Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting said to focus on a combination of "low-life and high tech". It features futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyberware, juxtaposed with societal collapse, dystopia or decay. Much of cyberpunk is rooted in the New Wave science fiction movement of the 1960s and 1970s, when writers like Philip K. Dick, Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelazny, John Brunner, J. G. Ballard, Philip José Farmer and Harlan Ellison examined the impact of technology, drug culture, and the sexual revolution while avoiding the utopian tendencies of earlier science fiction.
Neuromancer is a 1984 science fiction novel by American-Canadian author William Gibson. Set in a near-future dystopia, the narrative follows Henry Case, a computer hacker enlisted into a crew by a powerful artificial intelligence and a traumatised former soldier to complete a high-stakes heist. It was Gibson's debut novel and, following its success, served as the first entry in the Sprawl trilogy, preceding Count Zero (1986) and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988).
William Ford Gibson is an American 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.
Count Zero is a science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson, originally published in 1986. It presents a near future whose technologies include a network of supercomputers that created a "matrix" in "cyberspace", an accessible, virtual, three-dimensionally active "inner space", which, for Gibson—writing these decades earlier—was seen as being dominated by violent competition between small numbers of very rich individuals and multinational corporations. The novel is composed of a trio of plot lines that ultimately converge.
The Sprawl trilogy is William Gibson's first set of novels, and is composed of Neuromancer (1984), Count Zero (1986), and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988).
New Rose Hotel is a 1998 American science fiction erotic thriller film co-written and directed by Abel Ferrara and starring Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, and Asia Argento. It is based on William Gibson's 1984 short story of the same name.
Burning Chrome (1986) is a collection of short stories written by William Gibson. Three of the stories take place in Gibson's Sprawl, a shared setting for most of his early cyberpunk work. Many of the ideas and themes explored in the short stories were later revisited in Gibson's popular Sprawl trilogy.
"Johnny Mnemonic" is a science fiction short story by American-Canadian writer William Gibson. It first appeared in Omni magazine in May 1981, and was subsequently included in Burning Chrome, a 1986 collection of Gibson's short fiction. It takes place in the world of Gibson's cyberpunk novels, predating them by some years, and introduces the character Molly Millions, who plays a prominent role in the Sprawl trilogy of novels.
Molly Millions is a recurring character in stories and novels written by William Gibson, particularly his Sprawl trilogy. She first appeared in "Johnny Mnemonic", to which she makes an oblique reference in Neuromancer. She later appeared in Mona Lisa Overdrive under the name "Sally Shears".
"The Belonging Kind" is a science fiction short story by cyberpunk authors William Gibson and John Shirley. It was first published in the horror anthology Shadows 4 edited by Charles L. Grant in 1981, later to be included along with several other stories in Gibson's collection Burning Chrome.
"Fragments of a Hologram Rose" is a science fiction short story by William Gibson. It was Gibson's first published work, originally appearing in Unearth magazine #3, a short-lived science fiction collection magazine which retailed for $1.00; Gibson was paid $23 for the story. It tells the story of a jilted ex-lover who relies on artificial sense-recordings to sleep, in a dark, polluted city. It was subsequently published in Burning Chrome, a collection of Gibson's early short fiction.
"Hinterlands" is a science fiction short story written by William Gibson. It was first published in Omni in October 1981 and was republished in his short fiction collection Burning Chrome (1986). The story is a fable about the "cargo cult" mentality and explores the consequences for cultures and civilisations when confronted with artifacts - from an unknown but likely superior source - that are dangerous but nonetheless valuable.
"The Gernsback Continuum" is a 1981 science fiction short story by American-Canadian author William Gibson, originally published in the anthology Universe 11 edited by Terry Carr. It was later reprinted in Gibson's collection Burning Chrome, and in Mirrorshades, edited by Bruce Sterling. With some similarity to Gibson's later appraisal of Singapore for Wired magazine in Disneyland with the Death Penalty, as much essay as fiction, it depicts the encounters of an American photographer with the period futuristic architecture of the American Atomic Age and Art Deco when he is assigned to document it for British publishers Barris-Watford, and the gradual incursion of its retro-futuristic hallucinations into his world. "Gernsback" in the title alludes to Hugo Gernsback, the pioneer of early 20th century American pulp magazine science fiction.
"Red Star, Winter Orbit" is a short story written by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling in the 1980s. It was first published in Omni in July 1983, and later collected in Burning Chrome, a 1986 anthology of Gibson's early short fiction, and in Sterling's 1986 cyberpunk anthology Mirrorshades. The story is set in an alternate future where the Soviet Union controls most of the Earth's resources, especially oil. As a result of this the United States is no longer a dominant economic power on earth and the Soviets have won the space race.
The works of William Gibson encompass literature, journalism, acting, recitation, and performance art. Primarily renowned as a novelist and short fiction writer in the cyberpunk milieu, Gibson invented the metaphor of cyberspace in "Burning Chrome" (1982) and emerged from obscurity in 1984 with the publication of his debut novel Neuromancer. Gibson's early short fiction is recognized as cyberpunk's finest work, effectively renovating the science fiction genre which had been hitherto considered widely insignificant.
The Perils of Pauline is a 1933 American Pre-Code film serial, and sound film remake, of the Pathé original. The 12-chapter "cliffhanger" was produced by Universal Studios. Evalyn Knapp, herself a graduate of Pathé silent short subjects, starred as the heroine, Pauline Hargraves. Historic newsreel footage of the 1930 flight of the Dornier Do X seaplane is featured in chapter eight.
"Burning Chrome" is a science fiction short story by Canadian-American writer William Gibson, first published in Omni in July 1982. Gibson first read the story at a science fiction convention in Denver, Colorado in the autumn of 1981, to an audience of four people, among them Bruce Sterling. It was nominated for a Nebula Award in 1983 and collected with the rest of Gibson's early short fiction in a 1986 volume of the same name.
Shakespeare's Memory is a short story collection published in 1983 that collects the last stories by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, which had been published in diverse mediums, such as the national newspapers La Nación and Clarín. It was published three years before the author's death.
Popular culture references to Marrakech, Morocco:
