Mr. William Gibson Lecture

An Evening With William Gibson

Identified by The Literary Encyclopedia as "one of North America's most highly acclaimed science fiction writers", Mr. Gibson published his first novel, Neuromancer in 1974. This was the first novel to win all three major science fiction awards (the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick) in the year of its publication. He is credited with coining the term "cyberspace" and has an avid and devoted following among science fiction readers. A writer of short stories, reviews and articles, he has published in numerous outlets including The Observer, New York Times Magazine and Rolling Stone. He was invited to address the National Academy of Sciences in the early 1990s, and has contributed a script to the television series, X-Files. His most recent novels are Pattern Recognition (2003) and Spook Country (2007).

Background Information

(These references were compiled by the webmaster in the hope that they will prove interesting to some readers. The web being what it is, some of them will have vanished by the time you go to look them up, and there is—of course—no guarantee of their accuracy.)

Autobiographical notes

Gene Wolfe once said that being an only child whose parents are dead is like being the sole survivor of drowned Atlantis. There was a whole civilization there, an entire continent, but it's gone. And you alone remember. That's my story too, my father having died when I was six, my mother when I was eighteen. Brian Aldiss believes that if you look at the life of any novelist, you'll find an early traumatic break, and mine seems no exception. ...

Books by Gibson

Neuromancer: Here is the novel that started it all, launching the cyberpunk generation, and the first novel to win the holy trinity of science fiction: the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award and the Philip K. Dick Award. With Neuromancer, William Gibson introduced the world to cyberspace--and science fiction has never been the same. ...

William Gibson Bibliography / Mediagraphy

Just the facts, but far more complete than the other Johnny-come-lately "6 books and out" lists out there.
All lists are in real-world chronological order. The chronology of the "Sprawl" series is Johnny Mnemonic short story - New Rose Hotel short story - Burning Chrome short story - Neuromancer - Count Zero - Mona Lisa Overdrive. Other stories in Burning Chrome fit more or less tightly into the imagined future of the series. By the time Gibson wrote the Skinner's Room short story - virtual light - Idoru - All Tomorrow's Parties sequence set closer in time, the near future had turned out different from the "Sprawl" future. ...