photo from
William
Gibson information page
William
Gibson information pageWilliam Gibson was born in the United States in 1948, but moved to Canada at age nineteen. His first novel, Neuromancer, won the Hugo Award, the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award, and the Nebula Award in 1984. Gibson is credited with having coined the term "Cyberspace," and with having envisioned both The Internet and Virtual Reality before either existed. At the same time he eschewed advanced technology, writing Neuromancer on an old typewriter (indeed, "Gibson's Typewriter" has become part of the folklore of the modern world)
The modest and unassuming Gibson single-handedly founded, and remains a leading writer in, the genre of Cyberpunk, extrapolating contemporary technology and socio-economic trends into a future of urban decay and the social mores of a post-punk generation. He has been hailed as 'the new George Orwell' (The Sunday Times) and 'the Raymond Chandler of SF' (Observer), and there is no denying the influence of Raymond Chandler in his gritty noir style and hard-bitten (anti-)heros.
William Gibson now lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with his wife
and their two children.
The Neuromancer Trilogy:
Neuromancer
Mona Lisa Overdrive
Count Zero
The Idoru Trilogy:
Virtual Light
Idoru
All Tomorrow's Parties
short stories:
Burning Chrome (a collection of short
stories)
other novels:
The Difference Engine (With Bruce Sterling)
Virtual Light
Idoru
The Difference Engine is a sort of alternative history set in a 19th century world of steam-driven mechanical computers. This book initiated the short-lived genre of Steampunk. (gotta love that name! ;-) - there is even a charcter in the "Sinister & Dexter" series of Judge Dredd 2000 AD comic book called "Steampunk Willy")
Gibson also wrote the screenplay for Johnny
Mnemonic, based on one of his short stories of the same name.
Unfortunately it was a big flop at the Box Office, and the quality of the
script was (apart from a few good lines) greatly inferior to his prose.
More recently he has worked with Chris Carter on episodes of The X-Files
(the episode Kill
Switch, co-scripted with Tom Maddox, being one of the rare examples
of successful adaptation of cyberpunk to TV) and Harsh Realm, and
is tentatively looking (with Chris Cunningham) at adapting Neuromancer
to video.
 |
- William Gibson - Links - | |
An
Interview with William Gibson
Neuromancer's
Matrix - a cool new site - home to the William
Gibson Ring
Resources
on William Gibson - comprehensive
WILLIAM
GIBSON TOOLKIT - bibliography, reviews, and an Encyclopedia. The Encyclopedia
presently contains only Neuromancer.
an
interview with William Gibson by Dan Josefsson - Gibson's thoughts
on the Internet, social problems in America, and why he does not even have
an email addy, let alone a web page! Good stuff!
NO
SLACK IN TOKYO - A review of William Gibson's novel Virtual Light
Burning Chrome (entire collection online)
Cyberpunk index page |
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