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93-468: William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as cyberpunk . Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, his early works were noir, near-future stories that explored the effects of technology , cybernetics , and computer networks on humans, a "combination of lowlife and high tech "—and helped to create an iconography for

186-536: A "no Martians " type of science fiction, "about things that really could happen." Speculative fiction is also used as a genre term that combines different ones into a single narrative or fictional world such as "science fiction, horror, fantasy...[and]...mystery". The Internet Speculative Fiction Database contains a broad list of different subtypes. According to publisher statistics, men outnumber women about two to one among English-language speculative fiction writers aiming for professional publication. However,

279-615: A Greek archipelago and in Istanbul in 1970, as they "couldn't afford to stay anywhere that had anything remotely like hard currency". The couple married and settled in Vancouver , British Columbia, in 1972, with Gibson looking after their first child while they lived off his wife's teaching salary. During the 1970s, Gibson made a substantial part of his living from scouring Salvation Army thrift stores for underpriced artifacts he would then up-market to specialist dealers. Realizing that it

372-484: A TV series from the producers of Westworld based on Gibson's novel of the same name, in October 2022. Speculative fiction Speculative fiction is an umbrella genre of fiction that encompasses all the subgenres that depart from realism , or strictly imitating everyday reality, instead presenting fantastical, supernatural , futuristic , or other imaginative realms. This catch-all genre includes, but

465-576: A boarding school; to her surprise, he reacted enthusiastically. Unable to afford his preferred choice of Southern California, his then "chronically anxious and depressive " mother, who had remained in Wytheville since the death of her husband, sent him to Southern Arizona School for Boys in Tucson. He resented the structure of the private boarding school but was in retrospect grateful for its forcing him to engage socially. After his mother's death when he

558-476: A category ranges from ancient works to paradigm-changing and neotraditional works of the 21st century. Characteristics of speculative fiction have been recognized in older works whose authors' intentions , or in the social contexts of the stories they portray, are now known. For example, the ancient Greek dramatist, Euripides , ( c.  480  – c.  406 BCE ) whose play Medea seems to have offended Athenian audiences when he speculated that

651-446: A completely imaginary way or been followed by major new events that are completely imaginary (the genre of alternative history ). Or, it depicts impossible technology or technology that defies current scientific understandings or capabilities (the genre of science fiction ). Contrarily, realistic fiction involves a story whose basic setting (time and location in the world) is, in fact, real and whose events could believably happen in

744-488: A drink, but I don't know if I'd loan him any money," and referred to the novel as "an adolescent 's book". The success of Neuromancer nonetheless led to the 35-year-old Gibson's emergence from obscurity. Although much of Gibson's reputation has remained rooted in Neuromancer , his work continued to evolve conceptually and stylistically. He next intended to write an unrelated postmodern space opera , titled The Log of

837-510: A genre term has often been attributed to Robert A. Heinlein , who first used the term in an editorial in The Saturday Evening Post , 8 February 1947. In the article, Heinlein used "Speculative Fiction" as a synonym for "science fiction"; in a later piece, he explicitly stated that his use of the term did not include fantasy. However, though Heinlein may have come up with the term on his own, there are earlier citations:

930-399: A hardcover collection being published in 2019. The Peripheral ' s continuation, Agency , was released on January 21, 2020, after being delayed from an initial announced release date of December 2018. Gibson said in a New Yorker magazine article that both the election of Donald Trump as U.S. President and the controversy over Cambridge Analytica had caused him to rethink and revise

1023-422: A highly contentious part of the magazine. In 2004, The New York Times Magazine began publishing an entire supplement devoted to style. Titled T , the supplement is edited by Deborah Needleman and appears 14 times a year. In 2009, it launched a Qatari Edition as a standalone magazine. In 2006, the magazine introduced two other supplements: PLAY , a sports magazine published every other month, and KEY ,

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1116-516: A joint address to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences Convocation on Technology and Education in 1993 ("the Al Gore people"), in which they argued against the digital divide and "appalled everyone" by proposing that all schools be put online, with education taking place over the Internet. In a 2007 interview, Gibson revealed that Sterling had an idea for "a second recursive science novel that

1209-434: A large construction company. In Norfolk, Virginia , Gibson attended Pines Elementary School, where the teachers' lack of encouragement for him to read was a cause of dismay for his parents. While Gibson was still a young child, a little over a year into his stay at Pines Elementary, his father choked to death in a restaurant while on a business trip. His mother, unable to tell William the bad news, had someone else inform him of

1302-474: A more realist style of writing, with continuous narratives – "speculative fiction of the very recent past". Science fiction critic John Clute has interpreted this approach as Gibson's recognition that traditional science fiction is no longer possible "in a world lacking coherent 'nows' to continue from", characterizing it as "SF for the new century". Gibson's novels Pattern Recognition (2003), Spook Country (2007) and Zero History (2010) are set in

1395-647: A motion picture, a prospect that ended with Tsoi's death in a car crash, Womack's experiences in Russia ultimately culminated in his novel Let's Put the Future Behind Us and informed much of the Russian content of Gibson's Pattern Recognition . A similar fate befell Gibson's collaboration with Japanese filmmaker Sogo Ishii in 1991, a film they planned on shooting in the Walled City of Kowloon until

1488-558: A panel called "Behind the Mirrorshades: A Look at Punk SF", where Shiner noted "the sense of a movement solidified". After a weekend discussing rock and roll, MTV, Japan, fashion, drugs and politics, Gibson left the cadre for Vancouver, declaring half-jokingly that "a new axis has been formed." Sterling, Shiner, Shirley and Gibson, along with Rudy Rucker , went on to form the core of the radical cyberpunk literary movement. Gibson's early writings are generally near-future stories about

1581-605: A piece in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1889 used the term in reference to Edward Bellamy 's Looking Backward : 2000–1887 and other works; and one in the May 1900 issue of The Bookman said that John Uri Lloyd 's Etidorhpa , The End of the Earth had "created a great deal of discussion among people interested in speculative fiction". A variation on this term is "speculative literature". The use of "speculative fiction" in

1674-577: A real estate magazine published twice a year. In September 2010, as part of a greater effort to reinvigorate the magazine, Times editor Bill Keller hired former staff member and then-editor of Bloomberg Businessweek , Hugo Lindgren , as the editor of The New York Times Magazine . As part of a series of new staff hires upon assuming his new role, Lindgren first hired then–executive editor of O, The Oprah Magazine Lauren Kern to be his deputy editor and then hired then-editor of TNR.com, The New Republic magazine's website, Greg Veis , to edit

1767-512: A resurgent tribalism and the " infantilization of society", became a prominent theme of Gibson's work, while his focus nevertheless remained "at the intersection of paranoia and technology". The Peripheral , the first in a new series of novels by William Gibson, was released on October 28, 2014. He described the story briefly in an appearance he made at the New York Public Library on April 19, 2013, and read an excerpt from

1860-424: A rotating basis (including diagramless crossword puzzles and anacrostics ). In January 2012, humorist John Hodgman , who hosts his comedy court show podcast Judge John Hodgman , began writing a regular column "Judge John Hodgman Rules" (formerly "Ask Judge John Hodgman") for "The One-Page Magazine". In 2014, Jake Silverstein , who had been editor-in-chief at Texas Monthly , replaced Lindgren as editor of

1953-447: A tightly wrapped package at that time. If somebody had drafted me I might have wept and gone. I wouldn't have liked it of course. After weeks of nominal homelessness, Gibson was hired as the manager of Toronto's first head shop , a retailer of drug paraphernalia. He found the city's émigré community of American draft dodgers unbearable owing to the prevalence of clinical depression, suicide, and hardcore substance abuse. He appeared, during

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2046-534: A variety of disciplines: academia, design, film, literature, music, cyberculture , and technology. William Ford Gibson was born in the coastal city of Conway, South Carolina , and he spent most of his childhood in Wytheville, Virginia , a small town in the Appalachians where his parents had been born and raised. His family moved frequently during Gibson's youth owing to his father's position as manager of

2139-458: A waterlogged copy of Neuromancer on a beach at a Thai resort. His early efforts to write film scripts failed to manifest themselves as finished product; "Burning Chrome" (which was to be directed by Kathryn Bigelow ) and "Neuro-Hotel" were two attempts by the author at film adaptations that were never made. In the late 1980s he wrote an early version of Alien 3 (which he later characterized as " Tarkovskian "), few elements of which survived in

2232-509: A year to complete the work, Gibson undertook the actual writing out of "blind animal terror" at the obligation to write an entire novel – a feat which he felt he was "four or five years away from". After viewing the first 20 minutes of landmark cyberpunk film Blade Runner (1982) which was released when Gibson had written a third of the novel, he "figured [ Neuromancer ] was sunk, done for. Everyone would assume I'd copped my visual texture from this astonishingly fine-looking film." He re-wrote

2325-474: Is characterized by a lesser degree of adherence to realistic or plausible individuals, events, or places, while the umbrella genres of realistic fiction or literary realism are characterized by a greater degree of adherence. For instance, speculative fiction may depict an entirely imaginary universe or one in which the laws of nature do not strictly apply (often, the sub-genre of fantasy ). Or, it depicts true historical moments, except that they have concluded in

2418-498: Is generally more challenging than its counterparts featured on the other days of the week. Usually, a second puzzle is included with the crossword puzzle. The variety of the second puzzle varies each week. These have included acrostic puzzles, diagramless crossword puzzles, and other puzzles varying from the traditional crossword puzzle. The puzzles are edited by Will Shortz, the host of the on-air puzzle segment of NPR 's Weekend Edition Sunday , introduced as "the puzzlemaster". In

2511-437: Is not limited to, science fiction , fantasy , horror , slipstream , magical realism , superhero fiction , alternate history , utopia and dystopia , fairy tales , steampunk , cyberpunk , weird fiction , and some apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction . The term has been used for works of literature , film , television , drama , video games , radio , and their hybrids. The umbrella genre of speculative fiction

2604-399: Is sometimes abbreviated "spec-fic", "spec fic", "specfic", "S-F", "SF", or "sf". The last three abbreviations, however, are ambiguous as they have long been used to refer to science fiction (which lies within this general range of literature). It is sometimes also known as "the fantastic" or as fantastika , the latter term attributed to John Clute who coined it in 2007 after the term for

2697-725: The Time list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923, Lev Grossman opined of Neuromancer : "There is no way to overstate how radical Gibson's first and best novel was when it first appeared." Literary critic Larry McCaffery described the concept of the matrix in Neuromancer as a place where "data dance with human consciousness ... human memory is literalized and mechanized ... multi-national information systems mutate and breed into startling new structures whose beauty and complexity are unimaginable, mystical, and above all nonhuman." A 52-year-old Gibson later commented on himself as an author, circa Neuromancer , that "I'd buy him

2790-487: The Information Age before the ubiquity of the Internet in the 1990s. Gibson coined the term " cyberspace " for "widespread, interconnected digital technology" in his short story " Burning Chrome " (1982), and later popularized the concept in his acclaimed debut novel Neuromancer (1984). These early works of Gibson's have been credited with "renovating" science fiction literature in the 1980s. After expanding on

2883-460: The Sprawl trilogy . The trilogy solidified Gibson's reputation, with both later novels also earning Nebula and Hugo Award and Locus SF Award nominations. The Sprawl trilogy was followed by the 1990 novel The Difference Engine , an alternative history novel Gibson wrote in collaboration with Bruce Sterling . Set in a technologically advanced Victorian era Britain, the novel was a departure from

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2976-842: The Summer of Love of 1967, in a CBC newsreel item about hippie subculture in Yorkville, Toronto , for which he was paid $ 500—the equivalent of 20 weeks' rent—which financed his later travels. Gibson spent a "brief, riot-torn spell" in Washington, D.C. , where he completed his high school diploma at the age of 21. He spent the rest of the 1960s in Toronto , where he met Vancouverite Deborah Jean Thompson, with whom he subsequently traveled to Europe. Gibson has recounted that they concentrated their travels on European nations with fascist regimes and favorable exchange rates, including spending time on

3069-428: The cult of celebrity . Virtual Light depicts an "end-stage capitalism, in which private enterprise and the profit motive are taken to their logical conclusion", according to one review. Leonard's review called Idoru a "return to form" for Gibson, while critic Steven Poole asserted that All Tomorrow's Parties marked his development from "science-fiction hotshot to wry sociologist of the near future." I felt that I

3162-425: The sociological developments of near-future urban environments, postindustrial society , and late capitalism . Following the turn of the century and the events of 9/11 , Gibson emerged with a string of increasingly realist novels— Pattern Recognition (2003), Spook Country (2007), and Zero History (2010)—set in a roughly contemporary world. These works saw his name reach mainstream bestseller lists for

3255-425: The "front of the book" section of the magazine. In December 2010, Lindgren hired Joel Lovell, formerly story editor at GQ magazine, as deputy editor. In 2011, Kaminer replaced Cohen as the author of the column, and in 2012 Chuck Klosterman replaced Kaminer. Klosterman left in early 2015 to be replaced by a trio of authors, Kenji Yoshino , Amy Bloom , and Jack Shafer , who used a conversational format; Shafer

3348-565: The Hollywood blockbuster system. At one point, he collaborated on a script with Kazakh director Rashid Nugmanov after an American producer had expressed an interest in a Soviet-American collaboration to star Soviet rock musician Viktor Tsoi . Despite being occupied with writing a novel, Gibson was reluctant to abandon the "wonderfully odd project" which involved "ritualistic gang-warfare in some sort of sideways-future Leningrad " and sent Jack Womack to Russia in his stead. Rather than producing

3441-513: The Mustang Sally , but reneged on the contract with Arbor House after a falling out over the dustjacket art of their hardcover of Count Zero . Abandoning The Log of the Mustang Sally , Gibson instead wrote Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988), which in the words of Larry McCaffery "turned off the lights" on cyberpunk literature. It was a culmination of his previous two novels, set in the same universe with shared characters, thereby completing

3534-462: The September 18, 2005, issue of the magazine, an editors' note announced the addition of The Funny Pages , a literary section of the magazine intended to "engage our readers in some ways we haven't yet tried—and to acknowledge that it takes many different types of writing to tell the story of our time". Although The Funny Pages is no longer published in the magazine, it was made up of three parts:

3627-660: The Strip (a multipart graphic novel that spanned weeks), the Sunday Serial (a genre fiction serial novel that also spanned weeks), and True-Life Tales (a humorous personal essay , by a different author each week). On July 8, 2007, the magazine stopped printing True-Life Tales. The section has been criticized for being unfunny, sometimes nonsensical, and excessively highbrow ; in a 2006 poll conducted by Gawker.com asking, "Do you now find—or have you ever found— The Funny Pages funny?", 92% of 1824 voters answered "No". Of

3720-569: The Summer 1977 issue of Unearth . The latter thematic obsession was described by his friend and fellow author, Bruce Sterling, in the introduction of Gibson's short story collection Burning Chrome , as "Gibson's classic one-two combination of lowlife and high tech." Beginning in 1981, Gibson's stories appeared in Omni and Universe 11 , wherein his fiction developed a bleak, film noir feel. He consciously distanced himself as far as possible from

3813-467: The Sunday Times from the 1920s through the 1950s, encouraged the idea of the magazine as a forum for ideas. During his tenure, writers such as Leo Tolstoy , Thomas Mann , Gertrude Stein , and Tennessee Williams contributed pieces to the magazine. When, in 1970, The New York Times introduced its first op-ed page, the magazine shifted away from publishing as many editorial pieces. In 1979,

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3906-458: The Sunday magazine. U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey selects and introduces poems weekly, including from poets Tomas Tranströmer , Carlos Pintado , and Gregory Pardlo . The magazine features the Sunday version of the crossword puzzle along with other puzzles. The puzzles have been very popular features since their introduction. The Sunday crossword puzzle has more clues and squares and

3999-584: The authors' cyberpunk roots. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1991 and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1992, and its success drew attention to the nascent steampunk literary genre of which it remains the best-known work. Gibson's second series, the " Bridge trilogy ", is composed of Virtual Light (1993), a "darkly comic urban detective story", Idoru (1996), and All Tomorrow's Parties (1999). The first and third books in

4092-418: The character of Molly Millions from " Johnny Mnemonic " ultimately culminated in his first novel, Neuromancer . The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. —opening sentence of Neuromancer (1984) Neuromancer was commissioned by Terry Carr for the second series of Ace Science Fiction Specials , which was intended to feature debut novels exclusively. Given

4185-464: The city was demolished in 1993. Adaptations of Gibson's fiction have frequently been optioned and proposed, to limited success. Two of the author's short stories, both set in the Sprawl trilogy universe, have been loosely adapted as films: Johnny Mnemonic (1995) with screenplay by Gibson and starring Keanu Reeves, Dolph Lundgren and Takeshi Kitano , and New Rose Hotel (1998), starring Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, and Asia Argento. The former

4278-452: The context of the real world. One realistic fiction sub-genre is historical fiction , centered around true major events and time periods in the past. The attempt to make stories feel faithful to reality or to more objectively describe details, and the 19th-century artistic movement that began to vigorously promote this approach, is called "literary realism", which incorporates some works of both fiction and non-fiction. "Speculative fiction"

4371-765: The creative design and generation of lore and mythology for works of fiction. The term's definition comes from its use by J. R. R. Tolkien , whose novel, The Lord of the Rings , demonstrates a clear application of this process. Themes common in mythopoeia, such as the supernatural , alternate history and sexuality , continue to be explored in works produced within the modern speculative fiction genre. The creation of speculative fiction in its general sense of hypothetical history, explanation, or ahistorical storytelling , has also been attributed to authors in ostensibly non-fiction modes since as early as Herodotus of Halicarnassus (fl. 5th century BCE), for his Histories , and

4464-419: The culture of science fiction, including an awareness of postmodernity . It was at UBC that he attended his first course on science fiction, taught by Susan Wood , at the end of which he was encouraged to write his first short story, " Fragments of a Hologram Rose ". After considering pursuing a master's degree on the topic of hard science fiction novels as fascist literature, Gibson discontinued writing in

4557-571: The death. Tom Maddox has commented that Gibson "grew up in an America as disturbing and surreal as anything J. G. Ballard ever dreamed". Loss is not without its curious advantages for the artist. Major traumatic breaks are pretty common in the biographies of artists I respect. —William Gibson, interview with The New York Times Magazine , August 19, 2007 A few days after the death of his father, Gibson and his mother moved back from Norfolk to Wytheville. Gibson later described Wytheville as "a place where modernity had arrived to some extent but

4650-504: The detonation of some slow-fused projectile buried deep in society's flank a decade earlier, and I took it to be, somehow, a sign. And I began, then, to write. —William Gibson, "Since 1948" Through Shirley, Gibson came into contact with science fiction authors Bruce Sterling and Lewis Shiner ; reading Gibson's work, they realized that it was, as Sterling put it, "breakthrough material" and that they needed to "put down our preconceptions and pick up on this guy from Vancouver; this [was]

4743-466: The film is being developed by British producer Janine Marmot at Hot Property Films. Television is another arena in which Gibson has collaborated; with friend Tom Maddox , he co-wrote The X-Files episodes " Kill Switch " and " First Person Shooter ", broadcast in 1998 and 2000. In 1998 he contributed the introduction to the spin-off publication Art of the X-Files . Gibson made a cameo appearance in

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4836-413: The final version. In 2018-19, Dark Horse Comics released a five-part adaptation of Gibson's Alien 3 script, illustrated and adapted by Johnnie Christmas. In 2019, Audible released an audio drama version of Gibson's script, adapted by Dirk Maggs and with Michael Biehn and Lance Henriksen reprising their roles. Gibson's early involvement with the film industry extended far beyond the confines of

4929-636: The first chapter of the book entitled "The Gone Haptics". The story takes place in two eras, one about thirty years into the future and the other further in the future. In 2017, Gibson's comic/graphic novel Archangel was published. Both Archangel and The Peripheral contain time travel (of sorts), but Gibson has clarified that the works are not related: "They're not 'same universe'. The Splitter and trans-continual virtuality are different mechanisms (different plot mechanisms too)." The next year, Dark Horse Comics began releasing Johnnie Christmas' adaptation of Gibson's Alien 3 script in five parts, resulting in

5022-674: The first time. His most recent novels, The Peripheral (2014) and Agency (2020), returned to a more overt engagement with technology and recognizable science fiction themes. In 1999, The Guardian described Gibson as "probably the most important novelist of the past two decades", while The Sydney Morning Herald called him the "noir prophet" of cyberpunk. Throughout his career, Gibson has written more than 20 short stories and 12 critically acclaimed novels (one in collaboration), contributed articles to several major publications, and collaborated extensively with performance artists, filmmakers, and musicians. His work has been cited as influencing

5115-402: The first two-thirds of the book twelve times, feared losing the reader's attention and was convinced that he would be "permanently shamed" following its publication; yet what resulted was a major imaginative leap forward for a first-time novelist. Neuromancer 's release was not greeted with fanfare, but it hit a cultural nerve, quickly becoming an underground word-of-mouth hit. It became

5208-524: The first winner of one science fiction "triple crown" —both the Nebula Award and the Hugo Award as the year's best novel and the Philip K. Dick Award as the best paperback original — eventually selling more than 6.5 million copies worldwide. Lawrence Person , in his "Notes Toward a Postcyberpunk Manifesto" (1998), identified Neuromancer as "the archetypal cyberpunk work". In 2005, as part of

5301-451: The genre in some Slavic languages . The term has been used by some critics and writers dissatisfied with what they consider to be a limitation of science fiction: the need for the story to hold to scientific principles. They argue that "speculative fiction" better defines an expanded, open, imaginative type of fiction than does "genre fiction", and the categories of "fantasy", "mystery", "horror" and "science fiction". Harlan Ellison used

5394-415: The influences of cybernetics and cyberspace (computer-simulated reality) technology on the human species. His themes of hi-tech shanty towns , recorded or broadcast stimulus (later to be developed into the "sim-stim" package featured so heavily in Neuromancer ), and dystopic intermingling of technology and humanity, are already evident in his first published short story, "Fragments of a Hologram Rose", in

5487-498: The introduction to Shirley's short story collection Heatseeker (1989). Shirley convinced Gibson to write a story for the television series Max Headroom for which Shirley had written several scripts, but the network canceled the series. Gibson and Sterling collaborated again on the short story "The Angel of Goliad" in 1990, which they soon expanded into the novel-length alternate history story The Difference Engine (1990). The two were later "invited to dream in public" (Gibson) in

5580-407: The magazine began publishing Pulitzer Prize –winning journalist William Safire 's " On Language ", a column discussing issues of English grammar, use and etymology . Safire's column steadily gained popularity and by 1990 was generating "more mail than anything else" in the magazine. In 1999, the magazine debuted "The Ethicist", an advice column written by humorist Randy Cohen that quickly became

5673-556: The main character's backstory, which had been suddenly rendered implausible by the September 11, 2001, attacks ; he described this as "the strangest experience I've ever had with a piece of fiction". He saw the attacks as a nodal point in history, "an experience out of culture", and "in some ways ... the true beginning of the 21st century". He is noted as one of the first novelists to use the attacks to inform his writing. Examination of cultural changes in post-September 11 America, including

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5766-420: The mainstream of science fiction (towards which he felt "an aesthetic revulsion", expressed in " The Gernsback Continuum "), to the extent that his highest goal was to become "a minor cult figure , a sort of lesser Ballard ." When Sterling started to distribute the stories, he found that "people were just genuinely baffled ... I mean they literally could not parse the guy's paragraphs ... the imaginative tropes he

5859-500: The pair played philosophers. Appearances in fiction aside, Gibson was the focus of a biographical documentary by Mark Neale in 2000 called No Maps for These Territories . The film follows Gibson over the course of a drive across North America discussing various aspects of his life, literary career and cultural interpretations. It features interviews with Jack Womack and Bruce Sterling, as well as recitations from Neuromancer by Bono and The Edge . Amazon released The Peripheral ,

5952-605: The paper, and is generally credited with saving The New York Times from financial ruin. In 1897, the magazine published a 16-page spread of photographs documenting Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee , a "costly feat" that resulted in a wildly popular issue and helped boost the magazine to success. In its early years, The New York Times Magazine began a tradition of publishing the writing of well-known contributors, from W. E. B. Du Bois and Albert Einstein to numerous sitting and future U.S. Presidents . Editor Lester Markel , an "intense and autocratic " journalist who oversaw

6045-407: The percentages vary considerably by genre, with women outnumbering men in the fields of urban fantasy , paranormal romance and young adult fiction . Academic journals which publish essays on speculative fiction include Extrapolation and Foundation . Speculative fiction may include elements from one or more of the following genres: The New York Times Magazine Its first issue

6138-410: The references and story elements in the novels through online resources such as Google and Misplaced Pages and collated the results, essentially creating hypertext versions of the books. Critic John Sutherland characterized this phenomenon as threatening "to completely overhaul the way literary criticism is conducted". About 100 pages into writing Pattern Recognition , Gibson felt impelled to re-write

6231-555: The same contemporary universe — "more or less the same one we live in now" — and put Gibson's work on to mainstream bestseller lists for the first time. As well as the setting, the novels share some of the same characters, including Hubertus Bigend and Pamela Mainwaring, employees of the enigmatic marketing company Blue Ant. When asked on Twitter what this series of novels should be called ("The Bigend Trilogy? The Blue Ant Cycle? What?"), Gibson replied "I prefer 'books'. The Bigend books." However, "Blue Ant" rather than "Bigend" has become

6324-608: The sense of expressing dissatisfaction with traditional or establishment science fiction was popularized in the 1960s and early 1970s by Judith Merril , as well as other writers and editors in connection with the New Wave movement. However, this use of the term fell into disuse around the mid-1970s. In the 2000s, the term came into wider use as a convenient collective term for a set of genres. However, some writers, such as Margaret Atwood , who wrote The Handmaid's Tale , continue to distinguish "speculative fiction" specifically as

6417-456: The standard signifier. At a later date, Gibson stated that he did not name his trilogies, "I wait to see what people call them," and in 2016 he used "the Blue Ant books" in a tweet. A phenomenon peculiar to this era was the independent development of annotating fansites, PR-Otaku and Node Magazine , devoted to Pattern Recognition and Spook Country respectively. These websites tracked

6510-466: The stories that later appeared in Burning Chrome were written in collaboration with other authors: " The Belonging Kind " (1981) with John Shirley , " Red Star, Winter Orbit " (1983) with Sterling, and " Dogfight " (1985) with Michael Swanwick . Gibson had previously written the foreword to Shirley's 1980 novel City Come A-walkin ' and the pair's collaboration continued when Gibson wrote

6603-488: The story in Neuromancer with two more novels ( Count Zero in 1986 and Mona Lisa Overdrive in 1988), thus completing the dystopic Sprawl trilogy , Gibson collaborated with Bruce Sterling on the alternate history novel The Difference Engine (1990), which became an important work of the science fiction subgenre known as steampunk . In the 1990s, Gibson composed the Bridge trilogy of novels, which explored

6696-495: The television miniseries Wild Palms at the behest of creator Bruce Wagner . Director Oliver Stone had borrowed heavily from Gibson's novels to make the series, and in the aftermath of its cancellation Gibson contributed an article, "Where The Holograms Go", to the Wild Palms Reader . He accepted another acting role in 2002, appearing alongside Douglas Coupland in the short film Mon Amour Mon Parapluie in which

6789-500: The term to avoid being pigeonholed as a science fiction writer. Ellison, a fervent proponent of writers embracing more literary and modernist directions, broke out of genre conventions to push the boundaries of speculative fiction. The term suppositional fiction is sometimes used as a sub-category designating fiction in which characters and stories are constrained by an internally consistent world, but not necessarily one defined by any particular genre. Speculative fiction as

6882-460: The text. The working title for the third novel in the series was Jackpot , about which Gibson had a change of heart in January 2021: "I don't think I'm going to call Agency's sequel Jackpot after all. Not because of [ Jackpot by Michael Mechanic], which I look forward to reading, but because Agency was originally called Tulpagotchi. Which I still like, but would've been a different book." Three of

6975-591: The titular shamaness Medea killed her own children, as opposed to their being killed by other Corinthians after her departure. Additionally, Euripides' play, Hippolytus , narratively introduced by Aphrodite , Goddess of Love in person, is suspected to have displeased his contemporary audiences, as his portrayal of Phaedra was seen as too lusty . In historiography , what is now called "speculative fiction" has previously been termed "historical invention", "historical fiction", and other similar names. These terms have been extensively noted in literary criticism of

7068-554: The trilogy center on San Francisco in the near future; all three explore Gibson's recurring themes of technological, physical, and spiritual transcendence in a more grounded, matter-of-fact style than his first trilogy. Salon 's Andrew Leonard notes that in the Bridge trilogy, Gibson's villains change from multinational corporations and artificial intelligences of the Sprawl trilogy to the mass media – namely tabloid television and

7161-463: The way forward." Gibson met Sterling at a science fiction convention in Denver , Colorado , in the autumn of 1981, where he read " Burning Chrome " – the first cyberspace short story – to an audience of four people, and later stated that Sterling "completely got it". In October 1982, Gibson traveled to Austin, Texas, for ArmadilloCon , at which he appeared with Shirley, Sterling and Shiner on

7254-486: The works of William Shakespeare , such as when he co-locates Athenian Duke Theseus , Amazonian Queen Hippolyta , English fairy Puck , and Roman god Cupid across time and space in the Fairyland of the fictional Merovingian Germanic sovereign Oberon , in A Midsummer Night's Dream . In mythography the concept of speculative fiction has been termed "mythopoesis", or mythopoeia . This practice involves

7347-409: The world, and responds to it by creating imaginative , inventive , and artistic expressions. Such expressions can contribute to practical societal progress through interpersonal influences, social and cultural movements , scientific research and advances, and the philosophy of science . In its English-language usage in arts and literature since the mid 20th century, "speculative fiction" as

7440-535: The writings of Allen Ginsberg , Jack Kerouac , and William S. Burroughs ; the lattermost had a particularly pronounced effect, greatly altering Gibson's notions of the possibilities of science fiction literature. A shy, ungainly teenager, Gibson grew up in a monoculture he found "highly problematic", consciously rejected religion and took refuge in reading science fiction as well as writers such as Burroughs and Henry Miller . Becoming frustrated with his poor academic performance, Gibson's mother threatened to send him to

7533-888: The year that followed graduation and, as one critic put it, expanded his collection of punk records. During this period he worked at various jobs, including a three-year stint as teaching assistant on a film history course at his alma mater. Impatient with much of what he saw at a science fiction convention in Vancouver in 1980 or 1981, Gibson found a kindred spirit in fellow panelist, punk musician and author John Shirley . The two became immediate and lifelong friends. Shirley persuaded Gibson to sell his early short stories and to take writing seriously. In 1977, facing first-time parenthood and an absolute lack of enthusiasm for anything like "career," I found myself dusting off my twelve-year-old's interest in science fiction. Simultaneously, weird noises were heard from New York and London. I took Punk to be

7626-513: Was 18, Gibson left school without graduating and became very isolated for a long time, traveling to California and Europe, and immersing himself in the counterculture . In 1967, he elected to move to Canada in order "to avoid the Vietnam war draft ". Gibson has observed that he "did not literally evade the draft, as they never bothered drafting me"; In the biographical documentary No Maps for These Territories (2000), Gibson said that his decision

7719-445: Was already both practiced and edited out by early encyclopedic writers like Sima Qian ( c.  145 or 135 BCE–86 BCE), author of Shiji . These examples highlight the caveat that many works, now regarded as intentional or unintentional speculative fiction, long predated the coining of the genre term; its concept, in its broadest sense, captures both a conscious and unconscious aspect of human psychology in making sense of

7812-565: Was announced as in development in 2006, and Pattern Recognition was in the process of development by director Peter Weir , although according to Gibson the latter is no longer attached to the project. Announced at International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2015 is an adaptation of Gibson's short story Dogfight by BAFTA award-winning writer and director Simon Pummell . Written by Gibson and Michael Swanwick and first published in Omni in July 1985,

7905-585: Was deeply distrusted" and credits the beginnings of his relationship with science fiction, his "native literary culture", with the subsequent feeling of abrupt exile. At the age of 12, Gibson "wanted nothing more than to be a science fiction writer". He spent a few unproductive years at basketball-obsessed George Wythe High School, a time spent largely in his room listening to records and reading books. At 13, unbeknownst to his mother, he purchased an anthology of Beat generation writing, thereby gaining exposure to

7998-526: Was easier to sustain high college grades, and thus qualify for generous student financial aid, than to work, he enrolled at the University of British Columbia (UBC), earning "a desultory bachelor's degree in English" in 1977. Through studying English literature , he was exposed to a wider range of fiction than he would have read otherwise; something he credits with giving him ideas inaccessible from within

8091-402: Was inventing were just beyond people's grasp." While Larry McCaffery has commented that these early short stories displayed flashes of Gibson's ability, science fiction critic Darko Suvin has identified them as "undoubtedly [cyberpunk's] best works", constituting the "furthest horizon" of the genre. The themes which Gibson developed in the stories, the Sprawl setting of " Burning Chrome " and

8184-422: Was just a wonderful idea", but that Gibson was unable to pursue the collaboration because he was not creatively free at the time. In 1993, Gibson contributed lyrics and featured as a guest vocalist on Yellow Magic Orchestra 's Technodon album, and wrote lyrics to the track "Dog Star Girl" for Deborah Harry's Debravation . Gibson was first solicited to work as a screenwriter after a film producer discovered

8277-509: Was motivated less by conscientious objection than by a desire to "sleep with hippie chicks" and indulge in hashish . He elaborated on the topic in a 2008 interview: When I started out as a writer I took credit for draft evasion where I shouldn't have. I washed up in Canada with some vague idea of evading the draft but then I was never drafted so I never had to make the call. I don't know what I would have done if I'd really been drafted. I wasn't

8370-417: Was published on September 6, 1896, and contained the first photographs ever printed in the newspaper. In the early decades, it was a section of the broadsheet paper and not an insert as it is today. The creation of a "serious" Sunday magazine was part of a massive overhaul of the newspaper instigated that year by its new owner, Adolph Ochs , who also banned fiction , comic strips , and gossip columns from

8463-471: Was replaced three months later by Kwame Anthony Appiah , who assumed sole authorship of the column in September 2015. "Consumed", Rob Walker 's regular column on consumer culture, debuted in 2004. The Sunday Magazine also features a puzzle page , edited by Will Shortz , that features a crossword puzzle with a larger grid than those featured in the Times during the week, along with other types of puzzles on

8556-487: Was the first time in history that a book was launched simultaneously as a film and a CD-ROM interactive video game. As of 2013, Vincenzo Natali still hoped to bring Neuromancer to the screen, after some years in development hell . Count Zero was at one point being developed as The Zen Differential with director Michael Mann attached, and the third novel in the Sprawl trilogy, Mona Lisa Overdrive , has also been optioned and bought. An anime adaptation of Idoru

8649-434: Was trying to describe an unthinkable present and I actually feel that science fiction's best use today is the exploration of contemporary reality rather than any attempt to predict where we are going ... The best thing you can do with science today is use it to explore the present. Earth is the alien planet now. —William Gibson in an interview on CNN , August 26, 1997 After All Tomorrow's Parties , Gibson began to adopt

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