"Skinner's Room" is a

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

short story by American-Canadian author

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 ...

, originally composed for ''Visionary San Francisco'', a 1990 museum exhibition exploring the future of

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

. It features the first appearance in Gibson's fiction of "the Bridge", which Gibson revisited as the setting of his acclaimed

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'' (1993), ''Idoru,'' (1996) and ''All Tomorrow's Parties'' (1999). A short story, " Skinner ...

of novels. In the story, the Bridge is overrun by

squatters Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use. The United Nations estimated in 2003 that there ...

, among them Skinner, who occupies a shack atop a bridgetower. An altered version of the story was published in '' Omni'' magazine and subsequently anthologized. "Skinner's Room" was nominated for the 1992

Locus Award The Locus Awards are an annual set of literary awards voted on by readers of the science fiction and fantasy magazine ''Locus'', a monthly magazine based in Oakland, California. The awards are presented at an annual banquet. In addition to the pl ...

for Best Short Story.

Synopsis

The story takes place in a near-future where the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

is in decline, having been negatively affected by some event referred to as the "devaluations." It is set in a decaying San Francisco in which the

San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge The San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, known locally as the Bay Bridge, is a complex of bridges spanning San Francisco Bay in California. As part of Interstate 80 in California, Interstate 80 and the direct road between San Francisco and Oakland ...

is closed and taken over by the

homeless Homelessness or houselessness – also known as a state of being unhoused or unsheltered – is the condition of lacking stable, safe, and adequate housing. People can be categorized as homeless if they are: * living on the streets, also kn ...

. The wealthy denizens of the city have retreated to gated-access enclaves. The room mentioned in the title is a

shack A shack (or, in some areas, shanty) is a type of small shelter or dwelling, often primitive or rudimentary in design and construction. Unlike huts, shacks are constructed by hand using available materials; however, whereas huts are usually ru ...

built on top one of the bridge's

tower A tower is a tall Nonbuilding structure, structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from guyed mast, masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting ...

s. Skinner has lived on the bridge, and in his room, for a long time, and is accompanied by a girl with an interest in the history of the bridge town and who arrived only three months before. The story reveals that, long ago, the Bridge had been closed to vehicle

traffic Traffic comprises pedestrians, vehicles, ridden or herded animals, trains, and other conveyances that use public ways (roads) for travel and transportation. Traffic laws govern and regulate traffic, while rules of the road include traffic ...

(for three years) and that the pressure to find somewhere to live had forced homeless people to seize the bridge and set up a squatters' town there. The community that arose was vibrant and was watched by the world's media. The town grew in a piecemeal fashion, built from salvaged parts as well as from material apparently donated by more wealthy nations. At the end of the story Skinner has a dream in which he remembers being at the front of the crowd who seized the bridge (Skinner is the first onto the bridge) and scaled the towers.

Publication history

"Skinner's Room" was commissioned by the

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...

for its exhibition "Visionary San Francisco", shown from June 14 to August 26, 1990. Gibson's story inspired a contribution to the exhibition by architects Ming Fung and Craig Hodgetts. Ming and Hodgetts designed the urban environment which would have catalysed the transformation of the Bridge. They envisioned a San Francisco in which the rich live in high-tech, self-sufficient, self-contained towers, above the decrepit city and its crumbling bridge, isolated from the amorphous city. The crate-packaged installation, which was surrounded by

scrap metal Scrap consists of recyclable materials, usually metals, left over from product manufacturing and consumption, such as parts of vehicles, building supplies, and surplus materials. Unlike waste, scrap has monetary value, especially recovered me ...

computer chips An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny M ...

, and pages from ''

manga Manga (Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is u ...

'' comic strips, featured a model of the towers, along with Gibson on a monitor discussing the future and reading from "Skinner's Room". A slightly different version of the short story was featured in the November 1991 issue of '' Omni''. The ''OMNI'' version concerns an unnamed girl and an old man named Skinner who live in the one-room shack built on top of the first cable tower of the Bridge. This version was collected in Gardner Dozois' 1992 anthology '' The Year's Best Science Fiction: Ninth Annual Collection'', and in Larry McCaffery's ''After Yesterday's Crash'' (1995).

Significance

"Skinner's Room" is the first appearance of

the Bridge The Bridge may refer to: Art, entertainment and media Art * ''The Bridge'' (sculpture), a 1997 sculpture in Atlanta, Georgia, US * Die Brücke (''The Bridge''), a group of German expressionist artists * ''The Bridge'' (M. C. Escher), a lithograph ...

in Gibson's fiction. In the acknowledgments at the end of his 1994 novel ''

Virtual Light ''Virtual Light'' is a science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson, the first book in his Bridge trilogy. ''Virtual Light'' is a science-fiction novel set in a postmodern, dystopian, cyberpunk future. The term 'Virtual Light' ...

'', Gibson writes that the short story later developed into the novel; the character of Skinner is one of the main characters in ''Virtual Light'' and the setting and characters of "Skinner's Room" are revisited in the sequels to the novel, ''

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. One of the main characters, Colin Laney, has a talent for identifying nodal points, analogous ...

'' and '' All Tomorrow's Parties'' (collectively known as the

). ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' hailed the "Visionary San Francisco" 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 organiser Paulo Polledri's claim that the collaboration was an "appeal to civic responsibility by showing the effects of its absence", ''The New York Times'' judged Ming and Hodgetts's reaction to "Skinner's Room" a "powerful, but sad and not a little cynical, work". After its 1991 republication in ''OMNI'', "Skinner's Room" was nominated for the

for Best Short Story in 1992.

References

External links

* {{Good article

1990 short stories Cyberpunk short stories Short stories set in San Francisco Science fiction short stories Short stories by William Gibson Speculative fiction short stories Works originally published in Omni (magazine)

Synopsis

Publication history

Significance

See also

References

External links