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William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American-Canadian
speculative fiction Speculative fiction is a term that has been used with a variety of (sometimes contradictory) meanings. The broadest interpretation is as a category of fiction encompassing genres with elements that do not exist in reality, recorded history, na ...
writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the
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 ...
subgenre known as ''
cyberpunk Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of lowlife and high tech", featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyber ...
''. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, his early works were noir, near-future stories that explored the effects of
technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...
,
cybernetics Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with circular causality, such as feedback, in regulatory and purposive systems. Cybernetics is named after an example of circular causal feedback, that of steering a ship, where the helmsperson m ...
, and
computer network A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ...
s on humans—a "combination of
lowlife A low-life (or lowlife) is a term for a person who is considered morally unacceptable by their community. Examples of people society often labels low-lives include aggressive panhandlers, bullies, criminals, drug dealers, freeloaders, hobos, ...
and
high tech High technology (high tech), also known as advanced technology (advanced tech) or exotechnology, is technology that is at the cutting edge: the highest form of technology available. It can be defined as either the most complex or the newest te ...
"—and helped to create an iconography for the
information age The Information Age (also known as the Computer Age, Digital Age, Silicon Age, or New Media Age) is a historical period that began in the mid-20th century. It is characterized by a rapid shift from traditional industries, as established during ...
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 "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 ...
" (1982), and later popularized the concept in his acclaimed debut novel ''
Neuromancer ''Neuromancer'' is a 1984 science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson. Considered one of the earliest and best-known works in the cyberpunk genre, it is the only novel to win the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and ...
'' (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 ''Count Zero'' is a science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson, originally published in 1986. It is the second volume of the Sprawl trilogy, which begins with ''Neuromancer'' and concludes with ''Mona Lisa Overdrive'', and i ...
'' in 1986, and ''
Mona Lisa Overdrive ''Mona Lisa Overdrive'' is a science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson, published in 1988. It is the final novel of the cyberpunk Sprawl trilogy, following ''Neuromancer'' and ''Count Zero'', taking place eight years after ...
'' in 1988), thus completing the
dystopic A dystopia (from Ancient Greek δυσ- "bad, hard" and τόπος "place"; alternatively cacotopiaCacotopia (from κακός ''kakos'' "bad") was the term used by Jeremy Bentham in his 1818 Plan of Parliamentary Reform (Works, vol. 3, p. 493). ...
''Sprawl'' trilogy, Gibson collaborated with Bruce Sterling on the alternate history novel ''
The Difference Engine ''The Difference Engine'' (1990) is an alternative history novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. It is widely regarded as a book that helped establish the genre conventions of steampunk. It posits a Victorian era Britain in which great t ...
'' (1990), which became an important work of the science fiction subgenre known as '' steampunk''. In the 1990s, Gibson composed the ''Bridge'' trilogy of novels, which explored the
sociological Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation and ...
developments of near-future urban environments,
postindustrial society In sociology, the post-industrial society is the stage of society's development when the service sector generates more wealth than the manufacturing sector of the economy. The term was originated by Alain Touraine and is closely related to si ...
, and
late capitalism Late capitalism, late-stage capitalism, or end-stage capitalism is a term first used in print by German economist Werner Sombart around the turn of the 20th century. In the late 2010s, the term began to be used in the United States and Canada t ...
. Following the turn of the century and the events of 9/11, Gibson emerged with a string of increasingly realist novels—''
Pattern Recognition Pattern recognition is the automated recognition of patterns and regularities in data. It has applications in statistical data analysis, signal processing, image analysis, information retrieval, bioinformatics, data compression, computer graphi ...
'' (2003), ''
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 ...
'' (2007), and '' Zero History'' (2010)—set in a roughly contemporary world. These works saw his name reach mainstream bestseller lists for the first time. His most recent novels, ''
The Peripheral ''The Peripheral'' is a 2014 science fiction mystery-thriller novel by William Gibson set in near- and post-apocalyptic versions of the future. The story focuses on a young rural-town American woman who lives in the near future, and on a London ...
'' (2014) and ''Agency'' (2020), returned to a more overt engagement with technology and recognizable science fiction themes. In 1999, ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' described Gibson as "probably the most important novelist of the past two decades", while ''
The Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper ...
'' called him the "noir prophet" of cyberpunk. Throughout his career, Gibson has written more than 20 short stories and 12 critically acclaimed novels (one in collaboration), contributed articles to several major publications, and collaborated extensively with performance artists, filmmakers, and musicians. His work has been cited as influencing a variety of disciplines: academia, design, film, literature, music,
cyberculture Internet culture is a culture based on the many way people have used computer networks and their use for communication, entertainment, business, and recreation. Some features of Internet culture include online communities, gaming, and social medi ...
, and technology.


Early life


Childhood, itinerance, and adolescence

William Ford Gibson was born in the coastal city of Conway, South Carolina, and he spent most of his childhood in
Wytheville, Virginia Wytheville is a town in, and the county seat of, Wythe County, in southwestern Virginia, United States. It is named after George Wythe, a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence, and mentor to Thomas Jefferson. Wytheville's populat ...
, a small town in the
Appalachians The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, (french: Appalaches), are a system of mountains in eastern to northeastern North America. The Appalachians first formed roughly 480 million years ago during the Ordovician Period. They ...
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 ( ) is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. Incorporated in 1705, it had a population of 238,005 at the 2020 census, making it the third-most populous city in Virginia after neighboring Virginia Be ...
, 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 (October 1945 – October 18, 2022) was an American science fiction writer, known for his part in the early cyberpunk movement. Maddox's only novel was ''Halo'' (), published in 1991 by Tor Books. His story "Snake Eyes" appeared in t ...
has commented that Gibson "grew up in an America as disturbing and surreal as anything
J. G. Ballard James Graham Ballard (15 November 193019 April 2009) was an English novelist, short story writer, satirist, and essayist known for provocative works of fiction which explored the relations between human psychology, technology, sex, and mass med ...
ever dreamed". A few days after the death of his father, Gibson and his mother moved back from Norfolk to Wytheville. Gibson later described Wytheville as "a place where
modernity Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period (the modern era) and the ensemble of particular socio-cultural norm (social), norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the Renaissancein the " ...
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 generation writing, thereby gaining exposure to the writings of
Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...
, Jack Kerouac, and
William S. Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...
; 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 Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American novelist. He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical ref ...
. 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. He resented the structure of the private boarding school but was in retrospect grateful for its forcing him to engage socially. On the
SAT The SAT ( ) is a standardized test widely used for college admissions in the United States. Since its debut in 1926, its name and scoring have changed several times; originally called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, it was later called the Schol ...
(Scholastic Aptitude Test) exams, he scored 148 out of 150 in the written section but 5 out of 150 in
mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
, to the dismay of his teachers.


Draft-dodging, exile, and counterculture

After his mother's death when he was 18, Gibson left school without graduating and became very isolated for a long time, traveling to California and Europe, and immersing himself in the
counterculture A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Hou ...
. 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
narcotic The term narcotic (, from ancient Greek ναρκῶ ''narkō'', "to make numb") originally referred medically to any psychoactive compound with numbing or paralyzing properties. In the United States, it has since become associated with opiates ...
substance in existence. Gibson has observed that he "did not 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'' 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 Docur ...
'' (2000), Gibson said that his decision was motivated less by
conscientious objection A conscientious objector (often shortened to conchie) is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. The term has also been extended to objecti ...
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 head shop is a retail outlet specializing in paraphernalia used for consumption of cannabis and tobacco and items related to cannabis culture and related countercultures. They emerged from the hippie counterculture in the late 1960s, and ...
, 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 Yorkville is a neighbourhood and former village in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. 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 it is part of The Annex neighbo ...
, 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 ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
, 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 favorable exchange rates, including spending time on a Greek archipelago and in
Istanbul Istanbul ( , ; tr, İstanbul ), formerly known as Constantinople ( grc-gre, Κωνσταντινούπολις; la, Constantinopolis), is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, serving as the country's economic, ...
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 (from Latin: ''salvatio'', from ''salva'', 'safe, saved') is the state of being saved or protected from harm or a dire situation. In religion and theology, ''salvation'' generally refers to the deliverance of the soul from sin and its c ...
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 The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university, public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks a ...
(UBC), earning "a desultory bachelor's degree in English" in 1977. Through studying
English literature English literature is literature written in the English language from United Kingdom, its crown dependencies, the Republic of Ireland, the United States, and the countries of the former British Empire. ''The Encyclopaedia Britannica'' defines E ...
, 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 (post-modernity or the postmodern condition) is the economic or cultural state or condition of society which is said to exist ''after'' modernity. Some schools of thought hold that modernity ended in the late 20th century – in the ...
. 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".


Early writing and the evolution of cyberpunk

After considering pursuing a master's degree on the topic of
hard science fiction Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell's ''Islands of Space'' in the Novemb ...
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 Science fiction conventions are gatherings of fans of the speculative fiction genre, science fiction. Historically, science fiction conventions had focused primarily on literature, but the purview of many extends to such other avenues of expre ...
in Vancouver in 1980 or 1981, Gibson found a kindred spirit in fellow panelist, punk musician and author
John Shirley John Shirley (born February 10, 1953) is an American writer, primarily of fantasy, science fiction, dark street fiction, westerns, and songwriting. He has also written one historical novel, a western about Wyatt Earp, ''Wyatt in Wichita'', and ...
. 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 Lewis Shiner (born December 30, 1950 in Eugene, Oregon) is an American writer. Shiner began his career as a science fiction writer, and then identified with cyberpunk. He later wrote more mainstream novels, albeit often with magical realism and ...
; reading Gibson's work, they realized 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 asthe 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" 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 ...
" – 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 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 empha ...
, 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 Rudolf von Bitter Rucker (; born March 22, 1946) is an American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author, and one of the founders of the cyberpunk literary movement. The author of both fiction and non-fiction, he is best known f ...
, went on to form the core of the radical
cyberpunk Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of lowlife and high tech", featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyber ...
literary movement.


Literary career


Early short fiction

Gibson's early writings are generally near-future stories about the influences of
cybernetics Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with circular causality, such as feedback, in regulatory and purposive systems. Cybernetics is named after an example of circular causal feedback, that of steering a ship, where the helmsperson m ...
and cyberspace (computer-simulated reality) technology on the human species. His themes of hi-tech shanty towns, 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", in the Summer 1977 issue of ''
Unearth Unearth is an American metalcore band from Boston, Massachusetts. Formed in 1998, the group has released seven studio albums. History Early career (1998–2002) Unearth was formed by Trevor Phipps, Buz McGrath, Ken Susi, Mike Rudberg, an ...
''. 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 "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 ...
'', as "Gibson's classic one-two combination of lowlife and high tech." Beginning in 1981, 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 cult following refers to a group of fans who are highly dedicated to some person, idea, object, movement, or work, often an artist, in particular a performing artist, or an artwork in some medium. The lattermost is often called a cult classic. A ...
, 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 people's grasp." While
Larry McCaffery Lawrence F. McCaffery Jr. (born May 13, 1946) is an American literary critic, editor, and retired professor of English and comparative literature at San Diego State University. His work and teaching focuses on postmodern literature, contemporary ...
has commented that these early short stories displayed flashes of Gibson's ability, science fiction critic
Darko Suvin Darko Ronald Suvin (born Darko Šlesinger) is a Yugoslav-born academic, writer and critic who became a professor (now emeritusDavid JohnstonConvocation: Honorary degrees and emeritus professorships McGill Reporter, Volume 33, No. 05, November ...
has identified them as "undoubtedly yberpunk'sbest works", constituting the "furthest horizon" of the genre. The themes which Gibson developed in the stories, the Sprawl setting of "
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 ...
" and the character of
Molly Millions Molly Millions (also known as Sally Shears, Rose Kolodny, and others) 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 ...
from "
Johnny Mnemonic "Johnny Mnemonic" is a science fiction short story by American-Canadian writer William Gibson. It first appeared in '' Omni'' magazine in May 1981, and was subsequently included in ''Burning Chrome'', a 1986 collection of Gibson's short fiction. ...
" ultimately culminated in his first novel, ''
Neuromancer ''Neuromancer'' is a 1984 science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson. Considered one of the earliest and best-known works in the cyberpunk genre, it is the only novel to win the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and ...
''.


''Neuromancer''

''
Neuromancer ''Neuromancer'' is a 1984 science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson. Considered one of the earliest and best-known works in the cyberpunk genre, it is the only novel to win the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and ...
'' was commissioned by
Terry Carr Terry Gene Carr (February 19, 1937 – April 7, 1987) was an American science fiction fan, author, editor, and writing instructor. Background and discovery of fandom Carr was born in Grants Pass, Oregon. He attended the City College of San ...
for the second series of Ace Science Fiction Specials, which was intended to exclusively feature
debut novel A debut novel is the first novel a novelist publishes. Debut novels are often 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 p ...
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'' is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott, and written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos, it is an adaptation of Philip K. Dick' ...
'' (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 Word of mouth, or ''viva voce'', is the passing of information from person to person using oral communication, which could be as simple as telling someone the time of day. Storytelling is a common form of word-of-mouth communication where one pe ...
hit. It became the first winner of one science fiction "triple crown" —both
Nebula A nebula ('cloud' or 'fog' in Latin; pl. nebulae, nebulæ or nebulas) is a distinct luminescent part of interstellar medium, which can consist of ionized, neutral or molecular hydrogen and also cosmic dust. Nebulae are often star-forming regio ...
and Hugo Awards as the year's best novel and
Philip K. Dick Award The Philip K. Dick Award is an American science fiction award given annually at Norwescon and sponsored by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and (since 2005) the Philip K. Dick Trust. Named after science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, ...
as the best
paperback original A paperback (softcover, softback) book is one with a thick paper or paperboard cover, and often held together with glue rather than stitches or staples. In contrast, hardcover (hardback) books are bound with cardboard covered with cloth, ...
— eventually selling more than 6.5 million copies worldwide.
Lawrence Person ''Nova Express'' was a Hugo-nominated science fiction fanzine edited by Lawrence Person. ''Nova Express'' is named after William S. Burroughs' ''Nova Express'' and the fictional magazine ''Nova Express'' in Alan Moore's ''Watchmen''. It remained i ...
in his "Notes Toward a Postcyberpunk Manifesto" (1998) identified ''Neuromancer'' as "the archetypal cyberpunk work", and in 2005, ''
Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' included it in its list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923, opining that " ere is no way to overstate how radical 'Neuromancer''was when it first appeared." Literary critic
Larry McCaffery Lawrence F. McCaffery Jr. (born May 13, 1946) is an American literary critic, editor, and retired professor of English and comparative literature at San Diego State University. His work and teaching focuses on postmodern literature, contemporary ...
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.


Sprawl trilogy, ''The Difference Engine'', and Bridge trilogy

Although much of Gibson's reputation has remained rooted in ''Neuromancer'', his work continued to evolve conceptually and stylistically. He next intended to write an unrelated postmodern
space opera Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes space warfare, with use of melodramatic, risk-taking space adventures, relationships, and chivalric romance. Set mainly or entirely in outer space, it features technological and soci ...
, titled ''The Log of the Mustang Sally'', but reneged on the contract with Arbor House after a falling out over the
dustjacket The dust jacket (sometimes book jacket, dust wrapper or dust cover) of a book is the detachable outer cover, usually made of paper and printed with text and illustrations. This outer cover has folded flaps that hold it to the front and back book ...
art of their hardcover of ''Count Zero''. Abandoning ''The Log of the Mustang Sally'', Gibson instead wrote ''
Mona Lisa Overdrive ''Mona Lisa Overdrive'' is a science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson, published in 1988. It is the final novel of the cyberpunk Sprawl trilogy, following ''Neuromancer'' and ''Count Zero'', taking place eight years after ...
'' (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 The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the universe. ...
with shared characters, thereby completing the
Sprawl trilogy The Sprawl trilogy (also known as the Neuromancer, Cyberspace, or Matrix trilogy) is William Gibson's first set of novels, composed of ''Neuromancer'' (1984), ''Count Zero'' (1986), and '' Mona Lisa Overdrive'' (1988). The novels are all set in ...
. 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'' (1990) is an alternative history novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. It is widely regarded as a book that helped establish the genre conventions of steampunk. It posits a Victorian era Britain in which great t ...
'', an
alternative history Alternate history (also alternative history, althist, AH) is a genre of speculative fiction of stories in which one or more historical events occur and are resolved differently than in real life. As conjecture based upon historical fact, alte ...
novel Gibson wrote in collaboration with Bruce Sterling. Set in a technologically advanced
Victorian era In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardia ...
Britain, the novel was a departure from the authors' cyberpunk roots. It was nominated for the
Nebula Award for Best Novel The Nebula Award for Best Novel is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) for science fiction or fantasy novels. A work of fiction is considered a novel by the organization if it is 40,000 words or longer; a ...
in 1991 and the
John W. Campbell Memorial Award The John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, or Campbell Memorial Award, is an annual award presented by the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas to the author of the best science fiction no ...
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 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, " Skinn ...
", is composed of ''
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 ...
'' (1993), a "darkly comic urban detective story", ''
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, analogou ...
'' (1996), and ''
All Tomorrow's Parties "All Tomorrow's Parties" is a song by the Velvet Underground and Nico, written by Lou Reed and released on the group's 1967 debut studio album, ''The Velvet Underground & Nico''. Inspiration for the song came from Reed's observation of Andy Warh ...
'' (1999). The first and third books in the trilogy center on San Francisco in the near future; all three explore Gibson's recurring themes of technological, physical, and spiritual transcendence in a more grounded, matter-of-fact style than his first trilogy.
Salon Salon may refer to: Common meanings * Beauty salon, a venue for cosmetic treatments * French term for a drawing room, an architectural space in a home * Salon (gathering), a meeting for learning or enjoyment Arts and entertainment * Salon (P ...
's
Andrew Leonard Andrew Leonard (born 1962) is an American journalist who writes feature articles for ''San Francisco'' and contributes to Medium. From 1995 to 2014 he wrote for ''Salon.com''. He has also written for ''Wired''. Career Leonard is credited with co ...
notes that in the Bridge trilogy, Gibson's villains change from multinational corporations and
artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
s of the Sprawl trilogy to the mass media – namely tabloid television and the
cult of celebrity ''Famous for being famous'' is a term for someone who attains celebrity status for no clearly identifiable reason (as opposed to fame based on achievement, skill, or talent) and appears to generate their own fame, or someone who achieves fame thr ...
. ''Virtual Light'' depicts an "end-stage capitalism, in which private enterprise and the profit motive are taken to their logical conclusion", according to one review. This argument on the mass media as the natural evolution of capitalism is the opening line of the major
Situationist The Situationist International (SI) was an Proletarian internationalism, international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and Political philosophy, political theorists. It was prominent in Eu ...
work ''
The Society of the Spectacle ''The Society of the Spectacle'' (french: La société du spectacle) is a 1967 work of philosophy and Marxist critical theory by Guy Debord, in which the author develops and presents the concept of the Spectacle. The book is considered a semin ...
''. Leonard's review called ''Idoru'' a "return to form" for Gibson, while critic
Steven Poole Steven Poole (born 1972) is a British author and journalist. He particularly concerns himself with the abuse of language and has written two books on the subject: ''Unspeak'' (2006) and ''Who Touched Base In My Thought Shower?'' (2013). Biograph ...
asserted that ''All Tomorrow's Parties'' marked his development from "science-fiction hotshot to wry sociologist of the near future."


Blue Ant

After ''All Tomorrow's Parties'', Gibson began to adopt a more realist 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 Pattern recognition is the automated recognition of patterns and regularities in data. It has applications in statistical data analysis, signal processing, image analysis, information retrieval, bioinformatics, data compression, computer graphi ...
'' (2003), ''
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 ...
'' (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 on to 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 is a fictional character appearing in the third trilogy of novels of science fiction and literary author William Gibson. Bigend is the antihero of Gibson's ''Pattern Recognition'' (2003), ''Spook Country'' (2007) and '' Zero History ...
and Pamela Mainwaring, employees of the enigmatic marketing company Blue Ant. When asked on
Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
what this series of novels should be called ("The Bigend Trilogy? The Blue Ant Cycle? What?"), Gibson replied "I prefer 'books'. The Bigend books." However, "Blue Ant" rather than "Bigend" has become the standard signifier. At a later date, Gibson stated that he did not name his trilogies, "I wait to see what people call them," and has in 2016 used "the Blue Ant books" in a tweet. A phenomenon peculiar to this era was the independent development of annotation, 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 (author), John Sutherland characterized this phenomenon as threatening "to completely overhaul the way literary criticism is conducted". About 100 pages into writing ''Pattern Recognition'', Gibson felt impelled to re-write the main character's backstory, which had been suddenly rendered implausible by the September 11 attacks, September 11, 2001 attacks; he described this as "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, while his focus nevertheless remained "at the intersection of paranoia and technology".


The Jackpot trilogy and graphic novels

''
The Peripheral ''The Peripheral'' is a 2014 science fiction mystery-thriller novel by William Gibson set in near- and post-apocalyptic versions of the future. The story focuses on a young rural-town American woman who lives in the near future, and on a London ...
'', the first in a new series of novels by William Gibson, was released on October 28, 2014. He described the story briefly in an appearance he made at the New York Public Library on April 19, 2013, and read an excerpt from the first chapter of the book entitled "The Gone Haptics." The story takes place in two eras, one about thirty years into the future and the other further in the future. In 2017, Gibson's comic/graphic novel ''Archangel (Gibson comic), Archangel'' was published. Both ''Archangel'' and ''The Peripheral'' contain time travel (of sorts), but Gibson has clarified that the works are not related: "They're not "same universe". The Splitter and trans-continual virtuality are different mechanisms (different plot mechanisms too)." The next year, Dark Horse Comics began releasing Johnnie Christmas' adaptation of Gibson's ''Alien 3'' script in five parts, resulting in a hardcover collection being published in 2019. ''The Peripheral''s continuation, ''Agency (novel), Agency'', was released on January 21, 2020 after being delayed from an initial announced release date of December 2018. Gibson said in a ''New Yorker'' magazine article that both the election of Donald Trump as U.S. President and the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, controversy over Cambridge Analytica had caused him to rethink and revise the text. The working title for the third novel in the series was ''Jackpot'', which Gibson had a change of heart on in January 2021: "I don't think I'm going to call Agency's sequel Jackpot after all. Not because of [''Jackpot'' by Michael Mechanic], which I look forward to reading, but because Agency was originally called Tulpagotchi. Which I still like, but would've been a different book."


Collaborations, adaptations, and miscellanea


Literary collaborations

Three of the stories that later appeared in ''
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 ...
'' were written in collaboration with other authors: "The Belonging Kind" (1981) with
John Shirley John Shirley (born February 10, 1953) is an American writer, primarily of fantasy, science fiction, dark street fiction, westerns, and songwriting. He has also written one historical novel, a western about Wyatt Earp, ''Wyatt in Wichita'', and ...
, "Red Star, Winter Orbit" (1983) with Sterling, and "Dogfight (short story), 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 (TV 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 ''The Difference Engine'' (1990) is an alternative history novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. It is widely regarded as a book that helped establish the genre conventions of steampunk. It posits a Victorian era Britain in which great t ...
'' (1990). The two were later "invited to dream in public" (Gibson) in a joint address to the U.S. United States National Academy of Sciences, 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''.


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 Thailand, Thai 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 "Andrei Tarkovsky, Tarkovskian"), few elements of which survived in the final version. In 2018-19, Dark Horse Comics released a five-part adaptation of Gibson's ''Alien 3'' script, illustrated and adapted by Johnnie Christmas. In 2019, Audible (store), Audible released an audio drama of Gibson's script, adapted by Dirk Maggs and with Michael Biehn and Lance Henriksen reprising their roles. 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 Soviet rock musician Viktor 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 Pattern recognition is the automated recognition of patterns and regularities in data. It has applications in statistical data analysis, signal processing, image analysis, information retrieval, bioinformatics, data compression, computer graphi ...
''. A similar fate befell Gibson's collaboration with Japanese filmmaker Sogo Ishii in 1991, a film they planned 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 The Sprawl trilogy (also known as the Neuromancer, Cyberspace, or Matrix trilogy) is William Gibson's first set of novels, composed of ''Neuromancer'' (1984), ''Count Zero'' (1986), and '' Mona Lisa Overdrive'' (1988). The novels are all set in ...
universe, have been loosely adapted as films: ''Johnny Mnemonic (film), Johnny Mnemonic'' (1995) with screenplay by Gibson and starring Keanu Reeves, Dolph Lundgren and Takeshi Kitano, and ''New Rose Hotel (film), 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. , Vincenzo Natali still hoped to bring ''Neuromancer'' to the screen, after some years in development hell. ''
Count Zero ''Count Zero'' is a science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson, originally published in 1986. It is the second volume of the Sprawl trilogy, which begins with ''Neuromancer'' and concludes with ''Mona Lisa Overdrive'', and i ...
'' was at one point being developed as ''The Zen Differential'' with director Michael Mann (film director), Michael Mann attached, and the third novel in the Sprawl trilogy, ''
Mona Lisa Overdrive ''Mona Lisa Overdrive'' is a science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson, published in 1988. It is the final novel of the cyberpunk Sprawl trilogy, following ''Neuromancer'' and ''Count Zero'', taking place eight years after ...
'', has also been optioned and bought. An anime adaptation of ''
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, analogou ...
'' 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. Announced at International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2015 is an adaptation of Gibson's short story ''Dogfight'' by BAFTA award-winning writer and director Simon Pummell. Written by Gibson and Michael Swanwick and first published in Omni in July 1985, the film is being developed by British producer Janine Marmot at Hot Property Films. Television is another arena in which Gibson has collaborated; with friend
Tom Maddox Tom Maddox (October 1945 – October 18, 2022) was an American science fiction writer, known for his part in the early cyberpunk movement. Maddox's only novel was ''Halo'' (), published in 1991 by Tor Books. His story "Snake Eyes" appeared in t ...
, he co-wrote ''The X-Files'' episodes "Kill Switch (The X-Files), Kill Switch" and "First Person Shooter (The X-Files), First Person Shooter", broadcast 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 ''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 Docur ...
''. 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. Amazon (company), Amazon released ''The Peripheral (TV series), The Peripheral'' , a TV series from the producers of ''Westworld (TV series), Westworld'' based on Gibson's novel of the same name, in October 2022.


Exhibitions, poetry, and performance art

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 (film), 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 (artist), 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 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, " Skinn ...
. 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''.


Cryptography

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 "Hacker (computer security), 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. Since its debut in 1992, the mystery of ''Agrippa'' remained hidden for 20 years. Although many had tried to hack the code and decrypt the program, the uncompiled source code was lost long ago. Alan Liu and his team at "The Agrippa Files" created an extensive website with tools and resources to crack the Agrippa Code. They collaborated with Matthew Kirschenbaum at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities and the Digital Forensics Lab, and Quinn DuPont, a PhD student of cryptography from the University of Toronto, in calling for the aid of cryptographers to figure out how the program works by creating "Cracking the Agrippa Code: The Challenge", which enlisted participants to solve the intentional scrambling of the poem in exchange for prizes. The code was successfully cracked by Robert Xiao in late July 2012.


Essays and short-form nonfiction

Gibson is a sporadic contributor of non-fiction articles to newspapers and journals. He has occasionally contributed longer-form articles to ''Wired (magazine), Wired'' and of op-eds 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 Pattern recognition is the automated recognition of patterns and regularities in data. It has applications in statistical data analysis, signal processing, image analysis, information retrieval, bioinformatics, data compression, computer graphi ...
'', but abated in September of the same year owing to concerns that it might negatively affect his creative process. Gibson recommenced blogging in October 2004, and during the process of writing ''
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 ...
'' – 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". In 2012, Gibson released a collection of his non-fiction works entitled ''Distrust That Particular Flavor''.


Influence and recognition

Gibson's prose has been analyzed by a number of scholars, including a dedicated 2011 book, ''William Gibson: A Literary Companion''. Hailed by
Steven Poole Steven Poole (born 1972) is a British author and journalist. He particularly concerns himself with the abuse of language and has written two books on the subject: ''Unspeak'' (2006) and ''Who Touched Base In My Thought Shower?'' (2013). Biograph ...
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 A debut novel is the first novel a novelist publishes. Debut novels are often 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 p ...
, ''
Neuromancer ''Neuromancer'' is a 1984 science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson. Considered one of the earliest and best-known works in the cyberpunk genre, it is the only novel to win the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and ...
''. The novel won three major science fiction awards (the Nebula Award, the
Philip K. Dick Award The Philip K. Dick Award is an American science fiction award given annually at Norwescon and sponsored by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and (since 2005) the Philip K. Dick Trust. Named after science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, ...
, and the Hugo Award), an unprecedented achievement described by the ''Mail & Guardian'' as "the sci-fi writer's version of winning the Prix Goncourt, Goncourt, Booker Prize, Booker and Pulitzer prizes 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 ''The New York Times, 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 Late capitalism, late-stage capitalism, or end-stage capitalism is a term first used in print by German economist Werner Sombart around the turn of the 20th century. In the late 2010s, the term began to be used in the United States and Canada t ...
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".


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. 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.Trench, Marianne and Peter von Brandenburg, producers. 1992. ''Cyberpunk. Mystic Fire Video'': Intercon Productions. The publication of ''Neuromancer'' (1984) hit a cultural nerve, causing
Larry McCaffery Lawrence F. McCaffery Jr. (born May 13, 1946) is an American literary critic, editor, and retired professor of English and comparative literature at San Diego State University. His work and teaching focuses on postmodern literature, contemporary ...
to credit Gibson with virtually launching the
cyberpunk Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of lowlife and high tech", featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyber ...
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 outer space, 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 culture, hacker generation as a kind of road map". Through his novels, such terms as '' cyberspace'', ''netsurfing'', ''Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics, ICE'', ''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" 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 ...
" (1982), he coined the term ''cyberspace'', referring to the "mass consensual hallucination" of
computer network A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ...
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.""Liquid Science Fiction: Interview with William Gibson by Bernard Joisten and Ken Lum", ''Purple Prose'', (Paris), N°9, été, pp.10–16 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 ''Neuromancer'' is a 1984 science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson. Considered one of the earliest and best-known works in the cyberpunk genre, it is the only novel to win the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and ...
'') 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 (magazine), 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 Sprawl trilogy (also known as the Neuromancer, Cyberspace, or Matrix trilogy) is William Gibson's first set of novels, composed of ''Neuromancer'' (1984), ''Count Zero'' (1986), and '' Mona Lisa Overdrive'' (1988). The novels are all set in ...
. The characters of Neo (The Matrix), Neo and Trinity (The Matrix), Trinity in ''The Matrix'' are similar to Bobby Newmark (''
Count Zero ''Count Zero'' is a science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson, originally published in 1986. It is the second volume of the Sprawl trilogy, which begins with ''Neuromancer'' and concludes with ''Mona Lisa Overdrive'', and i ...
'') and Molly Millions, Molly ("
Johnny Mnemonic "Johnny Mnemonic" is a science fiction short story by American-Canadian writer William Gibson. It first appeared in '' Omni'' magazine in May 1981, and was subsequently included in ''Burning Chrome'', a 1986 collection of Gibson's short fiction. ...
", ''
Neuromancer ''Neuromancer'' is a 1984 science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson. Considered one of the earliest and best-known works in the cyberpunk genre, it is the only novel to win the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and ...
''). 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 (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
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. He was inducted by Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, Science Fiction Hall of Fame that same year, presented by his close friend and collaborator Jack Womack.


Visionary influence and prescience

In ''Neuromancer'', Gibson first used the term "wikt:matrix, matrix" to refer to the visualized Internet, two years after the nascent modern Internet was formed in the early 1980s from the computer networks of the 1970s. Gibson thereby imagined a worldwide Telecommunications network, communications network 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 "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 ...
", 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 The Information Age (also known as the Computer Age, Digital Age, Silicon Age, or New Media Age) is a historical period that began in the mid-20th century. It is characterized by a rapid shift from traditional industries, as established during ...
, long before the embrace of the Internet by the mainstream. Gibson introduced, in ''
Neuromancer ''Neuromancer'' is a 1984 science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson. Considered one of the earliest and best-known works in the cyberpunk genre, it is the only novel to win the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and ...
'', 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 Steven Poole (born 1972) is a British author and journalist. He particularly concerns himself with the abuse of language and has written two books on the subject: ''Unspeak'' (2006) and ''Who Touched Base In My Thought Shower?'' (2013). Biograph ...
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 trilogy, Sprawl and Bridge trilogy, 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 affected the direction of the hacker community," dismissed them as "adolescent fantasies of violence and disembodiment." In ''
Pattern Recognition Pattern recognition is the automated recognition of patterns and regularities in data. It has applications in statistical data analysis, signal processing, image analysis, information retrieval, bioinformatics, data compression, computer graphi ...
'', 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 ''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 ...
'', which featured a satirical extrapolated version of ''Cops (TV series), COPS''. When an interviewer in 1988 asked about the Bulletin Board System jargon in his writing, Gibson answered "I'd never so much as touched a PC when I wrote ''Neuromancer''"; he was familiar, he said, with the science-fiction community, which overlapped with the BBS community. Gibson similarly did not play computer games despite appearing in his stories. He wrote ''Neuromancer'' on a 1927 olive-green Hermes portable typewriter, which Gibson described as "the kind of thing Ernest Hemingway, Hemingway would have used in the field". By 1988 he used an Apple IIc and AppleWorks to write, with a modem ("I don't really use it for anything"), but until 1996 Gibson did not have an email address, 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'' 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, analogou ...
'' when a web developer built one for Gibson. In 2007 he said, "I have a 2005 PowerBook G4, a gigabyte, gig of memory, wireless router. That's it. I'm anything but an early adopter, generally. In fact, I've never really been very interested in computers themselves. I don't watch them; I watch sociology of the Internet, how people behave around them. That's becoming more difficult to do because everything is 'around them'."


Selected works

Novels *
Sprawl trilogy The Sprawl trilogy (also known as the Neuromancer, Cyberspace, or Matrix trilogy) is William Gibson's first set of novels, composed of ''Neuromancer'' (1984), ''Count Zero'' (1986), and '' Mona Lisa Overdrive'' (1988). The novels are all set in ...
: ** ''
Neuromancer ''Neuromancer'' is a 1984 science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson. Considered one of the earliest and best-known works in the cyberpunk genre, it is the only novel to win the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and ...
'' (1984) ** ''
Count Zero ''Count Zero'' is a science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson, originally published in 1986. It is the second volume of the Sprawl trilogy, which begins with ''Neuromancer'' and concludes with ''Mona Lisa Overdrive'', and i ...
'' (1986) ** ''
Mona Lisa Overdrive ''Mona Lisa Overdrive'' is a science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson, published in 1988. It is the final novel of the cyberpunk Sprawl trilogy, following ''Neuromancer'' and ''Count Zero'', taking place eight years after ...
'' (1988) * ''
The Difference Engine ''The Difference Engine'' (1990) is an alternative history novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. It is widely regarded as a book that helped establish the genre conventions of steampunk. It posits a Victorian era Britain in which great t ...
'' (1990; with Bruce Sterling) *
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, " Skinn ...
: ** ''
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 ...
'' (1993) ** ''
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, analogou ...
'' (1996) ** ''
All Tomorrow's Parties "All Tomorrow's Parties" is a song by the Velvet Underground and Nico, written by Lou Reed and released on the group's 1967 debut studio album, ''The Velvet Underground & Nico''. Inspiration for the song came from Reed's observation of Andy Warh ...
'' (1999) * Blue Ant trilogy (
Hubertus Bigend Hubertus Bigend is a fictional character appearing in the third trilogy of novels of science fiction and literary author William Gibson. Bigend is the antihero of Gibson's ''Pattern Recognition'' (2003), ''Spook Country'' (2007) and '' Zero History ...
): ** ''
Pattern Recognition Pattern recognition is the automated recognition of patterns and regularities in data. It has applications in statistical data analysis, signal processing, image analysis, information retrieval, bioinformatics, data compression, computer graphi ...
'' (2003) ** ''
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 ...
'' (2007) ** '' Zero History'' (2010) * Jackpot trilogy ** ''
The Peripheral ''The Peripheral'' is a 2014 science fiction mystery-thriller novel by William Gibson set in near- and post-apocalyptic versions of the future. The story focuses on a young rural-town American woman who lives in the near future, and on a London ...
'' (2014) ** ''Agency (novel), Agency'' (2020) ** ''Jackpot'' (TBD) Adapted screenplays * ''Archangel (Gibson comic), Archangel'' (2016–2017) (Graphic novel) * ''Alien 3#Other media, Alien 3'' (2018–2019) (Graphic novel) * ''Alien 3#Other media, Alien III'' (2019) (Audio drama) * ''Alien³: The Unproduced First-Draft Screenplay by William Gibson'' (2021). (Novel by Pat Cadigan) Short stories * ''
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 ...
'' (1986, preface by Bruce Sterling), collects Gibson's early short fiction, listed by original publication date: ** " Fragments of a Hologram Rose" (1977, ''UnEarth 3'') ** "
Johnny Mnemonic "Johnny Mnemonic" is a science fiction short story by American-Canadian writer William Gibson. It first appeared in '' Omni'' magazine in May 1981, and was subsequently included in ''Burning Chrome'', a 1986 collection of Gibson's short fiction. ...
" (1981, '' Omni'') ** " The Gernsback Continuum" (1981, ''Universe 11'') ** "Hinterlands (short story), Hinterlands" (1981, ''Omni'') ** "The Belonging Kind", with
John Shirley John Shirley (born February 10, 1953) is an American writer, primarily of fantasy, science fiction, dark street fiction, westerns, and songwriting. He has also written one historical novel, a western about Wyatt Earp, ''Wyatt in Wichita'', and ...
(1981, ''Shadows 4'') ** "
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 ...
" (1982, ''Omni'') ** "Red Star, Winter Orbit", with Bruce Sterling (1983, ''Omni'') ** "New Rose Hotel" (1984, ''Omni'') ** "The Winter Market" (Nov. 1985, ''Vancouver'') ** "Dogfight (short story), Dogfight", with Michael Swanwick (1985, ''Omni'') * "Skinner's Room" (Nov. 1991, ''Omni'') Nonfiction * ''Agrippa (A Book of the Dead)'' (1992) – a poem and artist's book * ''
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 Docur ...
'' (2000) – an independent documentary film * ''Distrust That Particular Flavor'' (2012) – written over a period of more than twenty years * "Disneyland with the Death Penalty" – a 1993 ''Wired (magazine), Wired'' article


Media appearances

* ''No Maps for These Territories'' (2000) * Making of ''Johnny Mnemonic'' (1995) * ''Cyberpunk'' (1990) * ''Wild Palms'' (1993)


Explanatory notes


References


Further reading

* * * *


External links

*
Bibliography
from the Centre for Language and Literature, Athabasca University * * * (including bibliography of selected interviews)
William Gibson aleph
– an extensive site dedicated to the author and his works (last updated Nov 2010) * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Gibson, William William Gibson, 1948 births 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American short story writers 20th-century Canadian male writers 20th-century Canadian non-fiction writers 20th-century Canadian novelists 20th-century Canadian short story writers 20th-century essayists 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American novelists 21st-century American short story writers 21st-century Canadian male writers 21st-century Canadian non-fiction writers 21st-century Canadian novelists 21st-century Canadian short story writers 21st-century essayists American agnostics American alternate history writers American bloggers American emigrants to Canada American expatriate writers in Canada American male bloggers American male essayists American male novelists American male short story writers American science fiction writers American social commentators American television writers Canadian agnostics Canadian alternative history writers Canadian bloggers Canadian male essayists Canadian male novelists Canadian male short story writers Canadian science fiction writers Canadian social commentators Canadian television writers Counterculture of the 1960s Critics of religions Cultural critics Cyberpunk writers Cyberspace Futurologists Hugo Award-winning writers Hyperreality theorists Inkpot Award winners Internet pioneers Living people Naturalized citizens of Canada Nebula Award winners Novelists from South Carolina Novelists from Virginia People from Conway, South Carolina Philosophers of art Philosophers of culture Philosophers of literature Philosophers of mind Philosophers of science Philosophers of social science Philosophers of technology Postmodern writers Science fiction critics Science fiction fans Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees SFWA Grand Masters Social critics Social philosophers Theorists on Western civilization University of British Columbia alumni Vietnam War draft evaders Virtual reality Wired (magazine) people Writers about activism and social change Writers about globalization Writers about religion and science