William Gibson
1 book analyzed
Biography
William Ford Gibson (born 1948) wrote Neuromancer on a 1927 Hermes portable typewriter, having never used a computer. He was a draft dodger who moved from South Carolina to Toronto in 1968, steeped in the counterculture, punk rock, and the New Wave of science fiction. He had published a handful of short stories — 'Johnny Mnemonic,' 'Burning Chrome' — when Terry Carr commissioned Neuromancer for Ace Science Fiction Specials. Gibson wrote it in a state of terror, convinced that the film Blade Runner (1982) had already visualized everything he was trying to describe. The novel won the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick awards — the science fiction triple crown — and is credited with launching the cyberpunk genre and predicting the cultural shape of the internet decades before the World Wide Web existed.