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,[6][7] 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.[8]
Although his early writing took the form of short stories, Gibson has written (or co-written) nine critically-acclaimed novels, contributed articles to several major publications, and has collaborated extensively with performance artists, filmmakers and musicians. His thought has been cited as an influence on science fiction authors, in academia, cyberculture, and technology.
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 although his family moved around frequently due to his father's position as manager in a large construction company.[9] After his father's death when Gibson was six years old, his mother returned them to South Carolina, which he later described 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.[10] At fifteen he was sent to a private boarding school in Tucson, Arizona by his then "chronically anxious and depressive" mother.[10]Tom Maddox has commented that Gibson "grew up in an America as disturbing and surreal as anything J. G. Ballard ever dreamed."[11]
Gibson's 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 the introduction to Gibson's short story collection Burning Chrome, as "Gibson's classic one-two combination of lowlife and high tech."[15]
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 on the author of Neuromancer[12]
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" composed of Virtual Light (1993), Idoru (1996), and All Tomorrow's Parties (1999), 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. A common theme up to this point has been the use of characters with seemingly innate abilities in the technological world they inhabit.
…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.
After All Tomorrow's Parties, Gibson began to adopt a more realistic style of writing, with continuous narratives — "speculative fiction of the very recent past."[16] His novel Pattern Recognition, set in the present day, broke into mainstream bestseller lists for the first time.[17] Gibson's latest novel, Spook Country, was released in August 2007. It is set in Spring 2006 in the same universe as Pattern Recognition,[18] and features some of the same characters as its predecessor, including Hubertus Bigend and Pamela Mainwaring - employees of the enigmatic marketing company Blue Ant.
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 subsequently became part of an exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art[23] featuring the author on a monitor discussing the future and reading from "Skinner's Room", a short story prequel to the trilogy.[20]
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.[24] 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 (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."[25] Contrary to numerous colorful reports, the diskettes were never actually "hacked." Instead the poem was manually transcribed from a surreptitious videotape of its screen projection at a public showing in Manhattan in December 1992, and released on the MindVoxBBS the next day; this is the text that still circulates widely on the Internet today.[26]
Two of Gibson's short stories, both set in the Sprawl trilogy universe, have been loosely adapted as films: 1995's Johnny Mnemonic, starring Keanu Reeves (for which Gibson wrote the screenplay), and 1998's New Rose Hotel, starring Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, and Asia Argento. In late 1980s Gibson 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 development, but according to Gibson, Weir is no longer attached to the project.[27] An anime adaptation of Gibson's Idoru was announced as in development in 2006.[28]Neuromancer, after a long stay in development hell, is in the process of adaptation as of 2007.[29]
Gibson was the focus of a 1999 documentary film by Mark Neale called No Maps for These Territories, which followed Gibson 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.[12]
Journalism
Gibson is a sporadic contributor to Wired, and has written for The Observer, Addicted to Noise, New York Times Magazine and Rolling Stone.[30] He commenced writing a blog in January 2003, which remains active, with one major hiatus (September 2003 – October 2004) as of August 2007. During the process of writing Spook Country, Gibson frequently posted short nonsequential excerpts from the novel to the blog.[31]
Influence
Hailed by the Literary Encyclopedia as "one of North America's most highly acclaimed science fiction writers",[9] Gibson first achieved critical recognition with his debut novel, Neuromancer, which 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 era.[32] His work, which has received international attention,[9] is often situated by critics within the context of postindustrialism as a construction of "a mirror of existing large-scale techno-social relations",[33] and as a narrative version of postmodernconsumer culture.[34] It is praised by critics for its depictions of late capitalism[33] and its "rewriting of subjectivity, human consciousness and behaviour made newly problematic by technology."[34]
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.[37]Hackers (1995) is another film, which although not drawing direct influence from Gibson, pays homage to him—the computer which the hackers break into toward the end of the film is called "the Gibson."[38]
Visionary influence
The future is already here — it's just not evenly distributed.
Gibson coined the term cyberspace[7] and in Neuromancer first used the term 'matrix' to refer to the visualised Internet.[40] He predicted the rise of the Internet and many of the subcultural aspects of it, e.g. the hacker's subculture in Neuromancer.
Gibson's vision, generated by the monopolising appearance of the terminal image and presented in his creation of the cyberspace matrix, came to him when he saw teenagers playing in video arcades. The physical intensity of their postures, and the realistic interpretation of the terminal spaces projected by these games — as if there were a real space behind the screen — made apparent the manipulation of the real by its own representation.
— Tatiani G. Rapatzikou, Gothic Motifs in the Fiction of William Gibson[41]
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 Lonelygirl15internet phenomenon. However, Gibson refuted the notion that he predicted Lonelygirl15 or YouTube 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!'"[IV]
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 said:
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."[18]
Foreword to Girard, Greg (2007). Phantom Shanghai. Magenta Foundation. ISBN9780973973914.
Further reading
Olsen, Lance (1992). William Gibson. San Bernardino: Borgo Press. ISBN1557421986.
Cavallaro, Dani (2000). Cyberpunk and Cyberculture. London: Athlone Press. ISBN9780485006070.
Tatsumi, Takayuki (2006). Full Metal Apache: Transactions between Cyberpunk Japan and Avant-Pop America. Durham: Duke University Press. ISBN9780822337744.
^ abcGibson, William (2003-01-28). "THE MATRIX: FAIR COP". William Gibson's blog. 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}}: line feed character in |quote= at position 743 (help)
^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
^ abChang, Angela (2007-01-10). "Q&A: William Gibson". PC Magazine. 26 (3): 19. 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.
^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)
