William Gibson in the 1990s: Virtual Realities

William Gibson established himself as one of the foremost contemporary SF writers with 1984’s Neuromancer. The first instalment of the ‘Sprawl’ trilogy was followed by Count Zero (1986) and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988). Set in a futuristic dystopia where all-powerful multinational corporations have largely replaced national governments, Gibson’s characters survive as ‘outsiders’ within the lawless post-industrial cities of the Sprawl. His aesthetic is an updated noir “combination of lowlife and high tech”. Together with the short stories collected in Burning Chrome (1986), Neuromancer and its successors were the precursor of the short-lived cyberpunk movement. Most significantly, Gibson’s 1980s works serve as an early exploration of the scope of the Internet as global information source, and the potential for autonomous Artificial Intelligence (AI).

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.

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.”

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.

bridge_trilogy_image by_dahliainosensu

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.

Cyberpunk 1990

Oxford English Dictionary – Cyberpunk: A genre of science fiction set in a lawless subculture of an oppressive society dominated by computer technology

The heyday of Cyberpunk was captured in a 1990 documentary by Marianne Trench and Peter von Brandenburg, providing an insight into its guiding ideas and featuring leading lights such as William Gibson, Jaron Lanier, Brenda Laurel and Timothy Leary. As a movement, it was primarily concerned with developments in technology, particularly artificial intelligence and virtual reality (the ‘consensual hallucination’ of a computer-generated world); “information wants to be free”, a phrase echoed by several participants in the documentary, symbolized their vision. Cyberpunk drew on influences from, and in turn influenced, art, fashion, film (Blade Runner was a major visual precursor), and literature (Gibson’s Neuromancer is its key text, while Jeff Noon’s Vurt and Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash are both highly regarded); it manifested in computer hacking, ‘industrial’ music, rave culture, and video game graphics, all considered in the film. Whilst most commentators see a trend toward liberation, others strike a cautionary note; that the Utopian technology which can empower, may also enslave. Very much a product of its time, the documentary’s imagery and production values illustrate how quickly the cutting-edge can become obsolete. It remains a valuable document of what the future looked like in 1990, at the dawn of the ‘computer age’, though its main protagonists have enjoyed contrasting fortunes over the subsequent 27 years... 

 

William Gibson – the American novelist is regarded as the Godfather of Cyberpunk, many of its central themes originating in his 1984 novel Neuromancer, the biggest single influence on the sub-genre. Gibson famously created his vision of the future on a manual type-writer, didn’t have an e-mail address until 1996, and has stated that he has “never really been very interested in computers themselves. I don't watch them; I watch how people behave around them.” By the 1990s, as advances in technology brought some of his concepts toward reality, he was in demand as a spokesman, reflected in his extensive contribution to the documentary. Neuromancer (the first book of his ‘Sprawl’ trilogy) portrayed a post-industrial, high-tech society dominated by multi-national corporations – zaibatsus – where national boundaries have been dissolved, and individuals define their identity through consumer products. He coined the term ‘cyberspace’ in his 1982 short story ‘Burning Chrome’, to denote the virtual territory contained within computer networks, before the worldwide phenomenon of the Internet. Another of his early short stories, ‘Johnny Mnemonic’, was filmed in 1995, with a pre-Matrix Keanu Reeves in the title role, as a cyber-courier who carries information in his brain – the acting, simplified plot and already-dated setting brought widespread derision (a fate shared by the same year’s risible techno-movie Hackers), although most critics recognised its distance from Gibson’s original conception.

William Gibson. Photo: Christopher J. Morris/Corbis via Getty Images

The 2000 documentary by film-maker Mark Neale, No Maps for these Territories, provides an introduction to Gibson’s biography and preoccupations, as he makes observations on the ‘mediated world’ we live in, during a road-trip across America. The author remains closely associated with Cyberpunk; though his later work has taken him in different directions, he continues to examine consumerism, corporate influence and globalisation, the evolution of the Internet and social media, believing that “the digital has become the constant; it’s becoming where we all are, all the time.”

Timothy Leary in his 1960s pomp

Timothy Leary – best known for his notorious role in the sixties counter-culture, associated with the use of mind-expanding drugs (which he not only advocated, but experimented with enthusiastically), and coining the phrase ‘tune in, turn on, drop out’. A clinical psychologist, researcher and Harvard academic until his drug-related dismissal in 1963, Leary became a major media figure, later described by then-President Richard Nixon as “the most dangerous man in America”. After multiple periods of imprisonment, and a relatively low public profile during the 1970s, Leary embraced the coming ‘cybernetic’ era – the concept of technological revolution embodied by Cyberpunk in the mid-to-late 1980s – adapting his former phrase to ‘turn on, boot up, jack in’ and declaring “the PC is the new LSD”. He saw the potential of home computing, virtual reality and the web as forces for personal liberation, able to free individuals from state control, and to subvert governmental and other power structures. His involvement with new technology extended to creating video games (including a project to produce a version of Neuromancer), endorsing the Mattel Power Glove – a gaming device “unique for its time, allowing players to use motion to control their games” – and acting as ‘technical consultant’ on Billy Idol’s somewhat opportunistic 1993 album Cyberpunk. Leary died in 1996.

Timothy Leary at the time of Cyberpunk

Jaron Lanier, then (above) & now (below)

Jaron Lanier – although only featuring briefly in the documentary, Lanier has since established himself as a leading figure in emerging technology, addressing its philosophical implications and the shortcomings of the Internet. His credentials are both practical and theoretical, as a computer science pioneer, early adopter of virtual reality and software developer. He has been involved in the field since the early 1980s, first working for Atari and then forming his own company, VPL Research, concentrating on visual programming language and virtual reality applications. Lanier has retained his status as a credible commentator and an independent authority, becoming a successful author and public speaker, outlining potential future developments and their impact on wider society in books such as You Are Not a Gadget (2010) and Who Owns the Future? (2013).


Michael Synergy – an enigmatic figure, clearly enjoying the attention bestowed on him by the documentary makers as a man with “the power to bring down governments”, Synergy has, for whatever reason, not enjoyed such publicity since its release. In fact, he has all but vanished – even from the cyberspaces of the Internet – personal details are scant, and information on his subsequent career hard to come by. 

Michael Synergy – current whereabouts unknown

Interconnections: From William Burroughs to Steely Dan to William Gibson (Part Two)

Two

Burroughs had his own career as a recording artist, releasing a series of spoken-word albums; his first official LP, in 1965, produced at and issued by the English Bookshop in Paris (42, rue de Seine on the Left Bank), was Call Me Burroughs. The Beatles apparently all had copies of the record, as well as art dealer Robert Fraser and members of the Rolling Stones. He also experimented with tape ‘cut-ups’ in much the same way as his writing – the recordings he made with Ian Sommerville in London were eventually released as Break through in Grey Room in 1986. 1990 saw the acclaimed release of Dead City Radio, an album which served as a musical vehicle for Burroughs’ spoken words; the following year, the film version of Naked Lunch, directed by David Cronenberg, helped to consolidate his relevance to a new generation. Throughout his career, he regarded collaboration as an essential part of the creative process; he later worked with artists such as Laurie Anderson, Kurt Cobain, R.E.M., Patti Smith, Tom Waits and also, appropriately, Donald Fagen of Steely Dan. Sonic Youth paid overt homage in a series of albums, and were among those to visit Burroughs at his home in Lawrence, Kansas (in 1993). 

An American writer based in Canada, William Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer popularised the science fiction ‘Cyberpunk’ sub-genre [1], marked by a fascination with technology. Gibson has confessed that “I had to teach myself not to write too much like Burroughs”, though his own work remains highly acclaimed and influential. His novels are also known for their frequent allusions to Steely Dan, a band whose name was itself taken from Naked Lunch. While suggesting the use of the name shouldn’t be taken too literally, Donald Fagen conceded that “we have certainly picked up on some of his world view. I admire Burroughs a lot.” 

Gibson has described Steely Dan’s music as “among the most genuinely subversive oeuvres in late 20th-century pop”. Direct references to their songs in his work include Barrytown (a location), The Gentleman Loser (a bar), Here at the Western World (another bar), and Klaus and the Rooster (characters). Steely Dan, formed in New York, were ostensibly a conventional seventies soft-rock act. They were nonetheless labelled “the perfect musical antiheroes for the Seventies” by Rolling Stone magazine – possibly owing to the sometimes sinister effect of their cryptic, often obscure lyrics hidden within smooth jazz-rock arrangements, suggesting subversive intent; according to Danny Weizmann (in Too Cool), they “pushed the most potent lyric pills since mid-Dyl[an].” 

Gibson is an outwardly conventional figure in appearance (as Burroughs was); he is an innovator in terms of ideas, if not language. The last twenty years particularly have seen him moving beyond traditional sci-fi in a series of novels exploring what happens to humanity in an increasingly technologically-dominated society, tackling the nature of ‘virtual reality’ and the role of the Internet in shaping the modern world, addressing the insidious nature of corporate advertising and branding. Gibson investigates the implications for the very near future, in effect commenting on contemporary life; in this respect he shares an affinity with English author J.G. Ballard, another admirer of Burroughs, who also moved beyond the conventions of science fiction. Gibson’s work has been characterised by critic John Clute as “SF for the new century.” Whilst the Steely Dan references have lessened in recent years, he still titled his 1999 novel All Tomorrow’s Parties, a nod to Lou Reed, the Velvet Underground and their counter-cultural legacy. That book also featured a mysterious character known as the ‘Tao man’, who Gibson has explained as “some sort of avatar connected to the late William Burroughs. An unconscious expression of Burroughsness.”

However, there is always a flip-side to these rich interconnections: Billy Idol paid a dubious homage to Gibson with his 1993 Cyberpunk album, featuring a track entitled ‘Neuromancer’; an enterprise mildly described by Gibson as “very silly.” Also preferably ignored are the subsequent adoption of Deacon Blues (a dire 1980s band appropriating a Steely Dan song title), and The Wild Boys (another Burroughs title and, extending the connection, dismal Duran Duran hit; a group whose own name derived from the 1968 science fiction film Barbarella). In his later years, all manner of unlikely musicians, without any obvious connection to him or signs of influence, began to see a Burroughs photo-opportunity as an ideal means of establishing their own counter-cultural credentials – chief among them Sting and the ubiquitous Bono. While the music of Steely Dan and the novels of William Gibson have a devoted following, they are essentially cult interests. Despite the avant-garde origins and often challenging nature of his work, it is Burroughs who has permeated popular culture, for better or worse.

The influences and the influenced: Call Me Burroughs (Original Cover Design: Tientje Louw, Cover Photo: Harriet Crowther); Neuromancer (Front Cover Illustration by Steve Crisp); Cyberpunk (Cover Art by Mark Frauenfelder)

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[1] OED definition: A genre of science fiction set in a lawless subculture of an oppressive society dominated by computer technology; it has been said that “without Naked Lunch there would probably be no cyberpunk” (Richard Kadrey and Larry McCaffery, Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk and Postmodern Fiction, 1991)