Gerald Alva Miller Jr. - Understanding William Gibson

UNDERSTANDING WILLIAM GIBSON

UNDERSTANDING CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN LITERATURE

Matthew J. Bruccoli, Founding Editor

Linda Wagner-Martin, Series Editor

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UNDERSTANDING

WILLIAM GIBSON

Gerald Alva Miller, Jr.

The University of South Carolina Press

2016 University of South Carolina

Published by the University of South Carolina Press

Columbia, South Carolina 29208

www.sc.edu/uscpress

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/

ISBN 978-1-61117-633-9 (cloth)

ISBN 978-1-61117-634-6 (ebook)

Front cover photograph by Ulf Andersen

http://ulfandersen.photoshelter.com

To the memory of my father, Jerry Miller,

Who taught me to love science fiction.

For my mother, Debbie Miller,

Who has always supported me no matter what.

For Jane, my daughter,

Who has brought new inspiration into my life.

And, finally, for Leigh,

Without whom none of this would have been possible.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1
Understanding William Gibson

Chapter 2
A Cyborg Apprenticeship: The Early Stories and the Retrofitting of Genres

Chapter 3
Beneath the Televisual Sky: The Sprawl Trilogy and the Rise of Cyberpunk

Chapter 4
Nodal Points: Singularities, Heterotopias, and Organic Spaces in the Bridge Trilogy

Chapter 5
Twenty-First-Century Singularities: The Futures End in Gibsons Bigend Trilogy

Chapter 6
Engaging with Difference: William Gibsons Genre and Media Explorations

Conclusion:
Retrofitting CyberpunkGibsons Lasting Influence

SERIES EDITORS PREFACE

The Understanding Contemporary American Literature series was founded by the estimable Matthew J. Bruccoli (19312008), who envisioned these volumes as guides or companions for students as well as good nonacademic readers, a legacy that will continue as new volumes are developed to fill in gaps among the nearly one hundred series volumes published to date and to embrace a host of new writers only now making their marks on our literature.

As Professor Bruccoli explained in his preface to the volumes he edited, because much influential contemporary literature makes special demands, the word understanding in the titles was chosen deliberately. Many willing readers lack an adequate understanding of how contemporary literature works; that is, of what the author is attempting to express and the means by which it is conveyed. Aimed at fostering this understanding of good literature and good writers, the criticism and analysis in the series provide instruction in how to read certain contemporary writersexplicating their material, language, structures, themes, and perspectives and facilitate a more profitable experience of the works under discussion.

In the twenty-first century Professor Bruccolis prescience gives us an avenue to publish expert critiques of significant contemporary American writing. The series continues to map the literary landscape and to provide both instruction and enjoyment. Future volumes will seek to introduce new voices alongside canonized favorites, to chronicle the changing literature of our times, and to remain, as Professor Bruccoli conceived, contemporary in the best sense of the word.

Linda Wagner-Martin, Series Editor

ABBREVIATIONS

Works by William Gibson

Other Frequently Cited Works

CHAPTER 1

Understanding William Gibson

Born on March 17, 1948, William Ford Gibson is often given the moniker father of cyberpunk, the subgenre of science fiction (or sci-fi or SF) that focuses on computer information systems, corporate control, and hyperurbanized spaces. Ironically, Gibsons early years were not spent in an urban environment or in an area known for technological advancement. Born in the coastal town of Conway, South Carolina, he spent the bulk of his childhood in Wytheville, a small Virginia town in the Appalachian Mountains (Dellinger 1). As Andrew Ross and Scott Bukatman discuss, many of the major cyberpunk authors also hailed unexpectedly from southern locales instead of from the major northern cities one might expect. Bruce Sterling, John Shirley, and Rudy Rucker, for example, were born in Brownsville, Texas; Houston, Texas; and Louisville, Kentucky, respectively. Despite his rural upbringing, Gibson became a dual citizen of Canada and the United States and a critic and visionary of the digital age.

From the Rural to the Virtual: A Brief Chronology of Gibsons Life

Gibson spent his first eight years in various parts of the South. His father, William Ford Gibson, Jr., managed a construction company that did plumbing work at Oak Ridge, where the first atomic bomb was built (Feller). Gibsons father died when the boy was eight, after which he and his mother, Elizabeth Otey, moved back to her hometown of Wytheville, Virginia (Feller). Because his mother was the town librarian, Gibson developed an early passion for books, and his writing style was influenced equally by sources as diverse as hard-boiled crime authors such as Raymond Chandler and postmodern novelists such as Thomas Pynchon (Dellinger 1). But it was the Classics Illustrated comic book version of