![]() ![]() By that point he’d helped inspire a whole movement in sci fi alongside his buds John Shirley, Rudy Rucker and Bruce Sterling, with whom he helped popularize steampunk with The Difference Engine (1990). He continued the Sprawl trilogy with Count Zero (1986) and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988). Katsuhiro Otomo’s manga series Akira also began that year. He worried too much, it was brilliantly original. He was afraid of being accused of derivativeness, and re-wrote the beginning numerous times. He was a third of the way through writing his first novel, Neuromancer (1984), when he saw Bladerunner (1982), based on Dick’s Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? (1968). They were more dystopian, described by some as “realism.” They were unlike anything I’d read before, the first steps in his virtual world building of the Sprawl, and the blueprint for cyberpunk. But his stories were more in line with Philip K. In general, sci fi was interested in the utopian possibilities of science. ![]() ![]() Later came “New Rose Hotel,” and “Burning Chrome,” in July 1982. ![]() I had a subscription to Omni magazine as a kid, which is where I first encountered a short story by Gibson, “Johnny Mnemonic” in 1981. The noir prophet of cyberpunk, William Gibson, is one of my favorite writers, because his brand of sci-fi, generally set in the near-ish future, is presciently predictive in the context of thrilling adventures. ![]()
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