"The Winter Market" is a science fiction short story written by

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, hi ...

and published as part of his ''

Burning Chrome "Burning Chrome" is a science fiction short story by Canadian-American writer William Gibson, first published in '' Omni'' in July 1982. Gibson first read the story at a science fiction convention in Denver, Colorado in the autumn of 1981, to an a ...

'' short story collection. The story was commissioned in 1985 by ''

Vancouver Magazine ''Vancouver Magazine'' is an English-language lifestyle magazine focused on Vancouver, British Columbia and the Lower Mainland. ''Vancouver Magazine'' describes its mission as informing, guiding and entertaining residents of a "dynamic, internat ...

'', who stipulated that Gibson – who at the time was "unquestionably the leading Vancouver author on the international literary scene" – set it in the city (thereby making it unique among the author's works until 2007, when he set the final third of ''

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'' (2003), and was succeeded in 2010 by ...

'' in and around the

Port of Vancouver The Port of Vancouver is the largest port in Canada and the fourth largest in North America by tonnes of cargo, facilitating trade between Canada and more than 170 world economies. The port is managed by the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, whic ...

). The market of the title was modelled on that of

Granville Island Granville Island is a peninsula and shopping district in the Fairview neighbourhood of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It is located across False Creek from Downtown Vancouver under the south end of the Granville Street Bridge. The peninsu ...

, though in a state of bohemian decay. As the author commented in a 2007 blog post: "Vancouver's Granville Island, centered around Granville Island Market (produce and food fair) is a very successful (and pleasant) retrofit of an under-bridge urban island that previously was heavily industrial. When the story was written, the retrofit was recent, and I dirtied it up for requisite punky near-future effect."

Plot

The story primarily concerns human relationships and their tenuous and problematic qualities by deploying the concept of technological

immortality Immortality is the concept of eternal life. Some modern species may possess biological immortality. Some scientists, futurists, and philosophers have theorized about the immortality of the human body, with some suggesting that human immorta ...

, in which one's

consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...

is separated from the body and "uploaded" into a supercomputer, where it continues to think and function on its own. Characters in the story are marked by a distinct failure to connect, while they express typical genre concerns regarding this type of theoretical

mind transfer Mind uploading is a speculative process of whole brain emulation in which a brain scan is used to completely emulate the mental state of the individual in a digital computer. The computer would then run a simulation of the brain's information pr ...

; whether or not the online consciousness really is the same individual, and whether or not it was moral to allow this to happen. In this particular tale, Lise's original body is defective and failing, partially due to a congenital disease, and partially due to drug abuse. Hence, the act of leaving behind the original physical form is potentially one of escape into an untainted existence. However, the story undercuts this simplistic reading by convincingly evoking Lise's humanity and her longing for a "normal" relationship to her body.

Analysis

According to the analysis of critic Pramod Nayar, the story "depicts the body as a vehicle for experiencing dreams edited into Hollywood thrillers". Critic David Seed saw the character of Rubin as a "thinly disguised" incarnation of performance artist Mark Pauline of Survival Research Laboratories.

Reception

The story was critically well-received, garnering nominations for the

Hugo Award for Best Novelette The Hugo Award for Best Novelette is one of the Hugo Awards given each year for science fiction or fantasy stories published or translated into English during the previous calendar year. The novelette award is available for works of fiction of ...

, the

Nebula Award for Best Novelette The Nebula Award for Best Novelette is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) to a science fiction or fantasy novelette. A work of fiction is defined by the organization as a novelette if it is between 7,50 ...

, the "short-form, English" Prix Aurora award, and the

British Science Fiction Association The British Science Fiction Association Limited is an organisation founded in 1958 by a group of British academics, science fiction fans, authors, publishers and booksellers, in order to promote the writing, criticism, and study of science fiction ...

award for best short story. It also finished highly in several science fiction magazines' annual readers polls in 1987, coming fourth in the ''

Locus Locus (plural loci) is Latin for "place". It may refer to: Entertainment * Locus (comics), a Marvel Comics mutant villainess, a member of the Mutant Liberation Front * ''Locus'' (magazine), science fiction and fantasy magazine ** ''Locus Award' ...

'' novelette category, third in the '' Interzone'' fiction category, and joint second in the ''Science Fiction Chronicle'' novelette category.

References

External links

"The Winter Market"
at SFTropes

at the William Gibson Aleph {{DEFAULTSORT:Winter Market, The 1985 short stories Brain–computer interfacing in fiction Cyberpunk short stories Short stories by William Gibson Vancouver in fiction Works set in the 2010s Short stories about diseases and disorders