Special Guest Appearance by
William Gibson
“The father of cyberspace”
William Gibson is one of the most influential writers in modern speculative fiction: a Vancouver-based novelist whose work gave readers a new language for thinking about technology, power, cities, and the increasingly porous line between the physical world and the networked one. His 1984 debut novel, Neuromancer, introduced the word “cyberspace” to a wide audience and became the first novel to win science fiction’s celebrated triple crown: the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards.
Born in Conway, South Carolina, Gibson came to Canada as a young man and earned his BA from the University of British Columbia in 1977. He had wanted to write science fiction since childhood, but a UBC science-fiction literature course prompted his first attempt at writing it. His early stories brought noir, punk, pop culture, and an outsider’s eye to a field he had feared was too conservative for the kinds of literary and visual influences he wanted to use. The result was a body of work that made the future feel both startlingly new and uncomfortably familiar.
Neuromancer began the Sprawl trilogy, followed by Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive. Gibson later co-wrote the foundational steampunk novel The Difference Engine with Bruce Sterling, and went on to create the Bridge and Blue Ant trilogies, as well as the Jackpot novels The Peripheral and Agency. His work has also extended to essays, journalism, performance pieces, and screenwriting, including the Johnny Mnemonic screenplay and an episode of The X-Files.
Gibson’s fiction is celebrated for its prescience, but his real gift is less prediction than observation: he notices the odd new thing already taking shape at the edge of ordinary life. Off the page, he has described Tokyo as a place he would gladly revisit every year, named Sherlock Holmes as a childhood hero, and remains distinctly wary of ranking things—including life lessons. It is a very Gibsonian stance: alert, sceptical, curious, and always looking just beyond the obvious future.
Find more about him at williamgibsonbooks.com