William Gibson: Science FictionWilliam Gibson is the guy who coined the word "Cyberspace" and he helped to create the genre known as cyberpunk. He inspired the guys who created a lot of what is now called the Internet with his fiction. His stuff is dark, but very compelling. And his recent writings are even better than his older stuff. By the way, he does not like his work called science fiction. He calls it "postmodern fiction". Like many of my favorite authors, some of his writing has been made into an incredibly bad movie. In his case the movie was Johnnie Mnemonic. He also co-wrote a pretty good X-Files episode, the one where an artificial intelligence let loose on the Internet is trying to protect itself from being destroyed.I didn't realize what a great writer William Gibson is until I read an article he wrote for Wired magazine "Disneyland with the Death Penalty". It was about Singapore, a place where I spent a fair amount of time in back in 1984. I knew everything he was going to say; in fact I had better anecdotes than he did. But I thoroughly enjoyed his telling of it. The best reason for reading Gibson is not whether the plots described below appeal to you. It is because he writes better than almost anyone else, and is compelling even if you are not interested in what he is talking about.
Burning ChromeThis is a collection of short stories from the mid 80s. It is a great introduction to Gibson, and will tell you whether you like him or not (some people just do not).Paperback ISBN: 0-441-08934-8
Virtual LightWritten in 1993 Virtual Light shows us San Francisco in a post-earthquake future that has the Bay Bridge a squatter community in which a bicycle messenger lives. A lost piece of technology brings her more attention than she is looking for. This is the beginning of a new series.Hardback ISBN: 0-553-07499-7
IdoruWritten in 1996, the word 'idoru' is the literal phonetic spelling of a Japanese word that is their adoption of our word 'idol'. When the Japanese say it the final 'u' is silent. This story follows a character introduced in Virtual Light as he is hired by a Japanese rock star bent on changing the world with his new wife, a computer-based personality.Paperback ISBN: 0-425-15864-0
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Gibson rose to prominence in the early 1980s with his novel
Neuromancer. If you go to Amazon.com you will see reviews
of this novel talking about how cliched the plot is. What the
commentators do not realize is that for the past 15 years authors
have been copying the plot of Neuromancer, and that this
is the original. At the time it was incredibly fresh and unlike
anything else.
Though Neuromancer (ISBN 0-441-56959-5) is his most famous
novel (part of a trilogy also including Count Zero, ISBN
0-441-11773-2, and Mona Lisa Overdrive, ISBN 0-553-28174-7)
I like some of his other books even better.
