American and Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as cyberpunk, a category from which he has repeatedly distanced himself.
Gibson grew up in southwestern Virginia. After dropping out of high school in 1967, he traveled to Canada and eventually settled there, earning a B.A. (1977) from the University of British Columbia. Many of Gibson’s early stories, including Johnny Mnemonic (1981; film 1995) and Burning Chrome (1982), were published in Omni magazine. With the publication of his first novel, Neuromancer (1984), Gibson emerged as a leading exponent of cyberpunk, a new school of science-fiction writing. Cyberpunk combines a cynical, tough “punk” sensibility with futuristic cybernetic (i.e., having to do with communication and control theory) technology. Gibson’s creation of “cyberspace,” a computer-simulated reality that shows the nature of information, foreshadowed virtual reality technology and is considered the author’s major contribution to the genre.
Neuromancer, which won three major science-fiction awards (Nebula, Hugo, and Philip K. Dick), established Gibson’s reputation. Its protagonist is a 22nd-century data thief who fights against the domination of a corporate-controlled society by breaking through the global computer network’s cyberspace matrix. Count Zero (1986) was set in the same world …
