In the following decade, the ‘Bridge’ trilogy began with Virtual Light (1993) in a near-future federated Northern and Southern California, c. 2005. Moving primarily between Los Angeles, a reconstructed San Francisco and Tokyo, the subsequent Idoru (1996) and All Tomorrow's Parties (1999) continue Gibson’s investigations of cyber- and pop-culture. The interwoven themes are today mainstream preoccupations: meditations on the development of AI, the “consensual hallucination” of cyberspace, the data-flows and ‘nodal points’ of information on the Web, digital identity, the fusion of big tech, celebrity, consumerism and mass media. The societal impact of new technologies and virtual realities reverberates throughout the Bridge trilogy, as the new phenomenon of the Internet reached a wider public.
The eponymous ‘idoru’ or idol, Rei Toei, is a computer-generated holographic, whose marriage to a rock star is at the heart of the second novel. Discussing the body as personality construct, author Dani Cavallaro attributes the creation of the idoru to a branch of nanotechnology which renders “the very distinction between the animate and the inanimate somewhat obsolete”. While a post-human construction, Rei Toei “carries traces of personal history”, presumably programmed. Colin Laney, the character who sifts the Internet to identify the significant ‘nodal points’ of incipient change, is described as “an intuitive fisher of patterns of information” – a gift he owes to the ingestion of experimental drugs as an orphaned child. The interaction of the real and the virtual is arguably the defining strand of science fiction tradition that Gibson explores as distinctively as Philip K. Dick before him.
After the impact of the Sprawl trilogy, Gibson was in demand during the 1990s as a cultural commentator and observer of technological developments. In his interviews and non-fiction, he cast a critical eye over emerging trends from an addiction to eBay to the evolution of the World Wide Web, speculating on where the changes might lead society. Famously, in ‘Disneyland with the Death Penalty’ (an article which now has its own Wikipedia page), his record of a visit to Singapore for Wired magazine, he found disturbing signs of totalitarianism beneath the prosperous, sterile façade of the city-state. The publication was promptly banned there, adding weight to his argument. Gibson also continued to insert musical references into his work, including Nick Cave, Steely Dan and the Velvet Underground in the Bridge trilogy, whilst being cited as an influence by Billy Idol, Sonic Youth and U2 among others.
All Tomorrow's Parties brings many of the earlier threads and characters together – Laney is now resident in a cardboard box in a Tokyo subway station, permanently plugged into the Web – and returns the series back to the Bridge. The trilogy’s emblematic setting of the Golden Gate Bridge, now a semi-autonomous zone or outsider community, serves as a counterpoint to the corporate world and provides a (temporary) refuge beyond the reach of an all-pervasive digital surveillance network. The arrival of the Lucky Dragon convenience store franchise signifies not only commodification of the Bridge – now a tourist attraction – but a disruption of its independent status. The Bridge’s virtual analogue is the Walled City (based on the physical location in Kowloon, Hak Nam or the City of Darkness, which was fully demolished in 1994), a self-regulated space within the web’s data-flows created by disaffected programmers and hackers. This attempt to “create a private realm for themselves where they would enjoy complete autonomy” has evolved outside the control of the multi-nationals; the ‘ownership’ of the Internet is a recurring concern of Gibson’s.
1995 saw the cinematic release of Johnny Mnemonic, an adaptation of his 1981 short story. Starring Keanu Reeves as the title character, a data courier who transports information stored in his head, Gibson was involved in the production but was dissatisfied with the final version – reflected in its mixed reviews. He complained of changes made late in post-production which “destroys the integrity” of the movie, together with the replacement of the original score. Many of the sets dated rapidly, and the film as a whole failed to capture the distinctive vision found in his fiction.
Gibson also contributed to the decade’s hugely successful sci-fi TV series, The X-Files, which was largely filmed in his adopted hometown of Vancouver. He collaborated with friend and fellow author Tom Maddox on the script for ‘Kill Switch’, broadcast in 1998 during the show’s fifth season. Many of the themes familiar from Gibson’s fiction are condensed into the episode, combining a rogue autonomous AI with virtual reality scenes – and still categorised as ‘cyberpunk’. Gibson confessed that his daughter (then 15) had introduced him to the series, and she also insisted they be present for the episode’s filming. Also in 1998, Gibson wrote an introduction to The Art of the X-Files, cementing his affinity with the show, which he described as “a disturbing and viscerally satisfying expression of where we've come from, where we are today, and all those places we simultaneously yearn and dread to go.” He again collaborated with Maddox on a second episode, ‘First Person Shooter’, which aired in February 2000 and explored a deadly presence in a role-playing VR game.
After the impact of the Sprawl trilogy, Gibson was in demand during the 1990s as a cultural commentator and observer of technological developments. In his interviews and non-fiction, he cast a critical eye over emerging trends from an addiction to eBay to the evolution of the World Wide Web, speculating on where the changes might lead society. Famously, in ‘Disneyland with the Death Penalty’ (an article which now has its own Wikipedia page), his record of a visit to Singapore for Wired magazine, he found disturbing signs of totalitarianism beneath the prosperous, sterile façade of the city-state. The publication was promptly banned there, adding weight to his argument. Gibson also continued to insert musical references into his work, including Nick Cave, Steely Dan and the Velvet Underground in the Bridge trilogy, whilst being cited as an influence by Billy Idol, Sonic Youth and U2 among others.
He described the significance of the Internet in a 1994 interview:
“The advent, evolution and growth of the Internet is, I think, one of the most fascinating and unprecedented human achievements of the century. I sometimes suspect that we’re seeing something in the Internet as significant as the birth of cities. It’s something that profound and with that sort of infinite possibilities. It’s really something new, it’s a new kind of civilization.”
“The advent, evolution and growth of the Internet is, I think, one of the most fascinating and unprecedented human achievements of the century. I sometimes suspect that we’re seeing something in the Internet as significant as the birth of cities. It’s something that profound and with that sort of infinite possibilities. It’s really something new, it’s a new kind of civilization.”
Gibson discussed the potential consequences of the Internet in myriad interviews, even as its scope expanded over the course of the decade, anticipating that it would become “completely ubiquitous”. While he believed that “we’ll see some amazing social changes” as it evolves, he recognised within AI and the virtual worlds, “something almost pathological growing out of this technology.” Such observations translate seamlessly to his fiction, and while the narrative viewpoint is generally detached, fears that technological developments may not be entirely beneficial are articulated throughout the Bridge trilogy.
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Within its physical and virtual worlds, Gibson’s cast of disenfranchised and rootless characters seek a place in an increasingly de-humanised and polarised society. Counter-cultural remnants carve out a fragile existence in the shadow of omnipresent techno-corporations – what one of the protagonists hopes to document as “interstitial communities”. These urban ‘interzones’, spaces for the marginalised or “places built in the gaps” are found recurrently in Gibson’s work. The settings of Tokyo’s cardboard-box cities and the amorphous jumble of the Golden Gate Bridge are a reflection of the author’s belief “that there are viable degrees of freedom inherent if not realised in interstitial areas.”
Characterised elsewhere as a continuation of the “combination of high-tech gadgets, low-tech environments” found in the Sprawl novels, Gibson himself has described the Bridge trilogy as being “my take on the 1990s,” in a decade where technology was shaping an uncertain future. Recalling waiting for “the Soviet Union to collapse” before completing Virtual Light, in a 1993 interview he acknowledged the setting as “just ‘now’ with the volume cranked up.”
All Tomorrow's Parties in particular introduces the concept of 3D printing (later developed in 2014’s The Peripheral), while nanotechnology permeates the trilogy as a whole, in the reconstructed buildings of San Francisco and Tokyo. As a contemporary SF theme, both 3D printing and nanotechnology are even more exhaustively explored in Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer (1995), his follow-up to the influential Snow Crash. Also notable for its depiction of the ‘neo-Victorians’ which anticipates the Steampunk aesthetic, Stephenson’s novel depicts a future where the Matter Compiler (a more advanced 3D printer) is commonplace and nanotechnology ubiquitous – inside bodies, interactive books and the physical environment the characters inhabit. Gibson has acknowledged in Stephenson’s fiction “a natural overlap” with his own. The work of both authors in the 1990s is a guide to the digital landscape which was to come, as much a warning as a celebration of the potential for technology to re-shape the world.
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