See also: Gibson (homonymy)
William Gibson (born the March 17th 1948 with the the United States in South Carolina) is an American writer of Science-fiction and one of the leaders of the movement Cyberpunk.
Biography
William Gibson was born in 1948 with Conway, close to Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. It is six years old when his/her father (employed with the construction of the atomic complex of search for Oak Ridge) dies while choking himself accidentally. His/her mother then decides to return to settle in her family, in Virgine. William Gibson saw this removal like a jump behind in the past. Introvert and rather badly integrated into the local community, he becomes a keen reader and works to create what he will call later " a personality lovecraftienne" .His/her mother has much evil to only raise it. Overcoming with difficulty its widowhood, it decides into 1963 to send her son in pension, to thousands of kilometers of at his place, in Arizona. A new traumatism that Gibson surmounts, once again, by the reading. By chance, while believing to buy a novel of SF, he discovers the authors of the Beat Generation. While reading Kérouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, it will discover the Counter-culture.
In 1966, his/her mother dies in her turn. Gibson is 18 years old, and thus sees materializing one as of its worst anguishes. From now on orphan, it leaves the school without very passing its diploma of ends of studies, and survives while reselling the townsmen of the secondhand trades which it will cloud in the countryside.
In 1968, it flees with the Canada to avoid being sent to the Vietnam and settles in 1972 with Vancouver. It there resumes its studies mollement, travels much, and Marie. In 1977, its studies about to be completed, he sees without much enthusiasm the prospect to have to launch out in the work world. It is at that time that it redécouvre its old passion for the SF, which comes to be grafted on the emergence of a new cultural mobility: the punk one. It decides to become writer.
Disillusion, distrust of capitalism, acknowledgment of obvious failure of the Counter-culture, all that will involve it towards a dark fiction, in agreement with its vision of the world. A vision which it is not the only one to have. Other young authors share his point of view. As him they carry a very critical glance on the SF. Federated around the fanzine Cheap Truth , published and distributed free by Bruce Sterling, an abstract movement is created. If all the speakers sign under pseudonyms, one finds there feathers like Pat Cadigan, Rudy Rucker, Marc Laidlaw, Lewis Shiner, and of course Sterling itself, which finds, in fact, the thinking head of the movement.
Gibson, like the others, starts to write news which draws the attention. Its first writings are futuristic stories on subjects as the influence of the Cybernétique and Virtual reality then emergent on the human race in an imminent future. Surfant on the styles Punk and Gothic of the time. The set of themes of the Bidonville underground high-tech appears as of the Fragments off has Hologram Pink in 1977. In the Eighties its fictions develop on the mode of black film; news published in the magazine Omni started to outline the topics which it will develop in its first novel, Neuromancien .
Noting a certain coherence in the sets of themes, this abstract movement will take, under the feather of criticisms of the time, and in particular of Gardner R. Dozois, the editor association of Asimov SF magazine, the name of " Cyberpunk".
It is Gibson, with Neuromancien , which takes down the first an immense literary success. Success which will make of him the figurehead of the Cyberpunk. Neuromancien was the first novel to gain the three major literary prizes of the science fiction: the Price Nebula, the Price Hugo, the Price memorial Philip K. Dick. The two following novels supplemented what will be its first trilogy commonly called " Sprawl Trilogy" : Count Zero and Mona LISA bursts. The second trilogy of William Gibson, called " Bridge trilogy" , is located in the town of San Francisco in a near future, but avoids the recurrent themes of the author such as the technological, physical and spiritual transcendence to approach a kind more factual than the first trilogy. The three novels of this second trilogy are: virtual Light , Idoru and All Tomorrow' S Left .
More recently, William Gibson somewhat moved away like the fictional dystopies which made it famous for more privileging a more realistic style of writing, exchanging the narrative jumps characteristic of her first manner against a more continuous flow of writing. But it is always focused on the technological changes and their consequences disastrous and less foreseeable on the company.
Parallel to its works published by the conventional means, he wrote Agrippa (Book off the Dead has) , an electronic poem published in 1992. This poem treated éthérée nature of the memories (the title referring to a photo album), written in 1992 for a book of artists conceived in co-operation with the painter Dennis Ashbaugh and the editor Kevin Begos. The book was composed of an car-erasing diskette designed to allow only one reading of work. As William Gibson had said it in her Blog, the diskette owed " to eat it-même" after readbeing read. Then, the poem was published on Internet. William Gibson started to write her blog from 2003 which remained active until 2005, with only one large banknote. Gibson also wrote some elements of anticipation for Alien 3 of which some were integrated into film of the same name.
Two of its news were carried to the screen: Johnny Mnemonic in 1995, with Keanu Reeves and Hotel New Pink in 1998, with Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe and Asia Argento. William Gibson also wrote in collaboration with her friend Tom Maddox two episodes of the series X-Files : " mortal Click (Kill Switch) " (season 5) and " Maitreya (First Persson Shooter) " (season 7). It in addition made an appearance with the screen in the mini-series Wild Palms , a series largely influenced by the work of Gibson and other Cyberpunk authors. Its last novel, the Identification of the diagrams , is currently in the course of adaptation to the cinema by Peter Weir and should leave in 2008.
Quotations of the author
- I believe that I spent exactly as much time to write than an average American of my age spent time in front of television, and it is perhaps there, more than nowhere elsewhere, than the true secrecy resides.
-
Any technology emergent spontaneously escapes any control and its repercussions are unforeseeable.
-
I felt that I tried to describe one unthinkable present, but actually I feel that the best use than one can make science fiction today is to explore contemporary reality instead of trying to predict the future… The best thing to be made with science today, it is to use it to explore the present. The Earth is the planet alien of today.
Works
Novels
- 1984 Neuromancien ( Neuromancer ) - part 1 of Sprawl Trilogy
- 1986 Count Zero ( Count Zero ) - part 2 of Sprawl Trilogy
- 1988 Mona LISA bursts ( Mona LISA Overdrive ) - part 3 of Sprawl Trilogy
- 1990 the Machine with differences ( The Difference Engine ) - coécrit with Bruce Sterling
- 1993 virtual Lumière ( Virtual Light )
- 1996 Idoru ( Idoru )
- 1999 Tomorrow' S left ( All Tomorrow' S Left )
- 2003 Identification the diagrams ( Pattern Recognition )
Collections
- 1986 Engraved on chromium ( Burning Chromium plates )
News
- 1977
- Fragments of pink in hologram ( Fragments off has Hologram Pink )
- 1981
- Johnny Mnemonic ( Johnny Mnemonic )
- the continuum Gernsback ( The Gernsback Continuum )
- the kind integrated ( The Belonging Kind ), written with John Shirley
- Hinterlands ( Hinterlands )
- pink Hotel New ( New Pink Hotel )
- 1982
- Gravé on chromium ( Burning Chromium plates )
- 1983
- red Star, white orbit ( Red Star, Winter Orbit ), written with Bruce Sterling
- 1985
- air Duel ( Dog Fight ), written with Michael Swanwick
- 1986
- the market of winter ( The Winter Market )
- 1990
- Skinner' S Room
- 2006
- Spook Country , to appear (announced it October 6th on its blog)
External bonds
Zh-min-nan: William Gibson
| Random links: | Sebastien Huyghe | The Rock-Guyon | Revolt of Oaxaca | Amantes | Ci Simu |