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William Gibson

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For other people named William Gibson, see William Gibson (disambiguation).

Template:Infobox Science Fiction Writer William Ford Gibson (born (1948-03-17)March 17, 1948, 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,[1] 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.[2]

Biography

Early life

William Ford Gibson was born in 1948 in the coastal city of Conway, South Carolina and spent most of his childhood in Wytheville, Virginia.[3] His family moved around frequently due to his father's position as manager in a large construction company, until the latter's death when the author was six years old.[4] His mother returned them to South Carolina, a place Gibson describes as "a place where modernity had arrived to some extent but was deeply distrusted" and credits the beginnings of his relationship with science fiction with the subsequent feeling of abrupt exile.[4] At fifteen he was sent to a private boarding school in Tucson, Arizona by his mother, by now "chronically anxious and depressive".[4] Tom Maddox has commented that Gibson grew up in "an America as disturbing and surreal as anything J. G. Ballard ever dreamed."[5]

Draft dodging and life in the North

In 1967, Gibson went to Canada "to avoid the Vietnam war draft",[6] appearing that year in a CBC newsreel item about hippie subculture in Yorkville, Toronto.[7] He settled in Vancouver, British Columbia five years later and began to write science fiction. Although he retains U.S. citizenship,[8] 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)

The street finds its own uses for things

Burning Chrome (1981)

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 "Gibson's classic one-two combination of lowlife and high tech."[9]

Neuromancer and the Sprawl trilogy (1984 – 1988)

Main article: Sprawl trilogy

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 1999's No Maps for These Territories on the author of Neuromancer.[6]

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)

Main article: Bridge trilogy

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 a more grounded, matter-of-fact style than his first trilogy. The books in this trilogy are titled Virtual Light (1993), Idoru (1996), and All Tomorrow's Parties (1999). A common theme up to this point has been the use of characters with seemingly innate abilities in the technological world they inhabit.

Later novels (1999 – )

File:Gibson-gatech-pattern recognition-karthik.jpg
Gibson reading at Georgia Tech during the Pattern Recognition book tour.

…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.

— William Gibson in an interview on CNN, August 26, 1997.

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.[10]

Gibson finished writing a new novel entitled Spook Country in October 2006 and it was released in the US on 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."[11]

Spook Country was released in hardback in the UK on August 2, 2007 and features some of the same characters as Pattern Recognition, including Hubertus Bigend and Pamela Mainwaring - employees of the enigmatic marketing company Blue Ant.

Collaborations, adaptations and miscellanea

Literary 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.

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 foreword to the novel City come a-walkin' by fellow cyberpunk and occasional collaborator John Shirley.[12] In 1993, Gibson contributed lyrics and featured as a guest vocalist on Yellow Magic Orchestra's Technodon album,[13][14] and co-wrote lyrics to the track "Dog Star Girl" for Deborah Harry's Debravation.[15]

Exhibitions 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 future Johnny Mnemonic director Robert Longo entitled 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 theatre group "La Fura dels Baus" at Art Futura, Barcelona, which featured images by Karl Sims, Rebecca Allen, Mark Pellington and music by Peter Gabriel and others.[13] Gibson's latest contribution was in 1997, a collaboration with critically acclaimed Vancouver-based contemporary dance company Holy Body Tattoo.

In 1990, 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[16] featuring the author on a monitor discussing the future and reading from "Skinner's Room", a short story prequel to the trilogy.[13]

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.[17] 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" diskette embedded in the back of an artist's book containing etchings by Ashbaugh (these were supposed to fade from view once the book was opened and exposed to light — they never did). "Ashbaugh's design eventually included a supposedly self-devouring floppy-disk intended to display the text only once, then eat itself."[18] Contrary to numerous colorful reports, the diskettes were never actually "hacked." Instead the poem was manually transcribed from a surreptitious video tape of its screen projection at a public showing in Manhattan in December 1992, and released on the MindVox BBS the next day; this is the text that still circulates widely on the Internet today.[19]

Film adaptations and screenplays

File:No maps-cyberspace.jpg
Gibson discussing the coining of "cyberspace" in the documentary No Maps for These Territories (1999).

Two of his short stories have been adapted as films: 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 was in production, due for release in 2008,[20] but according to Gibson, Weir is no longer attached to the project.[21] In 2006, Alex Steyermark claimed to be developing an anime adaptation of Gibson's Idoru,[22] the status of which is currently unknown. Neuromancer, after a long stay in development hell, is currently in the process of adaptation,[23] and is listed by the Internet Movie Database for release in 2009.[24]

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 Neuromancer by Bono and The Edge.[6]

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.[25] 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.[26][27][28]

Influence

Hailed by the Literary Encyclopedia as "one of North America's most highly acclaimed science fiction writers",[3] Gibson's debut novel Neuromancer won the "holy trinity" of science fiction awards; the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award. Notwithstanding this, Gibson was read outside science fiction circles as early as the Sprawl trilogy.[29] His work, which has received international attention,[3] is often situated by critics within the context of postindustrialism as a construction of "a mirror of existing large-scale techno-social relations",[30] and as a narrative version of postmodern consumer culture.[31] It is praised by critics for its depictions of late capitalism[30] and its "rewriting of subjectivity, human consciousness and behaviour made newly problematic by technology."[31]

Cultural influence

Gibson's work has influenced several popular musicians; references to his stories appear in the music of Stuart Hamm,[32] Billy Idol,[33] Warren Zevon,[34] Deltron 3030, Straylight Run[35] 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[36] 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.

The Matrix is arguably the ultimate “cyberpunk” artifact.

— William Gibson, The William Gibson blog, 2003.[37]

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 similarities to Case and Molly in Neuromancer.[38] Hackers (1995) is another film, which although not drawing influence from Gibson directly, pays homage to him. The computer which the hackers break into toward the end of the film is called "the Gibson."[39]

Visionary influence

The future is already here — it's just not evenly distributed.

— William Gibson, quoted in The Economist, June 23, 2000.[40]

Gibson coined the term 'cyberspace' and in Neuromancer first used the term 'matrix' to refer to the visualised Internet.[41][42][43] 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. However, Gibson refuted the notion that he predicted Lonelygirl15 or YouTube [44] stating: "Wow, the legend grows and grows! You could probably make a case that I predicted Lonelygirl in Pattern Recognition. But I don't think the people who did were thinking, 'This sounds like a riff from a William Gibson novel!'"

Gibson has never had a special relationship with computers. Neuromancer was in fact written on a manual typewriter (he eventually upgraded to a Macintosh SE/30). In 2007 he reported:

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."[11]

Bibliography

File:Gibson sprawl.jpg
The Sprawl trilogy: Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive.

Novels

Collections

File:Burning Chrome (Book).jpg
Cover of the Burning Chrome short story collection

Uncollected short fiction

  • "Tokyo Collage" in SF Eye, August 1988.[15]
  • "Hippy Hat Brain Parasite" in Rucker, Rudy (1989). Semiotext[[E]] Sf. Brooklyn: Autonomedia. pp. 109–122. ISBN 0936756438.
  • "The Nazi Lawn Dwarf Murders" (unpublished)[45]
  • "Doing Television" in Dorsey, Candas (1989). Tesseracts 3. Victoria: Porcépic. pp. 392–394. ISBN 9780888782908.
  • "Darwin" in Spin, April 1990, 21-23.[15][13]
  • "Skinner's Room" in Polledri, Paolo (1990). Visionary San Francisco. Munich: Prestal. pp. 153–65. ISBN 3791310607.
  • "Academy Leader" in Benedikt, Michael (1991). Cyberspace. Cambridge: MIT Press. pp. 27–29. ISBN 0262521776.
  • "Cyber-Claus" in Hartwell, David (1992). Christmas Stars. New York: Tor Books. ISBN 0812522869.
  • "Where the Holograms Go" in Trilling, Roger (1993). Wild Palms Reader. City: St Martins Pr. pp. 122–23. ISBN 0312090838.
  • "Thirteen Views of a Cardboard City" in Aldiss, Brian (1997). New Worlds. Clarkston: White Wolf Pub. pp. 338–349. ISBN 1565041909.
Cover of Agrippa (A Book of the Dead), released in 1992

Articles

Miscellaneous other work

Emergent technology is, by its very nature, out of control, and leads to unpredictable outcomes.

William Gibson, address at the Directors Guild of America's Digital Day, Los Angeles, May 17, 2003.

Further reading

  • Olsen, Lance (1992). William Gibson. San Bernardino: Borgo Press. ISBN 1557421986.
  • Cavallaro, Dani (2000). Cyberpunk and Cyberculture. London: Athlone Press. ISBN 9780485006070.
  • Tatsumi, Takayuki (2006). Full Metal Apache: Transactions between Cyberpunk Japan and Avant-Pop America. Durham: Duke University Press. ISBN 9780822337744.

References

  1. ^ "www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=cyberspace".
  2. ^ Gibson, William (2006-03-08). "William Gibson: His Blog". Retrieved 2007-02-28.
  3. ^ a b c Rapatzikou, Tatiani (2003-06-17). ""William Gibson."" (encyclopedia entry). The Literary Encyclopedia. The Literary Dictionary Company. Retrieved 2007-08-27. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  4. ^ a b c ""Since 1948"" (autobiographical sketch). Retrieved 2007-08-27.
  5. ^ Maddox, Tom (1989). "Maddox on Gibson" (zine article). #23. Virus. Retrieved 2007-07-13.
  6. ^ a b c Mark Neale (2000), No Maps for These Territories, Docurama
  7. ^ Yorkville: Hippie haven. Yorkville, Toronto: CBC.ca. 1967-09-04. Retrieved 2007-04-16.
  8. ^ Bolhafner, J. Stephen (1994). "William Gibson interview". Starlog (200): 72. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  9. ^ Gibson, William (1986). Burning Chrome. New York: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-06-053982-8. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  10. ^ Hirst, Christopher (2003-05-10). "Books: Hardbacks". The Independent. Retrieved 2007-07-08. Cyberspace guru William Gibson's tale of urban paranoia has shot straight to No 6
  11. ^ a b Chang, Angela (2007-01-10). "Q&A: William Gibson". PC Magazine. 26 (3): 19.
  12. ^ Gibson, William (1996-03-31). "Forward to City Come a-walkin'". Retrieved 2007-05-01.
  13. ^ a b c d "William Gibson Bibliography / Mediagraphy".
  14. ^ "EDiscogs entry for Technodon".
  15. ^ a b c d Bibliography of Works By William Gibson from the Centre for Language and Literature at Athabasca University.
  16. ^ Goldberger, Paul (1990-08-12). "Architecture View; In San Francisco, a Good Idea Falls With a Thud". New York Times.
  17. ^ Alan Liu, The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 339-48.
  18. ^ "Introduction to Agrippa: A Book of the Dead by William Gibson".
  19. ^ Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination (Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, forthcoming January 2008).
  20. ^ "Pattern Recognition". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 2007-05-01.
  21. ^ Gibson, William (2007-05-01). "I'VE FORGOTTEN MORE NEUROMANCER FILM DEALS THAN YOU'VE EVER HEARD OF". williamgibsonbooks.com. Retrieved 2007-08-11.
  22. ^ "William Gibson's Idoru Coming to Anime". cyberpunkreview.com. 2006-04-21. Retrieved 2007-05-01.
  23. ^ "Neuromancer comes" (news item). JoBlo.com. Retrieved 2007-08-27.
  24. ^ Neuromancer at IMDb
  25. ^ Archive of articles written by Gibson from the Aleph, retrieved April 9, 2007
  26. ^ Gibson, William (2006-06-01). "MOOR". williamgibsonbooks.com. Retrieved 2007-08-11.
  27. ^ Gibson, William (2006-09-23). "JOHNSON BROS". williamgibsonbooks.com. Retrieved 2007-08-11.
  28. ^ Gibson, William (2006-10-03). "THEIR DIFFERENT DRUMMER". williamgibsonbooks.com. Retrieved 2007-08-11.
  29. ^ Fitting, Peter (1991). "The Lessons of Cyberpunk". Technoculture. Cultural Politics (3): 295–315. [Gibson's work]…has attracted an audience from outside, people who read it as a poetic evocation of life in the late eighties rather than as science fiction. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |quotes= (help)
  30. ^ a b Brande, David (1994). "The Business of Cyberpunk: Symbolic Economy and Ideology in William Gibson". Configurations. 2 (3): 509–536. Retrieved 2007-08-27. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |quotes= (help)
  31. ^ a b Template:Cite online journal
  32. ^ Several track names on his Kings of Sleep album ("Black Ice", "Count Zero", "Kings of Sleep") are references to Gibson's work
  33. ^ See his Cyberpunk album
  34. ^ Transverse City was inspired by Gibson
  35. ^ http://www.mtv.com/music/artist/straylight_run/artist.jhtml
  36. ^ "Neuromancer audiobook". {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessmonthday= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  37. ^ Gibson, William (2003-01-28). "THE MATRIX: FAIR COP". William Gibson's Blog. Retrieved 2007-08-06. Whatever of my work may be there, it seems to me to have gotten there by exactly the kind of creative cultural osmosis I've always depended on myself. If there's NEUROMANCER in THE MATRIX, there's THE STARS MY DESTINATION and DHALGREN in NEUROMANCER, and much else besides, down to and including actual bits of embarrassingly undigested gristle. And while I was drawing directly from those originals, and many others, the makers of THE MATRIX were drawing through a pre-existing "cyberpunk" esthetic, which constituted as much of a found object, for them, as "science fiction" did for me. From where they were, they had the added luxury of choosing bits from, say, Billy Idol's "Neuromancer" as well. When I began to write NEUROMANCER, there was no "cyberpunk". THE MATRIX is arguably the ultimate "cyberpunk" artifact. Or will be, if the sequels don't blow. I hope they don't, and somehow have a hunch they won't, but I'm glad I'm not the one who has to worry about it. {{cite web}}: External link in |publisher= (help); line feed character in |quote= at position 701 (help)
  38. ^ Hepfer, Karl (2001). "The Matrix Problem I: The Matrix, Mind and Knowledge". Erfurt Electronic Studies in English. ISSN 1430-6905. Retrieved 2007-08-27.
  39. ^ "Trivia for Hackers (1995)". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 2007-08-15.
  40. ^ "Books of the year 2003" (book review). BOOKS & ARTS. The Economist. 2000-06-23. Retrieved 2007-08-06. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  41. ^ "highlighted quote from Neuromancer excerpt".
  42. ^ Cyberspace at The Jargon File
  43. ^ "Matrix at Netlingo".
  44. ^ in the August 14 2006 edition of the free daily publication, Metro International, while being interviewed by Amy Benfer (email: amybenfer@metro.us)
  45. ^ "Tom Maddox Unreal-Time Chat" (email exchange). Shop Talk. Retrieved 2007-07-13.
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