William Ford Gibson

Template:Infobox Science Fiction Writer William Ford Gibson (born 1948 March 17}}, Conway, South Carolina) is an American-born science fiction author who has been called the father of the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction, partly due to coining the term "cyberspace" in 1982, and partly because of the success of his first novel, Neuromancer, which has sold more than 6.5 million copies worldwide since its publication in 1984.

In 1967, Gibson went to Canada "to avoid the Vietnam war draft", appearing that year in a CBC newsreel item about hippie subculture in Yorkville, Toronto. He settled in Vancouver, British Columbia five years later and began to write science fiction. Although he retains U.S. citizenship, Gibson has spent most of his adult life in Canada, and still lives in the Vancouver area.

Literary career

Early years: Short stories and Burning Chrome (1972–1984)

His early writings are generally futuristic stories about the influences of cybernetics and cyberspace (computer-simulated reality) technology on the human race. His themes of hi-tech shantytowns, 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" (1977). The latter thematic obsession was described by Gibson's friend and fellow author, Bruce Sterling, in Sterling's introduction to the Gibson short story collection, Burning Chrome, as "a one-two combination of high-tech and low-life".

Neuromancer and the Sprawl trilogy (1984–1988)

In the 1980s, his fiction developed a film noir, bleak feel; short stories appearing in Omni began to develop the themes he eventually expanded into his first novel, Neuromancer. Neuromancer was the first novel to win all three major science fiction awards: the Nebula, the Hugo, and Philip K. Dick Award.

"I'd buy him a drink, but I don't know if I'd loan him any money."--Gibson commenting in 1996's No Maps for These Territories on the author of Neuromancer.</small>

The subsequent novels which complete his first trilogy - commonly known as "The Sprawl trilogy" - are Count Zero (1986) and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988).

The Difference Engine and the Bridge trilogy (1990–1999)

Following the completion of the Sprawl trilogy, Gibson's next project was a departure from his cyberpunk roots, a steampunk collaboration with Bruce Sterling. The Difference Engine, an alternate history novel set in a technologically advanced Victorian era Britain was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1991 and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1992. Gibson's second trilogy, "The Bridge trilogy", centres on San Francisco in the near future and evinces Gibson's recurring themes of technological, physical, and spiritual transcendence in an arguably more grounded, matter-of-fact style than his first trilogy. The books in this trilogy are titled Virtual Light (1994), Idoru (1997), and All Tomorrow's Parties (1999).

Later novels (1999– )

After All Tomorrow's Parties, Gibson began to adopt a more realistic style of writing, with continuous narratives. His novel Pattern Recognition, set in the present day, broke into mainstream bestseller lists for the first time.

Gibson finished writing a new novel entitled Spook Country in October 2006. According to Amazon.com, its scheduled market release is set for August 7, 2007. Gibson says: "It's set 'in the same universe,' as they say, as Pattern Recognition. Which is more or less the one we live in now. It takes place during the spring of 2006."

Collaborations, adaptations and miscellanea

Collaborations

In 1990, Gibson co-wrote the Nebula Award-nominated alternate history novel The Difference Engine with friend and fellow founder of the cyberpunk movement Bruce Sterling. The novel is notable for being one of the founding texts of the steampunk sub-genre of speculative fiction.

Earlier that year, Gibson wrote an article about a decaying San Francisco, its Bay Bridge closed and taken over by the homeless (a theme later to form the setting of the Bridge Trilogy) as part of a collaboration with the architects Ming Fung and Craig Hodgetts; this article became part of an exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

In 1992, Gibson wrote Agrippa (A Book of the Dead), an electronic poem. It focused on the ethereal nature of memories (the title refers to a photo album) in the artist's book collaboration with painter Dennis Ashbaugh and publisher Kevin Begos. The book included a self-erasing floppy disk intended to display the text only once, then "eat itself" after being read (Gibson quote from his weblog). The poem has since found its way onto the Internet.

Gibson, together with his friend Tom Maddox, wrote the X-Files episodes "Kill Switch" and "First Person Shooter". In 1998, Gibson wrote the introduction to the Art of the X-Files. Gibson also made a cameo appearance in the miniseries Wild Palms. Gibson also wrote the forward to the novel City come a-walkin' by fellow cyberpunk and occasional collaborator John Shirley.

In 1997, Gibson collaborated with critically acclaimed Vancouver-based contemporary dance company Holy Body Tattoo, contributing text that was integrated into their performance.

Film adaptations and screenplays

Two of his short stories have been turned into movies: 1995's Johnny Mnemonic, starring Keanu Reeves (screenplay by Gibson), and 1998's New Rose Hotel, starring Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, and Asia Argento, both of which are set in the Sprawl trilogy universe. Gibson also wrote an early treatment of Alien³, few elements of which found their way into the film. A film adaptation of Pattern Recognition by director Peter Weir is currently in active production, due for release in 2008. In 2006 Alex Steyermark claimed to be developing an anime adaptation of Gibson's Idoru, the status of which is currently unknown.

Gibson was the focus of a 1999 documentary by Mark Neale called No Maps for These Territories, which followed Gibson across the North American continent discussing various aspects of his personal life, literary career and cultural interpretations. The documentary features interviews with Jack Womack and Bruce Sterling, as well as recitations from Neruomancer by Bono and The Edge.

Journalism

Gibson is a sporadic contributor to Wired magazine, and has written for The Observer, Addicted to Noise, New York Times Magazine and Rolling Stone. He commenced writing a blog in early 2003, which remains active, with one major hiatus, into 2007. During the process of writing Spook Country, Gibson frequently posted short nonsequential excerpts from the novel to the blog.

Influence

Gibson's work has influenced several popular musicians; references to his stories appear in the music of Stuart Hamm, Billy Idol, Warren Zevon, Deltron 3030, Straylight Run and Sonic Youth. U2 at one point planned to scroll the text of "Neuromancer" above them on a concert tour, but ended up not doing it. Members of the band did, however, provide background music for the audiobook version of "Neuromancer" as well as appearing in Gibson's biographical documentary, No Maps for These Territories. Gibson returned the favour, writing an article about U2 on tour titled 'U2's City of the blinding light' for Wired Magazine.

In the landmark cyberpunk film The Matrix (1999), the title itself and some of the characters were inspired by the novel. Neo and Trinity in The Matrix show remarkable similarities to Case and Molly in Neuromancer. In an interview Gibson, when questioned about copyright issues, laughed it away and called it 'the unpaid invoice'.

Visionary influence

Gibson coined the term 'cyberspace' and in Neuromancer first used the term 'matrix' to refer to the visualised internet. He predicted the rise of the internet and many of the subcultural aspects of it, e.g. the hacker's subculture in Neuromancer. In Pattern Recognition, an important plotline revolves around snippets of film footage posted anonymously at 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. Again, Gibson predicted an internet application, of which YouTube is perhaps the best known example.

Despite all this, Gibson never had a special relationship with computers. His watershed Neuromancer was in fact written on a manual typewriter (he eventually moved up to a Macintosh SE/30). In 2007 he reports:
"I have a 2005 PowerBook G4, a 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 how people behave around them. That's becoming more difficult to do because everything is "around them.""

Selected quotations

• 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 CNN, August 26, 1997.

• ...the street finds its own uses for things. -- from "Burning Chrome"

• Writing a novel for me...the part of the text where you're moving forward into nothingness, it feels like being one of those transatlantic tunneling machines...grinding away at a dank dark rock face. -- from a radio interview with This Week in Science originally recorded on February 03, 2004.

• "The Matrix is arguably the ultimate “cyberpunk” artifact." -- Taken from the the official William Gibson internet blog.

• The future is already here. It's just not widely distributed yet.

Bibliography

File:Gibson sprawl.jpg

The Sprawl trilogy: Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive.

Novels

• Neuromancer (1984) (part 1 of the Sprawl Trilogy)
• Count Zero (1986) (part 2 of the Sprawl Trilogy)
• Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988) (part 3 of the Sprawl Trilogy)
• The Difference Engine (1990) (with Bruce Sterling)
• Virtual Light (1993) (part 1 of the Bridge Trilogy)
• Idoru (1996) (part 2 of the Bridge Trilogy)
• All Tomorrow's Parties (1999) (part 3 of the Bridge Trilogy)
• Pattern Recognition (2003)
• Spook Country (2007)

Collections

• Burning Chrome (1986), which includes:
  • "Fragments of a Hologram Rose" (1977, UnEarth 3)
  • "Johnny Mnemonic" (1981, Omni)
  • "The Gernsback Continuum" (1981, Universe II)
  • "Hinterlands" (1981, Omni)
  • "New Rose Hotel" (1981, Omni)
  • "The Belonging Kind", with John Shirley (1981, Shadows 4)
  • "Burning Chrome" (1982, Omni)
  • "Red Star, Winter Orbit", with Bruce Sterling (1983, Omni)
  • "The Winter Market" (1985)
  • "Dogfight", with Michael Swanwick (1985, Omni)

Uncollected short fiction

• "Academy Leader"
• "Doing Television" (1990)
• "Skinner's Room" (1990)
• "Cyber-Claus" (1991)
• "Thirteen Views of a Cardboard City" (1997)
• "Hippy Hat Brain Parasite"

Magazine articles

• Count Zero Serialization (1986), Issac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, January, February, March issues. Art by J. K. Potter
• Disneyland With The Death Penalty (1993), Wired Magazine, 1.04
• My Obsession (1999), Wired Magazine, 7.01
• William Gibson's Filmless Festival (1999), Wired Magazine, 7.10
• My Own Private Tokyo (2001), Wired Magazine, 9.09
• God's Little Toys (2005), Wired Magazine, 13.7
• U2's City of Blinding Lights (2005), Wired Magazine, 13.8

Miscellaneous other work

• Agrippa (A Book of the Dead) (1992)—an artist's book.
• Introduction to The Art of the X-Files (1998)
• Two episodes of The X-Files

Further reading

• Olsen, Lance (1992). William Gibson, San Bernardino: Borgo Press.

• Cavallaro, Dani (2000). Cyberpunk and Cyberculture, London: Athlone Press.

External links

Official

• William Gibson's website
• Archive index for William Gibson's weblog

References

• William Gibson at the Internet Movie Database
• Template:isfdb name
• Literary Encyclopedia's biography
• Project Cyberpunk's biography and links
• Japanese scholar Takayuki Tatsumi's Full Metal Apache, which examines Gibson and other cyberpunk figures in Japan and the U.S.

Interviews

• William Gibson discussing our post-mediated culture
• Video interview with Gibson from 1967
• Audio interview at CBC Bookclub (1hr) from 2003
• Streaming audio interview (20min) from 2003
• Tech Nation Interview (20 minute mp3)
• Spike Magazine Interview
• Radio Interview from This Week in Science Sept 12, 2006 Broadcast

Notable fan sites

• William Gibson Aleph An extensive fan site
• Synaptic Response Formerly neuromancer.ca

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