|
Skinner's Room
"Skinner's Room" is a science fiction short story by American-Canadian author William Gibson, originally composed for ''Visionary San Francisco'', a 1990 museum exhibition exploring the future of San Francisco. It features the first appearance in Gibson's fiction of "the Bridge", which Gibson revisited as the setting of his acclaimed Bridge trilogy of novels. In the story, the Bridge is overrun by squatters, among them Skinner, who occupies a shack atop a bridgetower. An altered version of the story was published in ''Omni (magazine), Omni'' magazine and subsequently anthologized. "Skinner's Room" was nominated for the 1992 Locus Award for Best Short Story. Synopsis The story takes place in a near-future where the United States is in decline, having been negatively affected by some event referred to as the "devaluations." It is set in a urban decay, decaying San Francisco in which the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge is closed and taken over by the homeless. The wealthy denizens ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Gibson
William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as ''cyberpunk''. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, his early works were noir, near-future stories that explored the effects of technology, cybernetics, and computer networks on humans—a "combination of lowlife and high tech"—and helped to create an iconography for the information age before the ubiquity of the Internet in the 1990s. Gibson coined the term " cyberspace" for "widespread, interconnected digital technology" in his short story "Burning Chrome" (1982), and later popularized the concept in his acclaimed debut novel ''Neuromancer'' (1984). These early works of Gibson's have been credited with "renovating" science fiction literature in the 1980s. After expanding on the story in ''Neuromancer'' with two more novels (''Count Zero'' in 1986, and ''Mona Lisa Overdrive'' in 1988), th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
