A Happy Cyberpunk Birthday!
Our Butterfly-in-Chief’s circa 1984-86 ACE paperback edition of Neuromancer by William Gibson.
Okay, it’s not precisely the birthday of cyberpunk, but it is the birthday of one of the authors who pioneered the genre, William Gibson… born this day in 1948, and who introduced the world to cyberspace in his 1982 short story “Burning Chrome” and his 1984 debut novel Neuromancer. Even among the vast mind-blowing riches of science fiction, Neuromancer stands out as one of a handful of works that continue to shake our foundations here at the Butterflies & Aliens Library for its revolutionary ideas and world-building.
And we’re not the only ones to have been moved by his debut novel. Neuromancer went on to win not only the Nebula and Hugo awards for best novel but also the Philip K. Dick Award as the best paperback original.
But his literary and artistic explorations have extended well beyond his eleven novels and many short stories. Gibson also penned a screenplay for a version of Aliens 3 that tragically was never made, but was later turned into a graphic novel. He created a poem and self-destructing electronic artist’s book called Agrippa (A Book of the Dead) that encrypted itself after one viewing. He also co-wrote two episodes of the television series The X-Files: "Kill Switch" that aired in 1998 and "First Person Shooter" in 2000.
Our Head Alien had the delight of witnessing Gibson deliver a reading sponsored by Audrey’s Books inside the Zeidler Dome star theatre at the Telus World of Science in Edmonton. Standing in that futuristic setting, Gibson joked that he was actually doing the reading from a hotel in Toyko and was simply projecting himself there.
If you haven’t read Neuromancer yet, we highly recommend you find yourself a copy and plug yourself in!
Happy Reading!
– Winston and Stacey
Find a copy of Neuromancer at your local Canadian indie bookseller!
Our Head Alien’s four editions of Neuromancer, clockwise from the top: the 1994 Tenth Anniversary ACE Science Fiction hardcover edition, with a new afterword by the author; the 2000 ACE trade paperback edition, with an afterword by Jack Womack; Volume 1 of the 1989 Berkley graphic novel edition by Tom de Haven and Bruce Jensen, and for which no further volumes were ever published; and the 2016 hardcover reissue as part of the Penguin masterworks of science fiction and fantasy series, with series introduction by Neil Gaiman.
Our Butterfly-in-Chief’s paperback edition of Count Zero, the sequel to Neuromancer, and Burning Chrome, a collection of Gibson’s short stories.
The graphic novelization of William Gibson’s unproduced screenplay for Aliens 3, the only Aliens 3 that exists as far as the Head Alien of the Butterflies & Aliens Library is concerned.
Our Butterfly-in-Chief’s paperback edition of Virtual Light, the first novel in Gibson’s Bridge trilogy.
Our Head Alien’s floating ‘invisible’ shelf of Gibson works, including short story collections Burning Chrome and The Difference Engine; the Sprawl trilogy: Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive; the Bridge trilogy: Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties; the Blue Ant trilogy: Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, Zero History: the first novel in the Jackpot trilogy, The Peripheral (note to self: have to pick up a copy of Agency!); and Gibson’s non-fiction collection, Distrust That Particular Flavour.