William Gibson

9 summariesFantasy, Science Fiction, Thriller

William Ford Gibson 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 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.

Books by William Gibson

9 books available

Neuromancer
William Gibson
3.9 (262k) average on GoodreadsFantasy
In a future ruled by artificial intelligence, a former hacker navigates corporate espionage, cyberspace gods, and threats to human consciousness.
Count Zero
William Gibson
4.0 (45k) average on GoodreadsFantasy
In a future city glowing with neon, a corporate soldier, brought back to life, must rescue a bio-chipped defector from a dangerous corporate network while battling cybernetic ghosts and non-human enemies.
Pattern Recognition
William Gibson
3.9 (44k) average on GoodreadsThriller
Haunted by her father's presumed death on 9/11, a gifted but emotionally numb market-research consultant is drawn into a global mystery surrounding anonymous, cult-inducing internet videos, leading her from London to Tokyo and Russia in a quest that uncovers secrets about the footage and her own past.
Mona Lisa Overdrive
William Gibson
4.0 (36k) average on GoodreadsFantasy
In a future city, a street-smart girl's forced transformation, a celebrity's forgotten past, and a digital ghost meet in the Yakuza-controlled matrix, revealing a game where identities are bought and reality is a construct.
Idoru
William Gibson
3.8 (21k) average on GoodreadsScience Fiction
In post-earthquake Tokyo, a rock star's love for an AI idol and a young woman's investigation into her threaten to expose the city's constructed reality.
The Difference Engine
William Gibson
3.4 (19k) average on GoodreadsFantasy
In an alternate 1855 London where steam-powered computers ignite an early information age, a disgraced woman, a fossil hunter, and a spy are drawn into a deadly conspiracy surrounding mysterious punched cards that could reshape a technologically advanced Victorian world.
The Peripheral
William Gibson
3.9 (19k) average on GoodreadsThriller
In a future where past and present collide, a small-town gamer stumbles into a murder in a virtual London, unknowingly intertwining her fate with a publicist seventy years in the future, as both their realities unravel with dangerous consequences.
Spook Country
William Gibson
3.7 (19k) average on GoodreadsThriller
A journalist, an information specialist, a high-end junkie, and a military navigation troubleshooter find their lives linked in a conspiracy where information is manipulated, and the line between real and digital blurs.
Johnny Mnemonic
William Gibson
3.8 (11k) average on GoodreadsChildren's
A data courier with a brain overloaded by corporate secrets races against time and the Yakuza, who crave his cryogenically preserved head, to deliver his illicit cargo before it kills him.