Creator of the concept "Cyberspace," science-fiction author William Gibson developed a new fictional landscape for his edgy work--a hallucinatory three-dimensional region built from computer data gathered around the globe. Inventing this fictional setting, he could also leave it behind, which he has in later work. Increasingly, Gibson's creative production has come back from the future to deal with the here and now, forming a distinct arc from his 1984 debut sf novel, Neuromancer, set in the gritty futuristic urban world of the Sprawl, to his 2003 mainstream thriller, Pattern Recognition, placed in the dystopic present and featuring actual locales from London to Moscow and Tokyo.
Gibson had published only a handful of short stories when he stunned readers with his debut novel, Neuromancer, the first work ever to sweep the major honors of science fiction--the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick awards. Combining the hip cynicism of the rock music underground and the dizzying powers of high technology, the novel was hailed as the prototype of a new style of writing, promptly dubbed "cyberpunk." Gibson, who was also earning praise as a skillful prose stylist, disliked the trendy label but admitted that he was challenging science fiction traditions.
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