In 1984,
by William Gibson became the first novel to win the three top prizes for science fiction (the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Philip K. Dick awards). It established a new literary subgenre—“cyberpunk,” or digital, fiction—and helped inspire the Matrix film trilogy. In his debut novel, Gibson coined the term “cyberspace” and described the Internet and virtual reality long before they were part of the cultural landscape. In subsequent works, such as Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Johnny Mnemonic, Virtual Light, and Pattern Recognition, he continued his habit of prescience, forecasting developments in such complex and diverse fields as nanotechnology, identity theft, virtual art, computer viruses, and information control.
Oddly, Gibson, a former English major, knows little about computers or technology of any kind. And he has always insisted that his fiction was a way to comment on the present day and not to suggest the future. Indeed, ...
