Person

Gibson, William

1948-

William Gibson is generally recognized as the most important science fiction writer to emerge in the 1980s. His first novel, Neuromancer, was the first novel ever to win the Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick awards. Neuromancer is considered one of the most influential science fiction novels of the late Twentieth Century, and inspired a new genre in science fiction writing referred to as "cyberpunk”.
Gibson was born in 1948 in Conway, South Carolina, but spent most of his childhood in Wytheville, Virginia. In his youth he read a great deal of science fiction, and later became a fan of “Beat” writers like William S. Burroughs who had a great influence on his later writing. As a teenager he was sent to a boarding school in Arizona, but quit school without graduating. He moved to Toronto in 1967, in part to avoid the Vietnam War draft. While there he met Deborah Thompson – they travelled around Europe together before marrying and moving to Deborah’s home town of Vancouver in 1972.
Gibson studied English at the University of British Columbia. In 1977 he took a course on science fiction taught by Susan Wood. For his final paper in that course, Dr. Wood assigned Gibson to write a short science fiction story and submit it for publication. He wrote “Fragments of a Hologram Rose”, submitted it to the magazine UnEarth 3 (1977), and was paid $27. In 1979 Gibson wrote the short story "Johnny Mnemonic", which was published in Omni magazine. Editor Terry Carr at Ace Books encouraged him to try writing a novel. This novel would become Neuromancer which was published in 1984.
After Neuromancer, Gibson wrote Count Zero (1986), and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988), which together comprise the so-called “Sprawl trilogy”. His next three novels, Virtual Light (1993), Idoru (1996), and All Tomorrow’s Parties (1999) constitute his “Bridge trilogy”, and were all science fiction bestsellers. Between those two series he collaborated with Bruce Sterling in writing The Difference Engine (1990) – this alternate history story, set in 1855 and featuring steam-powered computers, inspired the “steampunk” genre of science fiction. Gibson’s next three novels – Pattern Recognition (2003), Spook Country (2007), and Zero History (2010) – together known unofficially as the “Blue Ant trilogy” – are set in the contemporary world rather than a speculative future, and were featured on mainstream bestseller lists. His most recent novels The Peripheral (2014), and Agency (2020), marked his return to the science fiction field.
Gibson has published numerous short stories, many of which appeared in a collection of his work, Burning Chrome (1986). He has written screenplays, most notably for the movie Johnny Mnemonic (adapted from his short story of the same title), Alien 3 (never produced, but adapted into a graphic novel series), and episodes of the TV show The X-Files. Another notable project was Agrippa (A Book of the Dead), a collaboration with artist Dennis Ashbough. He has also written numerous non-fiction pieces – many of these are collected in Distrust That Particular Flavor (2012).

Author.