William Gibson (novelist)

Image:Gibson-gatech-pattern recognition-karthik.jpg

Some credit William Gibson with writing the most clear-cut examples of the Science Fiction genre known as cyberpunk, as well as coining the term cyberspace.

William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an author, mostly of science fiction novels, who lives in Canada. He has been called the father of the cyberpunk movement, a subgenre of science fiction. His first and most influential novel, Neuromancer, has sold more than 6.5 million copies worldwide since its publication in 1984.

1 Bio
2 Quotes
3 Bibliography
4 External links

[edit]

Bio

Gibson was born in Conway, South Carolina, USA. In 1968, he fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam era draft in the United States, and in 1972, he settled in Vancouver, B.C., where he began to write science fiction and has spent his adult life. His early works are generally futuristic stories about the influences of cybernetic and cyberspace (computer simulated reality) technology on the human race living in the imminent future. His '80s fiction, especially, has a noir, bleak feel. His first novel, Neuromancer, won three major science-fiction awards (Nebula, Hugo, and Philip K. Dick Memorial Award).

The novels rounding out his first trilogy in what is commonly known as the "Sprawl Trilogy" are Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive.

Gibson also wrote a second trilogy centered on the San Francisco of the near future, which deal with Gibson's recurring theme of transcendence in a more grounded, matter-of-fact way than his first trilogy. The books in this trilogy are titled Virtual Light, Idoru, and All Tomorrow's Parties.

More recently, Gibson has begun to move away from the fictional dystopias that made him famous, toward a more realist style of writing, eschewing his trademark jump-cuts in favour of continuity and narrative flow. The novel Pattern Recognition even saw him enter the mainstream bestseller lists for the first time. There is, however, still focus on technological change, especially its darker, less predictable social consequences.

In addition to his conventionally-published works, he wrote Agrippa (A Book of the Dead), an electronic poem published in 1992. It was about the ethereal nature of memories (the title refers to a photo album), written in 1992 for "a multi-unit artwork to be designed by artist Dennis Ashbaugh and "published" by art-guy Kevin Begos. Ashbaugh's design eventually included a supposedly self-devouring floppy disk intended to display the text only once, then eat itself" after being read, but has since found its way onto the Internet (Gibson Quote from his weblog). He commenced writing a weblog in early 2003, which remains active, with one major hiatus, into 2005. Gibson also wrote a highly anticipated treatment of Alien³, few elements of which found their way into the film.

Two of his short stories have been turned into movies: 1995's Johnny Mnemonic, starring Keanu Reeves, and 1998's New Rose Hotel, starring Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, and Asia Argento. Gibson, together with his friend Tom Maddox, wrote the X-Files episodes "Kill Switch" and "First Person Shooter" and made a cameo appearance in the latter. Gibson also made a cameo appearance in the miniseries Wild Palms, which was heavily influenced by the work of Gibson and other cyberpunk writers. Gibson's article on fellow cyberpunk and occasional collaborator John Shirley can be read here.

Gibson was the focus of a 1999 documentary by Mark Neale called No Maps for These Territories, featuring Bono and The Edge reading excerpts from Neuromancer.

Despite all this, Gibson never had a special relationship with computers.

[edit]

Quotes

I suspect I have spent just about exactly as much time actually writing as the average person my age has spent watching television, and that, as much as anything, may be the real secret here. -- excerpt from short autobiography on Gibson's website, williamgibsonbooks.com

Emergent technology is, by its very nature, out of control, and leads to unpredictable outcomes. -- from a talk given at the Directors Guild of America's Digital Day, Los Angeles, May 17, 2003.

"...I felt that I was trying to describe an unthinkable present and I actually feel that science fiction's best use today is the exploration of contemporary reality rather than any attempt to predict where we are going... The best thing you can do with science today is use it to explore the present. Earth is the alien planet now." --from an interview on CNNfn, August 26, 1997.

[edit]