William

Gibson

illiam Gibson was born March 17, 1948 in Conway, South Carolina, U.S.A. The only son of a civilian contractor who had prospered during the construction of the Oak Ridge facility that manufactured the first atomic bomb, Gibson spent his childhood with his widowed mother in a small town in the mountains of southwestern Virginia, attended a boarding school in southern Arizona, and at age 19 left the United States for Canada in order to avoid the draft for the Vietnam War. He has lived in Vancouver, British Columbia, since 1972. Married, he has two children. Gibson began to write fiction while attending the University of British Columbia, where he earned a bachelor's degree in English literature. In 1984 his first novel, Neuromancer, won the Hugo award for best novel, the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award, and the Nebula award for best novel. He is credited with having coined the term "cyberspace", and for having envisioned both the Internet and virtual reality before most people had even heard of them. His subsequent novels are Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, the bestselling Virtual Light, and the latest one Idoru. He has also written a collaborative novel, The Difference Engine, with Bruce Sterling and some episodes of X-Files. His short stories are collected in Burning Chrome.