn Ann Bigelow is an American film director. Her best-known films are the cult horror film Near Dark , the surfer/bank robbery action picture Point Break , the science fiction/film noir Strange Days , the historical/mystery film The Weight of Water and the war drama The Hurt Locker...
) and "Neuro-Hotel" were two attempts by the author at film adaptations that were never made. In the late 1980s he wrote an early version of Alien 3 (which he later characterized as "Tarkovskian
Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky was a Soviet and Russian filmmaker, writer, film editor, film theorist, theatre and opera director, widely regarded as one of the finest filmmakers of the 20th century....
"), few elements of which survived in the final version.
Gibson's early involvement with the film industry extended far beyond the confines of the Hollywood blockbuster system. At one point, he collaborated on a script with Kazakh director Rashid Nugmanov
Rashid Nugmanov
Rashid Nugmanov is a Kazakh film director, dissident, political activist and founder of the Kazakh New Wave cinema movement.- Film career :...
after an American producer had expressed an interest in a Soviet-American collaboration to star Russian-Korean star Victor Tsoi. Despite being occupied with writing a novel, Gibson was reluctant to abandon the "wonderfully odd project" which involved "ritualistic gang-warfare in some sort of sideways-future Leningrad
Leningrad
Leningrad is the former name of Saint Petersburg, Russia.Leningrad may also refer to:- Places :* Leningrad Oblast, a federal subject of Russia, around Saint Petersburg* Leningrad, Tajikistan, capital of Muminobod district in Khatlon Province...
" and sent Jack Womack
Jack Womack
Jack Womack is an American author of fiction and speculative fiction. He lives in New York City with his wife and daughter, and works as a publicity manager for the Orbit and Yen imprints of Hachette Book Group USA....
to Russia in his stead. Rather than producing a motion picture, a prospect that ended with Tsoi's death in a car crash, Womack's experiences in Russia ultimately culminated in his novel Let's Put the Future Behind Us
Let's Put the Future Behind Us
Let's Put the Future Behind Us is a speculative fiction novel by Jack Womack set in post-Soviet Russia and released in 1996. It chronicles the transition of bureaucratic apparatchiks into an endemically corrupt Russian quasi-capitalism in the early 1990s dominated by oligarchs, criminals and...
and informed much of the Russian content of Gibson's Pattern Recognition
Pattern Recognition (novel)
Pattern Recognition is a novel by science fiction writer William Gibson published in 2003. Set in August and September 2002, the story follows Cayce Pollard, a 32-year-old marketing consultant who has a psychological sensitivity to corporate symbols...
. A similar fate befell Gibson's collaboration with Japanese filmmaker Sogo Ishii
Sogo Ishii
', formerly is a Japanese filmmaker known for his striking visuals and sometimes outlandish subject matter.Ishii was born in Fukuoka City, Fukuoka Prefecture, and is a graduate of Fukuoka Prefectural Fukuoka High School and Nihon University College of Art....
in 1991, a film they plotted on shooting in the Walled City of Kowloon until the city was demolished in 1993.
Johnny Mnemonic (film)
Johnny Mnemonic is a 1995 cyberpunk film, loosely based on the short story "Johnny Mnemonic" by William Gibson. The title character, a man with a cybernetic brain implant designed to store information, is played by Keanu Reeves. The film portrays Gibson's dystopian view of the future with the world...
(1995) with screenplay by Gibson and starring Keanu Reeves, Dolph Lundgren and Takeshi Kitano
Takeshi Kitano
is a Japanese filmmaker, comedian, singer, actor, film editor, presenter, screenwriter, author, poet, painter, and one-time video game designer who has received critical acclaim, both in his native Japan and abroad, for his highly idiosyncratic cinematic work. The famed Japanese film critic...
, and New Rose Hotel (1998), starring Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, and Asia Argento. The former was the first time in history that a book was launched simultaneously as a film and a CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
interactive video game. Neuromancer, after a long stay in development hell
Development hell
In the jargon of the media-industry, "development hell" is a period during which a film or other project is trapped in development...
, is in the process of adaptation , Count Zero
Count Zero
Count Zero is a science fiction novel written by William Gibson, originally published 1986. It is the second volume of the Sprawl trilogy, which begins with Neuromancer and concludes with Mona Lisa Overdrive, and is a canonical example of the cyberpunk sub-genre.Count Zero was serialized by Isaac...
was at one point being developed as The Zen Differential with director Michael Mann
Michael Mann (film director)
Michael Kenneth Mann is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. For his work, he has received nominations from international organizations and juries, including those at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, Cannes and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
attached, and the third novel in the Sprawl trilogy, Mona Lisa Overdrive
Mona Lisa Overdrive
Mona Lisa Overdrive is a cyberpunk novel by William Gibson published in 1988 and the final novel of the Sprawl trilogy, following Neuromancer and Count Zero. It takes place eight years after the events of Count Zero and is set, as were its predecessors, in The Sprawl...
, has also been optioned and bought. An anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
adaptation of Idoru
Idoru
Idoru is the second book in William Gibson's Bridge trilogy. Idoru is a science-fiction novel set in a postmodern, dystopian, cyberpunk future...
was announced as in development in 2006, and Pattern Recognition was in the process of development by director Peter Weir
Peter Weir
Peter Lindsay Weir, AM is an Australian film director. After playing a leading role in the Australian New Wave cinema with his films such as Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave and Gallipoli, Weir directed a diverse group of American and international films—many of them major box office...
, although according to Gibson the latter is no longer attached to the project.
Television is another arena in which Gibson has collaborated; he co-wrote with friend Tom Maddox
Tom Maddox
Tom Maddox is an American science fiction writer, known for his part in the early cyberpunk movement.His first novel was Halo , published in 1991 by Tor Books. His story Snake Eyes appeared in the 1986 collection Mirrorshades, edited by Bruce Sterling.He is perhaps best known as a friend and...
, The X-Files episodes "Kill Switch
Kill Switch (The X-Files)
"Kill Switch" is an episode of the popular Canadian/American science fiction television series The X-Files.- Plot :The episode begins one night at a diner in Washington, D.C.. A man tries to access some files on a laptop computer, but is repeatedly denied...
" and "First Person Shooter
First Person Shooter (The X-Files)
"First Person Shooter" is the thirteenth episode of the seventh season of the science fiction television series The X-Files. It is the spiritual successor to Gibson's earlier episode "Kill Switch".-Plot summary:...
", broadcast in the U.S. on 20th Century Fox Television
20th Century Fox Television
20th Century Fox Television is the television production division of 20th Century Fox Film Corporation, and a production arm of the Fox Broadcasting Company...
in 1998 and 2000. In 1998 he contributed the introduction to the spin-off publication Art of the X-Files. Gibson made a cameo appearance in the television miniseries Wild Palms
Wild Palms
Wild Palms is a six-hour mini-series, which first aired in May 1993 on the ABC network in the United States. Written by Bruce Wagner, who was also the executive producer, Wild Palms was a sci-fi drama about the dangers of brainwashing through technology and drugs...
at the behest of creator Bruce Wagner
Bruce Wagner
Bruce Alan Wagner is an American novelist, actor, screenwriter, producer, and director based in Los Angeles known for his acerbic view of the Hollywood entertainment industry.-Personal life:...
. Director Oliver Stone
Oliver Stone
William Oliver Stone is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Stone became well known in the late 1980s and the early 1990s for directing a series of films about the Vietnam War, for which he had previously participated as an infantry soldier. His work frequently focuses on...
had borrowed heavily from Gibson's novels to make the series, and in the aftermath of its cancellation Gibson contributed an article, "Where The Holograms Go", to the Wild Palms Reader. He accepted another acting role in 2002, appearing alongside Douglas Coupland
Douglas Coupland
Douglas Coupland is a Canadian novelist. His fiction is complemented by recognized works in design and visual art arising from his early formal training. His first novel, the 1991 international bestseller Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, popularized terms such as McJob and...
in the short film Mon Amour Mon Parapluie in which the pair played philosophers. Appearances in fiction aside, Gibson was the focus of a biographical documentary by Mark Neale in 2000 called No Maps for These Territories
No Maps for These Territories
No Maps for These Territories is an independent documentary film made by Mark Neale focusing on the speculative fiction author William Gibson. It features appearances by Jack Womack, Bruce Sterling, Bono, and The Edge and was released by Docurama...
. The film follows Gibson over the course of a drive across North America discussing various aspects of his life, literary career and cultural interpretations. It features interviews with Jack Womack and Bruce Sterling, as well as recitations from Neuromancer by Bono
Bono
Paul David Hewson , most commonly known by his stage name Bono , is an Irish singer, musician, and humanitarian best known for being the main vocalist of the Dublin-based rock band U2. Bono was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, and attended Mount Temple Comprehensive School where he met his...
and The Edge
The Edge
David Howell Evans , more widely known by his stage name The Edge , is a musician best known as the guitarist, backing vocalist, and keyboardist of the Irish rock band U2. A member of the group since its inception, he has recorded 12 studio albums with the band and has released one solo record...
.
Exhibitions, poetry, and performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
pieces. In October 1989, Gibson wrote text for such a collaboration with acclaimed sculptor and future Johnny Mnemonic
Johnny Mnemonic (film)
Johnny Mnemonic is a 1995 cyberpunk film, loosely based on the short story "Johnny Mnemonic" by William Gibson. The title character, a man with a cybernetic brain implant designed to store information, is played by Keanu Reeves. The film portrays Gibson's dystopian view of the future with the world...
director Robert Longo
Robert Longo
Robert Longo is an American painter and sculptor. Longo became famous in the 1980s for his "Men in the Cities" series, which depicted sharply dressed businessmen writhing in contorted emotion.-Early life and education:...
titled Dream Jumbo: Working the Absolutes, which was displayed in Royce Hall, University of California Los Angeles. Three years later, Gibson contributed original text to "Memory Palace", a performance show featuring the theater group La Fura dels Baus
La Fura dels Baus
La Fura dels Baus is a Catalan theatrical group founded in 1979 in Barcelona, known for their urban theatre, use of unusual settings and blurring of the boundaries between audience and actor. "La Fura dels Baus" in Catalan means "vermin from the sewers"....
at Art Futura '92, Barcelona, which featured images by Karl Sims
Karl Sims
Karl Sims is a computer graphics artist and researcher, who is best known for using particle systems and artificial life in computer animation....
, Rebecca Allen
Rebecca Allen
Rebecca Allen is an international artist inspired by a variety of media to create work from 3-D computer graphics, animation, music videos, video games, performance works, artificial life systems, multisensory interfaces, interactive installations, virtual and mixed reality.- Biography :Allen's...
, Mark Pellington
Mark Pellington
-Life and career:Pellington was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He directed The Mothman Prophecies, a 2002 film starring Richard Gere dealing with mysterious deaths foretold by a strange red-eyed flying creature, Mothman, as well as Arlington Road in 1999 starring Tim Robbins and Jeff Bridges....
with music by Peter Gabriel
Peter Gabriel
Peter Brian Gabriel is an English singer, musician, and songwriter who rose to fame as the lead vocalist and flautist of the progressive rock group Genesis. After leaving Genesis, Gabriel went on to a successful solo career...
and others. It was at Art Futura '92 that Gibson met Charlie Athanas, who would later act as dramaturg and "cyberprops" designer on Steve Pickering and Charley Sherman's adaptation of "Burning Chrome" for the Chicago stage. Gibson's latest contribution was in 1997, a collaboration with critically acclaimed Vancouver-based contemporary dance company Holy Body Tattoo
Holy Body Tattoo
The Holy Body Tattoo is an award-winning Canadian contemporary dance troupe based in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was formed in 1993 by co-artistic directors and choreographers Noam Gagnon and Dana Gingras who had performed together since 1987 and also Jean-Yves Thériault composer-musician and...
and Gibson's friend and future webmaster Christopher Halcrow.
In 1990, Gibson contributed to "Visionary San Francisco", an exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...
shown from June 14 to August 26. He wrote a short story, "Skinner's Room", set in a decaying San Francisco in which the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge was closed and taken over by the homeless – a setting Gibson then detailed in the Bridge trilogy
Bridge trilogy
The Bridge trilogy is a series of novels by William Gibson, his second after the successful Sprawl trilogy. The trilogy comprises the novels Virtual Light , Idoru, and All Tomorrow's Parties .-Setting:...
. The story inspired a contribution to the exhibition by architects Ming Fung and Craig Hodgetts that envisioned a San Francisco in which the rich live in high-tech, solar-powered towers, above the decrepit city and its crumbling bridge. The architects exhibit featured Gibson on a monitor discussing the future and reading from "Skinner's Room". The New York Times hailed the exhibition as "one of the most ambitious, and admirable, efforts to address the realm of architecture and cities that any museum in the country has mounted in the last decade", despite calling Ming and Hodgetts's reaction to Gibson's contribution "a powerful, but sad and not a little cynical, work". A slightly different version of the short story was featured a year later in Omni
Omni (magazine)
OMNI was a science and science fiction magazine published in the US and the UK. It contained articles on science fact and short works of science fiction...
.
A particularly well-received work by Gibson was Agrippa (a book of the dead)
Agrippa (A Book of the Dead)
Agrippa is a work of art created by speculative fiction novelist William Gibson, artist Dennis Ashbaugh and publisher Kevin Begos Jr. in 1992. The work consists of a 300-line semi-autobiographical electronic poem by Gibson, embedded in an artist's book by Ashbaugh. Gibson's text focused on the...
(1992), a 300-line semi-autobiographical electronic poem that was his contribution to a collaborative project with artist Dennis Ashbaugh
Dennis Ashbaugh
Dennis John Ashbaugh is an American painter and artist from New York. He is one of the first artists to employ DNA marking patterns in paintings, in his 1992 work Designer Gene. Ashbaugh's use of light and colour in his large-scale paintings of autoradiographs have drawn comparison with Mark Rothko...
and publisher Kevin Begos, Jr. Gibson's text focused on the ethereal nature of memories (the title refers to a photo album) and was originally published on a 3.5" floppy disk
Floppy disk
A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...
embedded in the back of an artist's book containing etchings by Ashbaugh (intended to fade from view once the book was opened and exposed to light — they never did, however). Gibson commented that Ashbaugh's design "eventually included a supposedly self-devouring floppy-disk intended to display the text only once, then eat itself." Contrary to numerous colorful reports, the diskettes were never actually "hacked
Hacker (computer security)
In computer security and everyday language, a hacker is someone who breaks into computers and computer networks. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, including profit, protest, or because of the challenge...
"; instead the poem was manually transcribed from a surreptitious videotape of a public showing in Manhattan in December 1992, and released on the MindVox
MindVox
MindVox was a famed early Internet Service Provider in New York City. A controversial sometime media darling — the service was referred to as "the Hells Angels of Cyberspace" — it was founded in 1991 by Bruce Fancher and Patrick Kroupa , two former members of the legendary Legion of Doom hacker...
bulletin board the next day; this is the text that circulated widely on the Internet.
Essays and short-form nonfiction
Gibson is a sporadic contributor of non-fiction articles to newspapers and journals. He has been a sporadic contributor of longer-form articles to WiredWired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
and of op-ed
Op-ed
An op-ed, abbreviated from opposite the editorial page , is a newspaper article that expresses the opinions of a named writer who is usually unaffiliated with the newspaper's editorial board...
s to The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, and has written for The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
, Addicted to Noise
Addicted to Noise
Addicted to Noise was an online music magazine in the early days of the World Wide Web. Founded by ex-Rolling Stone editor and writer Michael Goldberg and online music pioneer Jon Luini, it published its first issue in January 1995 and was the first online magazine to include audio samples along...
, New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
, and Details Magazine. His first major piece of nonfiction, the article "Disneyland with the Death Penalty
Disneyland with the Death Penalty
"Disneyland with the Death Penalty" is an article about Singapore written by William Gibson, his first major piece of non-fiction, first published as the cover story for Wired magazine's September/October 1993 issue ....
" concerning the city-state of Singapore, resulted in Wired being banned from the country and attracted a spirited critical response. He commenced writing a blog in January 2003, providing voyeuristic insights into his reaction to Pattern Recognition
Pattern Recognition (novel)
Pattern Recognition is a novel by science fiction writer William Gibson published in 2003. Set in August and September 2002, the story follows Cayce Pollard, a 32-year-old marketing consultant who has a psychological sensitivity to corporate symbols...
, but abated in September of the same year owing to concerns that it might negatively affect his creative process. Gibson re-commenced blogging in October 2004, and during the process of writing Spook Country
Spook Country
Spook Country is a 2007 novel by speculative fiction author William Gibson. A political thriller set in contemporary North America, it followed on from the author's previous novel, Pattern Recognition , and was succeeded in 2010 by Zero History, which featured much of its core cast of characters...
– and to a lesser extent Zero History
Zero History
Zero History is a novel by William Gibson. It concludes the informal trilogy begun by Pattern Recognition and features Hollis Henry and Milgrim from Spook Country, the middle book, as the protagonists.-Plot:...
– frequently posted short nonsequential excerpts from the novel to the blog. The blog was largely discontinued by July 2009, after the writer had undertaken prolific microblogging on Twitter under the nom de plume "GreatDismal".
Influence and recognition
Steven Poole
-Biography:Poole studied English at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and has subsequently written for publications including The Independent, The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, The Sunday Times, and the New Statesman...
of The Guardian in 1999 as "probably the most important novelist of the past two decades" in terms of influence, Gibson first achieved critical recognition with his debut novel
Debut novel
A debut novel is the first novel an author publishes. Debut novels are the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry, and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to publish in the future...
, Neuromancer
Neuromancer
Neuromancer is a 1984 novel by William Gibson, a seminal work in the cyberpunk genre and the first winner of the science-fiction "triple crown" — the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award. It was Gibson's debut novel and the beginning of the Sprawl trilogy...
. The novel won three major science fiction awards (the Nebula Award
Nebula Award
The Nebula Award is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America , for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction published in the United States during the previous year...
, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award
Hugo Award
The Hugo Awards are given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was officially named the Science Fiction Achievement Awards...
), an unprecedented achievement described by the Mail & Guardian
Mail & Guardian
The Mail & Guardian is a South African weekly newspaper, published by M&G Media in Johannesburg, South Africa, with a strong focus on politics, government, the environment, civil society and business.- The Mail & Guardian newspaper :...
as "the sci-fi writer's version of winning the Goncourt
Prix Goncourt
The Prix Goncourt is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year"...
, Booker
Man Booker Prize
The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and...
and Pulitzer prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
s in the same year". Neuromancer gained unprecedented critical and popular attention outside science fiction, as an "evocation of life in the late 1980s", although The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
noted that "it took the New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
10 years" to mention the novel.
Gibson's work has received international attention from an audience that was not limited to science fiction aficionados as, in the words of Laura Miller, "readers found startlingly prophetic reflections of contemporary life in [its] fantastic and often outright paranoid scenarios." It is often situated by critics within the context of postindustrialism as, according to academic David Brande, a construction of "a mirror of existing large-scale techno-social relations", and as a narrative version of postmodern consumer culture. It is praised by critics for its depictions of late capitalism
Late capitalism
"Late capitalism" is a term used by neo-Marxists to refer to capitalism from about 1945 onwards, with the implication that it is a historically limited stage rather than an eternal feature of all future human society. Postwar German sociologists needed a term to describe contemporary society...
and its "rewriting of subjectivity, human consciousness and behaviour made newly problematic by technology." Tatiani Rapatzikou, writing in The Literary Encyclopedia
The Literary Encyclopedia
The Literary Encyclopedia is an online reference work first published in October 2000 which, as of May 2008, offers freely available content together with full content and services for subscribing members. Articles are written by "nearly 2000 named scholars, most of whom are current university...
, identifies Gibson as "one of North America's most highly acclaimed science fiction writers".
Cultural significance
In his early short fiction, Gibson is credited by Rapatzikou in The Literary Encyclopedia with effectively "renovating" science fiction, a genre at that time considered widely "insignificant", influencing by means of the postmodern aesthetic of his writing the development of new perspectives in science fiction studies
Science fiction studies
This article is about the field of science fiction studies. For the journal of the same title, please see Science Fiction Studies.Science fiction studies is the common name for the academic discipline that studies and researches the history, culture, and works of science fiction and, more broadly,...
. In the words of filmmaker Marianne Trench, Gibson's visions "struck sparks in the real world" and "determined the way people thought and talked" to an extent unprecedented in science fiction literature. The publication of Neuromancer (1984) hit a cultural nerve, causing Larry McCaffery
Larry McCaffery
Lawrence F. "Larry" McCaffery Jr. is a literary critic, editor, and retired professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University...
to credit Gibson with virtually launching the cyberpunk
Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...
movement, as "the one major writer who is original and gifted to make the whole movement seem original and gifted." Aside from their central importance to cyberpunk and steampunk
Steampunk
Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, and speculative fiction that came into prominence during the 1980s and early 1990s. Steampunk involves a setting where steam power is still widely used—usually Victorian era Britain or "Wild West"-era United...
fiction, Gibson's fictional works have been hailed by space historian Dwayne A. Day as some of the best examples of space-based
Outer space
Outer space is the void that exists between celestial bodies, including the Earth. It is not completely empty, but consists of a hard vacuum containing a low density of particles: predominantly a plasma of hydrogen and helium, as well as electromagnetic radiation, magnetic fields, and neutrinos....
science fiction (or "solar sci-fi"), and "probably the only ones that rise above mere escapism to be truly thought-provoking".
Slacker
The term "slacker" is used to refer to a person who habitually avoids work. Slackers may be regarded as belonging to an antimaterialistic counterculture, though in some cases their behavior may be due to other causes ....
and hacker
Hacker culture
A hacker is a member of the computer programmer subculture originated in the 1960s in the United States academia, in particular around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 's Tech Model Railroad Club and MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory...
generation as a kind of road map".
Through his novels, such terms as cyberspace
Cyberspace
Cyberspace is the electronic medium of computer networks, in which online communication takes place.The term "cyberspace" was first used by the cyberpunk science fiction author William Gibson, though the concept was described somewhat earlier, for example in the Vernor Vinge short story "True...
, netsurfing, ICE
Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics
Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics is a term used in cyberpunk literature to refer to security programs which protect computerized data from being accessed by hackers.-Origin of term:...
, jacking in, and neural implants entered popular usage, as did concepts such as net consciousness, virtual interaction and "the matrix". In "Burning Chrome
Burning Chrome
Burning Chrome is a collection of short stories written by William Gibson. Most of the stories take place in Gibson's Sprawl, an anonymous, shared setting for most of his cyberpunk work...
" (1982), he coined the term cyberspace, referring to the "mass consensual hallucination
Hallucination
A hallucination, in the broadest sense of the word, is a perception in the absence of a stimulus. In a stricter sense, hallucinations are defined as perceptions in a conscious and awake state in the absence of external stimuli which have qualities of real perception, in that they are vivid,...
" of computer network
Computer network
A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information....
s. Through its use in Neuromancer, the term gained such recognition that it became the de facto term for the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
during the 1990s. Artist Dike Blair
Dike Blair
Dike Blair is an American artist.He graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with an M.F.A., in 1977.He lives in New York City.-Exhibitions:*2010 Gagosian Gallery, New York...
has commented that Gibson's "terse descriptive phrases capture the moods which surround technologies, rather than their engineering."
Gibson's work has influenced several popular musicians: references to his fiction appear in the music of Stuart Hamm
Stuart Hamm
Stuart "Stu" Hamm is an American bass guitar player, known for his session and live work with numerous artists as well for his unconventional playing style and solo recordings.-Beginning career:...
, Billy Idol
Billy Idol
William Michael Albert Broad , better known by his stage name Billy Idol, is an English rock musician. A member of the Bromley Contingent of Sex Pistols fans, Idol first achieved fame in the punk rock era as a member of the band Generation X...
, Warren Zevon
Warren Zevon
Warren William Zevon was an American rock singer-songwriter and musician noted for including his sometimes sardonic opinions of life in his musical lyrics, composing songs that were sometimes humorous and often had political or historical themes.Zevon's work has often been praised by well-known...
, Deltron 3030
Deltron 3030
Deltron 3030 is an alternative hip hop supergroup composed of producer Dan the Automator, rapper Del the Funky Homosapien and DJ Kid Koala...
, Straylight Run
Straylight Run
Straylight Run was an indie rock band based in Baldwin, New York. Two of the members, Nolan and Cooper, had been members of Taking Back Sunday and have now rejoined that band. Their final releases are the EPs About Time and Un Mas Dos, preceded by the full-length album entitled The Needles The...
(whose name is derived from a sequence in Neuromancer
Neuromancer
Neuromancer is a 1984 novel by William Gibson, a seminal work in the cyberpunk genre and the first winner of the science-fiction "triple crown" — the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award. It was Gibson's debut novel and the beginning of the Sprawl trilogy...
) and Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth is an American alternative rock band from New York City, formed in 1981. The current lineup consists of Thurston Moore , Kim Gordon , Lee Ranaldo , Steve Shelley , and Mark Ibold .In their early career, Sonic Youth was associated with the No Wave art and music scene in New York City...
. U2
U2
U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin. Formed in 1976, the group consists of Bono , The Edge , Adam Clayton , and Larry Mullen, Jr. . U2's early sound was rooted in post-punk but eventually grew to incorporate influences from many genres of popular music...
's Zooropa
Zooropa
Zooropa Based on the pronunciations of "zoo" and "Europa". is the eighth studio album by rock band U2. Produced by Flood, Brian Eno, and The Edge, it was released on 5 July 1993 on Island Records. Inspired by the band's experiences on the Zoo TV Tour, Zooropa expanded on many of the tour's themes...
album was heavily influenced by Neuromancer, and the band at one point planned to scroll the text of Neuromancer above them on a concert tour, although this did not end up happening. Members of the band did, however, provide background music for the audiobook version of Neuromancer as well as appearing in No Maps for These Territories, a biographical documentary of Gibson. He returned the favour by writing an article about the band's Vertigo Tour
Vertigo Tour
The Vertigo Tour was a worldwide concert tour by the Irish rock band U2. Launched in support of the group's 2004 album How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, the band visited arenas and stadiums from 2005 through 2006. The Vertigo Tour consisted of five legs that alternated between indoor arena shows in...
for Wired
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
in August 2005. The band Zeromancer
Zeromancer
Zeromancer is a Norwegian industrial rock band formed in 1999 by members of the band Seigmen. The current lineup is Alex Møklebust , Kim Ljung , Noralf Ronthi Lorry Kristiansen and Dan Heide...
take their name from Neuromancer.
The film The Matrix
The Matrix
The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction-action film written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, and Hugo Weaving...
(1999) drew inspiration for its title, characters and story elements from the Sprawl trilogy. The characters of Neo
Neo (The Matrix)
Thomas A. Anderson is a fictional character and the main protagonist in The Matrix franchise, as well as having a cameo in The Animatrix short film, Kid's Story. He was portrayed by Keanu Reeves in The Matrix Trilogy and The Animatrix. Andrew Bowen provided Neo's voice in The Matrix: Path of Neo...
and Trinity
Trinity (The Matrix)
Trinity is a fictional character and Neo's love interest in The Matrix universe, played by Carrie-Anne Moss in the films. In the gameplay segments of Path of Neo, she is voiced by Jennifer Hale...
in The Matrix are similar to Bobby Newmark (Count Zero
Count Zero
Count Zero is a science fiction novel written by William Gibson, originally published 1986. It is the second volume of the Sprawl trilogy, which begins with Neuromancer and concludes with Mona Lisa Overdrive, and is a canonical example of the cyberpunk sub-genre.Count Zero was serialized by Isaac...
) and Molly
Molly Millions
Molly Millions is a recurring character in stories and novels written by William Gibson, particularly his Sprawl trilogy. She first appeared in Johnny Mnemonic, to which she makes an oblique reference in Neuromancer...
("Johnny Mnemonic", Neuromancer
Neuromancer
Neuromancer is a 1984 novel by William Gibson, a seminal work in the cyberpunk genre and the first winner of the science-fiction "triple crown" — the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award. It was Gibson's debut novel and the beginning of the Sprawl trilogy...
). Like Turner, protagonist of Gibson's Count Zero, characters in The Matrix download instructions (to fly a helicopter and to "know kung fu", respectively) directly into their heads, and both Neuromancer and The Matrix feature artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
s which strive to free themselves from human control. Critics have identified marked similarities between Neuromancer and the film's cinematography and tone. In spite of his initial reticence about seeing the film on its release, Gibson later described it as "arguably the ultimate 'cyberpunk' artifact." In 2008 he received honorary doctorates from Simon Fraser University
Simon Fraser University
Simon Fraser University is a Canadian public research university in British Columbia with its main campus on Burnaby Mountain in Burnaby, and satellite campuses in Vancouver and Surrey. The main campus in Burnaby, located from downtown Vancouver, was established in 1965 and has more than 34,000...
and Coastal Carolina University
Coastal Carolina University
Coastal Carolina University is an independent, state-supported, liberal arts university in Conway, South Carolina, USA, located eight miles west of Myrtle Beach. Founded in 1954, Coastal became an independent university in 1993. The University enrolls approximately 8,300 students on its campus...
,
and was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame by close friend and collaborator Jack Womack.
Visionary influence and prescience
In Neuromancer, Gibson first used the term "matrix" to refer to the visualised Internet, two years after the nascent Internet was formed in the early 1980s from the computer networks of the 1970s. Gibson thereby imagined a worldwide communications networkTelecommunications network
A telecommunications network is a collection of terminals, links and nodes which connect together to enable telecommunication between users of the terminals. Networks may use circuit switching or message switching. Each terminal in the network must have a unique address so messages or connections...
years before the origin of the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
, although related notions had previously been imagined by others, including science fiction writers. At the time he wrote "Burning Chrome
Burning Chrome
Burning Chrome is a collection of short stories written by William Gibson. Most of the stories take place in Gibson's Sprawl, an anonymous, shared setting for most of his cyberpunk work...
", Gibson "had a hunch that [the Internet] would change things, in the same way that the ubiquity of the automobile changed things." In 1995, he identified the advent, evolution and growth of the Internet as "one of the most fascinating and unprecedented human achievements of the century", a new kind of civilization that is – in terms of significance — on a par with the birth of cities, and in 2000 predicted it would lead to the death of the nation state.
Observers contend that Gibson's influence on the development of the Web reached beyond prediction; he is widely credited with creating an iconography
Iconography
Iconography is the branch of art history which studies the identification, description, and the interpretation of the content of images. The word iconography literally means "image writing", and comes from the Greek "image" and "to write". A secondary meaning is the painting of icons in the...
for the information age
Information Age
The Information Age, also commonly known as the Computer Age or Digital Age, is an idea that the current age will be characterized by the ability of individuals to transfer information freely, and to have instant access to knowledge that would have been difficult or impossible to find previously...
, long before the embrace of the Internet by the mainstream. Gibson introduced, in Neuromancer
Neuromancer
Neuromancer is a 1984 novel by William Gibson, a seminal work in the cyberpunk genre and the first winner of the science-fiction "triple crown" — the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award. It was Gibson's debut novel and the beginning of the Sprawl trilogy...
, the notion of the "meatpuppet", and is credited with inventing—conceptually rather than participatorally—the phenomenon of virtual sex
Virtual sex
Virtual sex is a sexual act where two or more people gather together via some form of communications equipment to arouse each other by transmitting sexually explicit messages...
. His influence on early pioneers of desktop environment
Desktop environment
In graphical computing, a desktop environment commonly refers to a style of graphical user interface derived from the desktop metaphor that is seen on most modern personal computers. These GUIs help the user in easily accessing, configuring, and modifying many important and frequently accessed...
digital art has been acknowledged, and he holds an honorary doctorate from Parsons The New School for Design
Parsons The New School for Design
Parsons The New School For Design, known colloquially as Parsons, is the art and design college of The New School university. It is located in New York City's Greenwich Village, and has produced artists and designers such as Marc Jacobs, Dean and Dan Caten, Norman Rockwell, Donna Karan, Jane...
. Steven Poole
Steven Poole
-Biography:Poole studied English at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and has subsequently written for publications including The Independent, The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, The Sunday Times, and the New Statesman...
claims that in writing the Sprawl trilogy Gibson laid the "conceptual foundations for the explosive real-world growth of virtual environments in video games and the Web". In his afterword to the 2000 re-issue of Neuromancer, fellow author Jack Womack
Jack Womack
Jack Womack is an American author of fiction and speculative fiction. He lives in New York City with his wife and daughter, and works as a publicity manager for the Orbit and Yen imprints of Hachette Book Group USA....
suggests that Gibson's vision of cyberspace may have inspired the way in which the Internet (and the Web particularly) developed, following the publication of Neuromancer in 1984, asking "what if the act of writing it down, in fact, brought it about?"
In his Sprawl and Bridge
Bridge trilogy
The Bridge trilogy is a series of novels by William Gibson, his second after the successful Sprawl trilogy. The trilogy comprises the novels Virtual Light , Idoru, and All Tomorrow's Parties .-Setting:...
trilogies, Gibson is credited with being one of the few observers to explore the portents of the information age for notions of the sociospatial structuring of cities. Not all responses to Gibson's visions have been positive, however; virtual reality pioneer Mark Pesce
Mark Pesce
- Biography :September 1980, Pesce attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology , for a Bachelor of Science degree, but left in June 1982 to pursue opportunities in the newly emerging high-technology industry. He worked as an Engineer for the next few years, developing prototype firmware and...
, though acknowledging their heavy influence on him and that "no other writer had so eloquently and emotionally effected the direction of the hacker community," dismissed them as "adolescent fantasies of violence and disembodiment." In Pattern Recognition
Pattern recognition
In machine learning, pattern recognition is the assignment of some sort of output value to a given input value , according to some specific algorithm. An example of pattern recognition is classification, which attempts to assign each input value to one of a given set of classes...
, the plot revolves around snippets of film footage posted anonymously to various locations on the Internet. Characters in the novel speculate about the filmmaker's identity, motives, methods and inspirations on several websites, anticipating the 2006 Lonelygirl15
Lonelygirl15
lonelygirl15 was an interactive web-based video series which began in June 2006 and ran through to August 1, 2008. Developed under the working title The Children of Anchor Cove, the show gained worldwide media attention when it was outed as fictional in September 2006.-Overview:lonelygirl15...
internet phenomenon. However, Gibson later disputed the notion that the creators of Lonelygirl15 drew influence from him. Another phenomenon anticipated by Gibson is the rise of reality television
Reality television
Reality television is a genre of television programming that presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and usually features ordinary people instead of professional actors, sometimes in a contest or other situation where a prize is awarded...
, for example in Virtual Light
Virtual Light
Virtual Light is the first book in William Gibson's Bridge trilogy. Virtual Light is a science-fiction novel set in a postmodern, dystopian, cyberpunk future. The term 'Virtual Light' was coined by scientist Stephen Beck to describe a form of instrumentation that produces optical sensations...
, which featured a satirical extrapolated version of COPS
COPS (TV series)
Cops is an American documentary/reality television series that follows police officers, constables, and sheriff's deputies during patrols and other police activities...
.
For his part, Gibson rejects any notion of prophecy, never having had a special relationship with computers; until 1996 he had neither an email address nor a modem
Modem
A modem is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data...
, a lack he explained at the time to have been motivated by a desire to avoid correspondence that would distract him from writing. His first exposure to a website came while writing Idoru
Idoru
Idoru is the second book in William Gibson's Bridge trilogy. Idoru is a science-fiction novel set in a postmodern, dystopian, cyberpunk future...
when he was persuaded to let a web developer, Chris Halcrow, build one for him. An anecdote often recited in cybercultural enclaves and English departments holds that Neuromancer was written on a manual typewriter
Typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
; the author has confirmed that the novel was written on a 1927 model of an olive-green Hermes portable typewriter, which looked to him as "the kind of thing Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
would have used in the field". In 2007, he said:
Selected bibliography
Novels- Sprawl trilogy:
- NeuromancerNeuromancerNeuromancer is a 1984 novel by William Gibson, a seminal work in the cyberpunk genre and the first winner of the science-fiction "triple crown" — the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award. It was Gibson's debut novel and the beginning of the Sprawl trilogy...
(1984) - Count ZeroCount ZeroCount Zero is a science fiction novel written by William Gibson, originally published 1986. It is the second volume of the Sprawl trilogy, which begins with Neuromancer and concludes with Mona Lisa Overdrive, and is a canonical example of the cyberpunk sub-genre.Count Zero was serialized by Isaac...
(1986) - Mona Lisa OverdriveMona Lisa OverdriveMona Lisa Overdrive is a cyberpunk novel by William Gibson published in 1988 and the final novel of the Sprawl trilogy, following Neuromancer and Count Zero. It takes place eight years after the events of Count Zero and is set, as were its predecessors, in The Sprawl...
(1988)
- Neuromancer
- The Difference EngineThe Difference EngineThe Difference Engine is an alternate history novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.It posits a Victorian Britain in which great technological and social change has occurred after entrepreneurial inventor Charles Babbage succeeded in his ambition to build a mechanical computer .The novel was...
(1990; with Bruce SterlingBruce SterlingMichael Bruce Sterling is an American science fiction author, best known for his novels and his work on the Mirrorshades anthology, which helped define the cyberpunk genre.-Writings:...
) - Bridge trilogyBridge trilogyThe Bridge trilogy is a series of novels by William Gibson, his second after the successful Sprawl trilogy. The trilogy comprises the novels Virtual Light , Idoru, and All Tomorrow's Parties .-Setting:...
:- Virtual LightVirtual LightVirtual Light is the first book in William Gibson's Bridge trilogy. Virtual Light is a science-fiction novel set in a postmodern, dystopian, cyberpunk future. The term 'Virtual Light' was coined by scientist Stephen Beck to describe a form of instrumentation that produces optical sensations...
(1993) - IdoruIdoruIdoru is the second book in William Gibson's Bridge trilogy. Idoru is a science-fiction novel set in a postmodern, dystopian, cyberpunk future...
(1996) - All Tomorrow's PartiesAll Tomorrow's Parties (novel)All Tomorrow's Parties is the final novel in William Gibson's Bridge trilogy. Like its predecessors, All Tomorrow's Parties is a speculative fiction novel set in a postmodern, dystopian, postcyberpunk future. The novel borrows its title from that of a song by Velvet Underground...
(1999)
- Virtual Light
- Blue Ant Trilogy:
- Pattern RecognitionPattern Recognition (novel)Pattern Recognition is a novel by science fiction writer William Gibson published in 2003. Set in August and September 2002, the story follows Cayce Pollard, a 32-year-old marketing consultant who has a psychological sensitivity to corporate symbols...
(2003) - Spook CountrySpook CountrySpook Country is a 2007 novel by speculative fiction author William Gibson. A political thriller set in contemporary North America, it followed on from the author's previous novel, Pattern Recognition , and was succeeded in 2010 by Zero History, which featured much of its core cast of characters...
(2007) - Zero HistoryZero HistoryZero History is a novel by William Gibson. It concludes the informal trilogy begun by Pattern Recognition and features Hollis Henry and Milgrim from Spook Country, the middle book, as the protagonists.-Plot:...
(2010)
- Pattern Recognition
Short stories
- Burning Chrome (1986, preface by Bruce Sterling), collects Gibson's early short fiction, listed by original publication date:
- "Fragments of a Hologram RoseFragments of a Hologram Rose"Fragments of a Hologram Rose" is a science fiction short story by William Gibson. It was Gibson's first published work, originally appearing in 1977 in Unearth 3, a short-lived science fiction collection magazine which retailed for $1.00; Gibson was paid $27 for the story...
" (1977, UnEarth 3) - "Johnny Mnemonic" (1981, OmniOmni (magazine)OMNI was a science and science fiction magazine published in the US and the UK. It contained articles on science fact and short works of science fiction...
) - "The Gernsback ContinuumThe Gernsback Continuum"The Gernsback Continuum" is a short story by William Gibson about a photographer who has been given the assignment of photographing old, futuristic architecture. This architecture, although largely forgotten at the time of the story, embodied for the generation that built it their concept of the...
" (1981, Universe 11) - "HinterlandsHinterlands (short story)"Hinterlands" is a science fiction short story written by William Gibson in 1981 and published in his short fiction collection Burning Chrome in 1986. The story is a fable about the 'cargo cult' mentality...
" (1981, Omni) - "New Rose HotelNew Rose Hotel"New Rose Hotel" is a short story by William Gibson, first published in 1984 in Omni and later included in his 1986 collection Burning Chrome.-Plot:...
" (1981, Omni) - "The Belonging KindThe Belonging KindThe Belonging Kind is a science fiction short story; a collaboration between noted cyberpunk authors William Gibson and John Shirley. It was first published in the horror anthology Shadows 4 in 1981, later to be included along with several other stories in Gibson's collection Burning Chrome.It is a...
", with John ShirleyJohn ShirleyJohn Shirley is an American fantasist, author of noir fiction, and science-fiction writer. Shirley is a prolific writer of novels and short stories, TV scripts and screenplays who has published over 30 books and 10 collections...
(1981, Shadows 4) - "Burning ChromeBurning ChromeBurning Chrome is a collection of short stories written by William Gibson. Most of the stories take place in Gibson's Sprawl, an anonymous, shared setting for most of his cyberpunk work...
" (1982, Omni) - "Red Star, Winter OrbitRed Star, Winter Orbit"Red Star, Winter Orbit" is a short story written by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling in the 1980s. It was first published in Omni in July 1983, and later collected in Burning Chrome, a 1986 anthology of Gibson's early short fiction, and in Sterling's 1986 cyberpunk anthology Mirrorshades...
", with Bruce Sterling (1983, Omni) - "The Winter MarketThe Winter Market-External links:* at the William Gibson Aleph...
" (Nov 1985, Vancouver) - "DogfightDogfight (short story)"Dogfight" is a short story written by Michael Swanwick and William Gibson, and first published in Omni in July 1985.-Plot:A lonely ex-shoplifter who suffers from a neural block preventing him from returning to his hometown of Washington, D.C., finds a female friend, whose parents have set a neural...
", with Michael SwanwickMichael SwanwickMichael Swanwick is an American science fiction author. Based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he began publishing in the early 1980s.-Biography:...
(1985, Omni)
- "Fragments of a Hologram Rose
- "Skinner's Room" (Nov 1991, Omni)
Nonfiction
- Agrippa (a book of the dead)Agrippa (A Book of the Dead)Agrippa is a work of art created by speculative fiction novelist William Gibson, artist Dennis Ashbaugh and publisher Kevin Begos Jr. in 1992. The work consists of a 300-line semi-autobiographical electronic poem by Gibson, embedded in an artist's book by Ashbaugh. Gibson's text focused on the...
(1992) – a poem and artist's book
- "Disneyland with the Death PenaltyDisneyland with the Death Penalty"Disneyland with the Death Penalty" is an article about Singapore written by William Gibson, his first major piece of non-fiction, first published as the cover story for Wired magazine's September/October 1993 issue ....
" – a 1993 WiredWired (magazine)Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
article
Footnotes
I. The New York Times MagazineThe New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine is a Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is host to feature articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors...
and Gibson himself report his age at the time of his father's death to be six years old, while Gibson scholar Tatiani Rapatzikou claims in The Literary Encyclopedia
The Literary Encyclopedia
The Literary Encyclopedia is an online reference work first published in October 2000 which, as of May 2008, offers freely available content together with full content and services for subscribing members. Articles are written by "nearly 2000 named scholars, most of whom are current university...
that he was eight years old.
II. Several track names on Hamm's Kings of Sleep
Kings of Sleep
Kings of Sleep is the second solo album released by bassist Stuart Hamm. It was released on June 19, 1989 on Relativity Records.The title of the album and many of the songs were inspired by the novels and short stories of William Gibson, including the Neuromancer , Count Zero Kings of Sleep is the...
album ("Black Ice
Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics
Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics is a term used in cyberpunk literature to refer to security programs which protect computerized data from being accessed by hackers.-Origin of term:...
", "Count Zero
Count Zero
Count Zero is a science fiction novel written by William Gibson, originally published 1986. It is the second volume of the Sprawl trilogy, which begins with Neuromancer and concludes with Mona Lisa Overdrive, and is a canonical example of the cyberpunk sub-genre.Count Zero was serialized by Isaac...
", "Kings of Sleep
The Winter Market
-External links:* at the William Gibson Aleph...
") reference Gibson's work.
III. Idol released an album in 1993 titled Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk (album)
Cyberpunk is a concept album by English rock musician Billy Idol, released in 1993 by Chrysalis Records. Inspired by his personal interest in technology and his first attempts to use computers in the creation of his music, Idol based the album on the cyberdelic subculture of the late 80s and early...
, which featured a track named Neuromancer. Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau is an American essayist, music journalist, and self-proclaimed "Dean of American Rock Critics".One of the earliest professional rock critics, Christgau is known for his terse capsule reviews, published since 1969 in his Consumer Guide columns...
excoriated Idol's treatment of cyberpunk
Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...
, and Gibson later stated that Idol had "turned it into something very silly."
IV. Zevon's 1989 album Transverse City
Transverse City
Transverse City is an album by American singer-songwriter Warren Zevon, released in 1989.-Track listing:All tracks composed by Warren Zevon, except where indicated.#"Transverse City" – 4:19#"Run Straight Down" – 4:05...
was inspired by Gibson's fiction.
V. Gibson later successfully resisted attempts by Autodesk
Autodesk
Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational corporation that focuses on 3D design software for use in the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media and entertainment industries. The company was founded in 1982 by John Walker, a coauthor of the first versions of the company's...
to copyright the word for their abortive foray into virtual reality
Virtual reality
Virtual reality , also known as virtuality, is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds...
.
VI. Both the Internet with its dramatic social effects and the cyberpunk
Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...
genre itself were also anticipated in John Brunner
John Brunner (novelist)
John Kilian Houston Brunner was a prolific British author of science fiction novels and stories. His 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar, about an overpopulated world, won the 1968 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel. It also won the BSFA award the same year...
's 1975 novel The Shockwave Rider
The Shockwave Rider
The Shockwave Rider is a science fiction novel by John Brunner, originally published in 1975. It is notable for its hero's use of computer hacking skills to escape pursuit in a dystopian future, and for the coining of the word "worm" to describe a program that propagates itself through a computer...
.
VII. The idea of a globally interconnected set of computers through which everyone could quickly access data and programs from any site was first described in 1962 in a series of memos on the "Galactic Computer Network" by J.C.R. Licklider of DARPA.
VIII. In the "Author's Afterword" to Mona Lisa Overdrive, dated July 16, 1992, Gibson wrote the following:
External links
Official pages- WilliamGibsonBooks.com – personal website
Reference material
- Bibliography from the Centre for Language and Literature, Athabasca UniversityAthabasca UniversityAthabasca University is a Canadian university in Athabasca, Alberta. It is an accredited research institution which also offers distance education courses and programs. Courses are offered primarily in English with some French offerings. Each year, 32,000 students attend the university. It offers...
(including bibliography of selected interviews) - William Gibson aleph – an extensive site dedicated to the author and his works