WILLIAM GIBSON

William Ford Gibson (1948-) is a US author, mostly of science fiction novels. He is one of the leading members of the cyberpunk movement.

Gibson was born in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina on March 17, 1948. In 1972, he moved to Vancouver, B.C, Canada where he began to write science fiction. His early works are generally futuristic stories about the influences of cybernetic and cyberspace (computer simulated reality) technology on the human race living in the imminent future. His first novel, Neuromancer, won three major science-fiction awards (Nebula, Hugo, and Philip K. Dick Memorial Award).

More recently, Gibson has begun to move away from the fictional dystopias that made him famous, towards a more realist style of writing that eschews the trademark jump-cuts in favour of continuity and narrative flow. The novel Pattern Recognition even saw him enter the mainstream bestseller lists for the first time. There is, however, still the obsession with technology, and in particular with its darker, unpredictable side.

In addition to his paper works, he also wrote an electronic poem called Agrippa (A Book of the Dead), and flirted with writing a weblog. One of his short stories, Johnny Mnemonic, has been turned into a movie, starring Keanu Reeves.

According to the Internet Movie Database he has a writing credit for, and made an apperance in, the X-Files.