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William Gibson
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 William Gibson is the avatar of cyberpunk, whose novel
Neuromancer (1984) took the sf field by
storm and made him one of the big names of sf. He occupies a central position in that decade as J. G. Ballard did
in the 1960s, as a nexus of controversy and attention. "A lot of what I've written so far," said Gibson in
an interview, "is a conscious reaction to what I felt sf -- especially American sf -- had become by the time
I started writing in the late 70s. In fact, I felt I was writing so far outside the mainstream that my highest
goal was to become a minor cult figure, a sort of lesser Ballard. . . . Some of my resistance had to do with a
certain didactic, right wing stance that I associated with a lot of hard sf, but mainly it was a more generalized angle
of attack [against genre sf]."
Furthermore, he said, "I'm not interested in producing the kind of literalism most readers associate
with SF. This may be a suicidal admission, but most of the time I don't know what I'm talking about when it
comes to the scientific or logical rationales that supposedly underpin my books. Apparently, though, part of my
skill lies in my ability to convince people otherwise. Some of the SF writers who are actually working scientists
do know what they are talking about; but for the rest of us, to present a whole world that doesn't exist and make
it seem real, we have to more or less pretend we're polymaths. That's just the act of all good writing." One
can readily see why Benford, Brin, and many others were up in arms about Gibson and cyberpunk in the 80s,
and, on the other hand, why postmodern writers such as Kathy Acker and publications from The Village Voice
to Vogue have picked up the banner of cyberpunk.
Neuromancer, and the stories collected in
Burning Chrome (1986), are the pure essence of "the Movement." With his cohort Bruce Sterling, Gibson remains the
spokesman for the attitudes and images of cyberpunk, although they no longer see it as a movement. "I'm looking
for images that supply a certain atmosphere. Right now science and technology seem to be very useful sources.
But I'm more interested in the language of, say, computers than I am in the technicalities." Although by
1987 Sterling and Gibson had declared the Movement dead, the imagery and the name as a marketing term
survive as a major influence on the sf of the 1990s. Brian Aldiss has observed that Gibson's "emphasis on
surface style, which continually manifests itself in Gibson's work through sparkling visual one-liners, is reminiscent
of Bester and Delany, as is the portrait of a society glimpsed from its heights and its stygian depths."
Gibson himself has also acknowledged such diverse influences as William S. Burroughs and James Tiptree, Jr.'s
"The Girl Who Was Plugged In."
Gibson's immense popularity among sf readers is rooted in his ability to intuit and portray
intimate connections of mind and technology in a plausible fashion. This is especially powerful in a decade
where many sf readers for the first time were using home computers and connecting directly by modem to the
computers of others through vast networks, and playing sophisticated video games with characters whom
they might identify with on the screen-as in the films
Tron (1982), and Bladerunner (1982), the twin sources
whose imagery has perhaps overwhelmed Gibson's works as the prime influence on later cyberpunk fictions.
Gibson himself did not own a computer until after he wrote his essential cyberpunk corpus.
"My SF is realistic in that I write about what I see around me," Gibson says. The conventional setting
of cyberpunk fiction is a future world dominated by computer technology, massive cartels and cyberspace, an
artificial universe created through the link-up of tens of millions of machines. This is the world of
"Johnny Mnemonic." It is one of the stories that introduced a new affect into the hard sf dialog in the genre.
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The Ascent of Wonder copyright © 1994 by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. | ||
Cramer: On Science & Science Fiction || Hartwell: Hard Science Fiction
David G. Hartwell || Kathryn Cramer || About Tor Books || Ordering Info
Interactive Intoduction to THE ASCENT OF WONDER copyright © 1995-1997 by Kathryn Cramer.