Facts about William Gibson

William Gibson is 76 years old
Born: March 17, 1948
Best known as: The author who created "cyberpunk"

     
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William Gibson Biography

William Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer took the science fiction world by storm, winning the Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick awards for best novel. The book described a bleak futuristic world where laptop-toting thieves jack into “cyberspace,” a computer-generated virtual world that in retrospect looks a bit like the Internet. Gibson is credited with coining the term cyberspace (in his 1982 story “Burning Chrome”) and is considered the father of the literary sub-genre known as cyberpunk. His novels include Count Zero (1986), Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988), Virtual Light (1993), Idoru (1996), All Tomorrow’s Parties (1999), Pattern Recognition (2003) and Spook Country (2007). Gibson also co-authored The Difference Engine (1991, with Bruce Sterling) and wrote the screenplay for the movie Johnny Mnemonic (1995, starring Keanu Reeves).

Extra credit

When asked where he got the idea for cyberspace, Gibson once replied "from watching stoned teenagers play video games"… Gibson is not the same William Gibson who wrote the play about Helen Keller titled The Miracle Worker; that William Gibson was born in New York in 1914 and died in 2008.


     

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