William Gibson Bibliography / Mediagraphy

Just the facts, but far more complete than the other Johnny-come-lately "6 books and out" lists out there.

All lists are in real-world chronological order. The chronology of the "Sprawl" series is Johnny Mnemonic short story - New Rose Hotel short story - Burning Chrome short story - Neuromancer - Count Zero - Mona Lisa Overdrive. Other stories in Burning Chrome fit more or less tightly into the imagined future of the series. By the time Gibson wrote virtual light, the book set closest in time, the near future necessarily had turned out different from the "Sprawl" future.

Summary:

Books

Burning Chrome
Neuromancer
Count Zero
Mona Lisa Overdrive
The Difference Engine(with Bruce Sterling)
Virtual Light
Idoru

Short stories and articles

the stories collected in Burning Chrome
The Gernsback Continuum and Red Star, Winter Orbit were also collected in Mirrorshades
Rocket Radio in Rolling Stone
Skinner's Room in Visionary San Francisco
Doing Television in The Face / Darwin in Spin
Academy Leader in Cyberspace : First Steps
Disneyland with the Death Penalty in Wired
the foreword to a new edition of City Come A-Walking by John Shirley
the foreword to a new edition of Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
Idoru Excerpt in Rolling Stone

Other Media

Agrippa poem and artbook with Dennis Ashbaugh
Aliens 3 script
Visionary San Francisco literature/architecture exhibit
cameo in Wild Palms
Tomorrow Calling based on The Gernsback Continuum
film version of Johnny Mnemonic
Kill Switch episode of The X-Files (with Tom Maddox)

Adaptations of William Gibson's work

Neuromancer computer game
Neuromancer graphic novel
Hinterlands in graphic format in Freeflight comic book
Voyager Electronic Books of Nm/CZ/MLO and VL
Audiobook of Neuromancer narrated by William Gibson
Johnny Mnemonic computer game
Burning Chrome adaptation for the stage

In more detail...

Books

Also see the Library of Congress info for some books.

Burning Chrome

a varied collection of stories, many first published in Omni magazine. The short story details are listed elsewhere.

Not all the stories are part of the same future.

US hardback: Arbor House Publishing Company, 1986
US paperback: An Ace Book, October 1987
UK hardback: Victor Gollancz, (London) UK, 1986
UK Paperback: Grafton, (London) UK, 1988

Neuromancer

A star. It won the Hugo, Nebula, Philip K. Dick, Seiun, and Ditmar awards.

Also available as graphic novel, electronic book, videogame, and spoken word recording.

US Hardcover: Phantasia Press, spring 1986; 1st Ace hardcover ed. New York : Ace Books, 1994
US Paperback: Ace Book, July 1984 (Ace Science Fiction original, then Ace S.F. Special, then an Ace Book)

Count Zero

My favorite, less detached, more varied themes, strong characters. Most readers prefer Neuromancer because it's more action-packed, but check out this quote.

Hardcover: Arbor House, March 1986
US Paperback: Ace Book, April 1987

Mona Lisa Overdrive

The series continues; complex interwoven plot, strong female roles

Hardcover: Bantam Spectra, Nov. 1988
US Paperback
UK Paperback: Cover: Very different artwork, an airbrushed future motorcycle as I recall.

Difference Engine

Co-written with Bruce Sterling, another talented writer. A difficult "steampunk" novel. Very atmospheric. The more you know about Victorian history, the more you'll get out of it.

US Hardback: A Bantam Spectra Book, 1991
US Paperback: Same cover art

virtual light

Set in the near future, William Gibson's lightest book. More focus on place than ideas. Funny. This expands the story "Skinner's Room" from the Visionary San Francisco catalog.

Hardback: Bantam Spectra, September 1993
US Paperback: Same cover art.

Idoru

New work, Idoru is the Japanese borrowing of the English word "idol". From the Library of Congress Index:

PROJECTED PUBLICATION DATE:  9609

SUBJECTS:

  Rock musicians--Psychology--Fiction.

  Virtual reality--Fiction.

  Friendship--Fiction.

  Psychological fiction. lcsh

US hardcover: Berkely Putnam, 1996.
UK hardcover?: Viking Penguin

Short Stories and Articles

The stories in Burning Chrome were published in various magazines and two were published in the Mirrorshades anthology edited by Bruce Sterling.

"Burning Chrome" Story List

"Johnny Mnemonic"

"The Gernsback Continuum"

"Fragments of a Hologram Rose"

"The Belonging Kind"

"Hinterlands"

"Red Star, Winter Orbit"

"New Rose Hotel"

"The Winter Market"

"Dogfight"

"Burning Chrome".

Mirrorshades

Mirrorshades edited by Bruce Sterling is an excellent cyberpunk anthology which includes The Gernsback Continuum and Red Star, Winter Orbit.

US hardback: Arbor House, December 1986
US Paperback: Ace Books, July 1988

Rocket Radio

Ruminations on technology reuse and meaning. Restates themes from the Sprawl series as non-fiction, more personal.

Rolling Stone, June 15th 1989, "Technology for the Nineties" section
Photograph: head outlined by headphones, phone jack, circuits by William Duke.

Doing Television

One page, kids in a hotel room, covers nationalism, multinationals, environmental damaga, VR, test-tube babies, drugs, plagues. (!!!) Melancholy, absolutely stellar.

The Face 1991 ?? Future Tense section p.81-82

Darwin

Almost the same story as Doing TV

Spin , 1991 ?? p.60-61
Illustration (sun, chopper, homeless, VR helmet) by Karl Denham

Academy Leader in Cyberspace : First Steps

This is a dry academic book of original contributions about cyberspace. Most of it is pointless academic pontification except for a fascinating history of Lucasfilm's habitat, one of the first avatar-based communities. Gibson's three page story is an incredibly dense and mostly beyond me, truly fragments of a hologram rose. The girl Kelsey in an Australian room from Doing TV/Darwin reappears, interspersed with musings on technological reuse and references to data mining. I think "Academy Leader" refers to the countdown numerals at the beginning of a strip of film. I think the story is about the meta-act of zeroing in on details.

Cyberspace: First Steps, 1991 Cambridge Massachusetts
Edited by Michael Benedikt
The MIT Press
ISBN 0-262-02327-X (hard)
ISBN 0-262-52177-6 (paperback)
cover: mysterious technological device on a grid.

Skinner's Room

This short story appeared in the catalog for the Visionary San Francisco exhibition. The characters and takeover of the Bay Bridge by the homeless reappear in Virtual Light.

Visionary San Francisco, 1990 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Prestel-Verlag, Munich
ISBN: 3-7913-1060-7 (hard)
0-918-47115-X (soft)
Cover: (sketch of Mission Bay development) by John Kriken, SOM

Disneyland with the Death Penalty

Cynical article on Singapore, later attacked in Wired's letters section

Published in Wired 1.4, Sept-Oct. 1993, p. 51-114
ISSN 1059-1028
link at http://www.eff.org/pub/Net_culture/Cyberpunk/William_Gibson/gibson_disney_death.article

Foreword to the novel Dhalgren

William Gibson wrote a foreword to a new edition of Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany

Paperback: Dhalgren, Wesleyn University Press, 1996
Special edition: signed by both Samuel R. Delany and William Gibson.

Foreword to the novel City Come A-Walking

William Gibson wrote a foreword to a new edition of City Come A-Walking by John Shirley.

Published by Eyeball Books. >From their site:

An eloquent foreword by William Gibson sets the novel, and Shirley, into historical context.

Idoru

An excerpt from Idoru is available in the issue #735, May 30, 1996, of Rolling Stone magazine.

Other Media

Agrippa

Ruminations on memory and family, fragmented. Released as a limited edition encrypted program on floppy, designed to self-destruct when read. Some versions came with self-destructing artwork by Dennis Ashbaugh. Eventually decoded by hackers, versions of the text are available on the net.

In HTML at http://www.astro.utoronto.ca/~reid/htmldocs/agrippa.html, but I think the ASCII at file://bush.cs.tamu.edu/pub/misc/erich/agrippa looks better.

Here are the details from http://www.euro.net/mark-space/bkAgrippa.html

William Gibson, Dennis Ashbaugh
AGRIPPA: A Book of the Dead
hardback: Kevin Begos Publishing Inc, US, 1992

art book, poem, metaphor, identity, death, apocalyptic

Visuals by Dennis Ashbaugh and text by William Gibson. Contains a floppy disc. This is a self-destructing book: images fade, disc crashes. Gibson's text is available on the net.

"A collaboration between author William Gibson, publisher Kevin Begos Jr, and artist Dennis Ashbaugh. This art-work contains engravings by Ashbaugh which appear or disappear in light and an on-disk semi-autobiographical poem by William Gibson which is unreadable after having been read once. Agrippa is notable because in many respects it blurs the lines about what art is, and adds fuel to the fire on issues of property rights and intellectual property. A highlight of 1992 was the release of Gibson's poem on to the net".
--Andy Hawks (in FutureCulture FAQ , on the Internet).

[a review of this book by Peter Schwenger can be found in: Flame Wars edited by Mark Dery.]

Or for the text of Agrippa plus interviews by Marisa Golini and by Darren Wershler-Henry at: gopher://english.hss.cmu.edu:70/0F-2%3A1598%3AGibson

Visionary San Francisco

This was a literature meets architecture show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

From the exhbition book:

Published on the occasion of an exhibition of the same name organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and shown at the museum June 14-August 26, 1990 William Gibson appeared on a monitor discussing the future and reading from Skinner's Room.

Wild Palms

An inventive miniseries totally different from everything else on TV, that was roundly criticized for being differerent.

William Gibson appears in a scene in Virtual Reality, where he says (roughly) "I invented cyberspace". That's my recollection, anyway. Erich Schneider , maintainer of the alt.cyberpunk faq, remembers Gibson's cameo being at a "New Realism"/"Syntheotics" meeting:

Paige: This is William Gibson, Harry.
Harry: Oh, yeah ... _Neuromancer_, right?
Paige: He invented the word "cyberspace".
Gibson: And they'll never let me forget it.

Gibson may have also written some things in the Wild Palms tie-in book?

The alleged Alien ^3 Script

A well-written (surprise!) script for the movie. Themes of Russian/American/Chinese conflict in space, virus. There is some dispute whether the versions on the net are genuine. Its merits over the eventual filmed version are often debated in newsgroups.

http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~joker/misc/aliens3.html is the complete ASCII version

It's also available formatted, but with gaps, at http://www.umd.umich.edu/~nhughes/cyber/gibson/alien3.html

The Gernsback Continuum / Tomorrow Calling

Apparently The Gernsback Continuum was made into a short film, Tomorrow Calling, in the UK, 1995

Other Movie Attempts

"Cabana Boys Productions" had rights to Neuromancer, they reverted to Gibson.

At one point Malcolm McLaren had rights to Burning Chrome

New Rose Hotel was optioned at some point and has been in development for years. The latest is that Abel Ferrara (director of Bad Lieutenant) is making a low-budget version of it starring Willem Dafoe and Christopher Walken; Gibson did not write the screenplay.

Johnny Mnemonic movie

Directed by Robert Longo and starring Keanu Reeves.
Gibson himself says Hollywood forces changed the movie from his and Longo's vision, and that the Japanese cut of the movie (in English with Japanese subtitles) is closer to their intent. [$$$ anyone know how to get a Japanese video in the U.S.?]

The plot is quite different than that of the short story, but some core ideas remain. Because of overlapping rights, the Molly Millions character does not appear in the film.

Sony has an OK site for the movie, at http://www.spe.sony.com/movies/movies/Mnemonic/intro.html and http://www.spe.sony.com/movies/06jonmnu.html. There's a Cyberspace demo download, but it only works on Windows 3.1 with WinG.

Johnny Mnemonic The Screenplay and the Story

The screenplay presents the narrative drive of the film a lot better than the film itself does.

(this is lifted from http://www.euro.net/mark-space/bkJohnnyMnemonicScreenplay.html)

US paperback: Ace, (New York) US, June 1995

screenplay, short story, science fiction, film, cyberpunk

Illustrated with photos from the film.

"And his only allies are a cybernetic dolphin and a sexy streetfighter with a hardwired taste for violence...

"In 1984, William Gibson's Neuromancer -- winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K.Dick Awards -- introduced the concept of cyberspace to the world -- and revolutionized the way we look at the future. Rolling Stone labeled him 'science fiction's hottest author' -- and in the years since, his incomparably inventive body of work has made his name synonymous with 'visionary'. Now for the first time, Gibson's corrupt, computer-driven future is brought to the screen in Johnny Mnemonic -- based on a story previously published in Gibson's highly praised collection, Burning Chrome .

"This book, illustrated with exclusive photographs, contains the full text of William Gibson's exciting original screenplay -- and the short story that inspired it".

Kill Switch episode of The X-Files (co-written with Tom Maddox)

Episode 5X11, First aired February 15, 1998.

A comfortable statement of Gibson's traditional themes: an AI released onto the net (from Neuromancer) and human consciousness melded with the net (from Mona Lisa Overdrive). Nice dialog, a vulnerable hacker girl (why do they always have Darryl Hannah Blade Runner replicant eye makeup?)

It feels about 70 minutes long, but it's shoehorned into 48 or so minutes of TV.

Adaptations

Graphic Novel of Neuromancer

Nicely done first third of Neuromancer. Very hard to track down, but here's the details:

William Gibson's Neuromancer \ The Graphic Novel ... Volume 1 by Tom De Haven & Bruce Jensen: A Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc Book

Comic of Hinterlands

An interesting evocation of the fake paradise of the short story from Burning Chrome.

adapted and illustrated by Gavin Lonergan
appeared in Freeflight #5 and #6, Dec/Jan 95 and Apr/May 95, published by Thinkblots.

Here's the announcement of it on alt.cyberpunk:

From alt.cyberpunk.28400 March 1995

 Message-ID: <D1xD95.BI1@iceonline.com>

 From: patricks@icebox.iceonline.com (Patrick Sauriol)

 Subject: MISC: Gibson story adapted to comic books

    There's going to be an adaptation of the William Gibson short story

'Hinterlands' (from his compliation "Burning Chrome") in graphic format.  The

work will appear in a independent comic book called "Freeflight", issues #5

coming out this month) and concluding in #6 (in March).



  The story is twenty pages in length, broken up into two segments to fit into

the anthology format.  The work was adapted by Vancouver artist Gavin

Longeran, and has a Moebius-look to it.  Gibson was involved in the adaptation

process directly, between breaks and faxing while working on his adaptation of

'Johnny Mnemonic'.  As well, there's a computer-generated cover image

depicting the alien seashell from the story.



  Anyone interested in getting a copy can just cruise down to their local

comic shop at the end of the month and ask for it.

Computer game of Neuromancer

Role-playing adventure game with low-rez graphics

Interplay, 1988?,
distributed by Mediagenic for Apple II, Commodore C64, and Amiga computers. Interplay's site still has the cheats for the game, but the originals are no longer available. Hacked versions of all three are floating around on the Internet, and theApple ][ and C64 games are playable on a PC using freeware/shareware emulators. Supposedly the C64 version is the best, with better graphics . **I'll pay money for a physical copy of the original game. $$

Mentioned in Omni magazine, 1988?, Games section article.

"A real Neuromancer game, however, would probably kill or main you or maybe give you a mild shock if you lost," Gibson quips. "It amuses me that Neuromancer is now a product that you can actually play." Gibson, however, doesn't play computer games. In fact, when he wrote the novel he didn't even own a personal computer. "Maybe that's why I was able to bring a sense of wonder to computing," he says.

Audio book of Neuromancer

William Gibson reads Neuromancer. Gibson's flat twang voice work can't express the variety of all the characters, but his presentation of the narrative drive of the tale is excellent. His narration reveals the spiritual center of the tale in the forty hours/5 minutes that Case is flatlined in Neuromancer's cyberspace construct, it's a passage of lyrical emotion. U2 is credited with some of the incidental sounds in the background, but they're very incidental.

Time Warner AudioBooks http://pathfinder.com/twep/TWAB/TWAB.html,
Call 310/205-7451 to order.

Electronic Book Versions

Voyager Co. (http://www.voyagerco.com) sold an Expanded Book edition of Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive on floppy disk for Mac and PC. It's surprisingly readable and has search, comment, and bookmark features, but the content is very plain. I would have liked to see the original artwork, the extensive reviews of Neuromancer, etc.

From http://www.voyagerco.com/CD/gh/p.eb.html

Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, and Count Zero by William Gibson (Mac/Win) $19.95

Virtual Light by William Gibson (Mac) $19.95

Johnny Mnemonic computer game

From Sony, it blended video sequences with computer gaming. Hyped in Wired. As with seemingly every other FMV game, it was touted as breaking through the linearity problem of pre-canned video segments before its release, and then after release the consensus was "it sucks like every other FMV game"

Burning Chrome stage adaptation

Next Theatre in Evanston, IL is working on it, check out the details at http://burningcity.com/live_chrome.html

Criticism

In addition to all the book reports and ruminations on the Net, there is a book of "criticism and interpretation"

William Gibson by Lance Olsen

From the Library of Congress Index

SUBJECTS:

  Gibson, William, 1948- --Criticism and interpretation.

  Science fiction, American--History and criticism.



SERIES TITLES (Indexed under SERI option):

  Starmont reader's guide, 0272-7330 ; 58

NOTES:

  Includes bibliographical references (p. 115-119) and index.

.  San Bernardino, Calif. : Borgo Press, c1992.

ISBN:  1557421994 (hc)

       155742198

William Gibson Bibliography / Mediagraphy

Summary:

Books

Short stories and articles

Other Media

Adaptations of William Gibson's work

Books

Burning Chrome

Neuromancer

Count Zero

Mona Lisa Overdrive

Difference Engine

virtual light

Idoru

Short Stories and Articles

"Burning Chrome" Story List

Mirrorshades

Rocket Radio

Doing Television

Darwin

Academy Leader in Cyberspace : First Steps

Skinner's Room

Disneyland with the Death Penalty

Foreword to the novel Dhalgren

Foreword to the novel City Come A-Walking

Idoru

Other Media

Agrippa

Visionary San Francisco

Wild Palms

The alleged Alien ^3 Script

The Gernsback Continuum / Tomorrow Calling

Other Movie Attempts

Johnny Mnemonic movie

Johnny Mnemonic The Screenplay and the Story

Kill Switch episode of The X-Files (co-written with Tom Maddox)

Adaptations

Graphic Novel of Neuromancer

Comic of Hinterlands

Computer game of Neuromancer

Audio book of Neuromancer

Electronic Book Versions

Johnny Mnemonic computer game

Burning Chrome stage adaptation

Criticism

Links

Interview Links

Online Conferences

Credits