portrait of this blog's author - by Stephen Blackman 2008

Tuesday, July 02, 2024

Cyberpunk source of The ‘Matrix’ - WILLIAM GIBSON

 

36-year-old William Gibson's debut novel was first published on 1 July 1984.

"Gibson had been publishing short fiction since 1977, and Terry Carr commissioned Gibson to write a novel for Ace Science Fiction Specials. Gibson recalled that he wrote the novel with "blind animal panic" and rewrote the first two-thirds of the novel as many as 12 times and was convinced the novel would be a failure. 

Released with little notice, Neuromancer was sold by word-of-mouth and would go on to sell more than 6.5 million copies. It also received the Hugo, the Philip K. Dick, and Nebula awards (the first paperback original to ever achieve the feat). 

Neuromancer helped popularize the genre of cyberpunk, as well as the term "cyberspace" (which Gibson had coined in the 1982 short story "Burning Chrome"), and "matrix" as used in The Matrix franchise."

#william gibson

#1984

#neuromancer

#cyberspace

#burning chrome

#the matrix

Gregory Galloway Tumblr

No comments: