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William Gibson

William Gibson Quotes

Novelist

William Gibson, born on March 17, 1948, is a renowned science fiction novelist from Canada. His works are known for their unique futurist style and profound insights into technological development, making him a representative figure in the cyberpunk literary genre.

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Famous William Gibson Quotes

“I started writing short fiction very briefly, as I imagine is the case for some novelists.”

Writing Fiction Cases Imagine Novelists Writing Short

Author:William Gibson

“I think the least important thing about science fiction for me is its predictive capacity.”

Thinking Important Fiction Capacity Important Things Science Fiction

Author:William Gibson

“I'm a reluctant writer of non-fiction, in part because I don't really feel qualified.”

Feels Fiction Qualified Non Fiction Reluctant

Author:William Gibson

“A snappy label and a manifesto would have been two of the very last things on my own career want list. That label enabled mainstream science fiction to safely assimilate our dissident influence, such as it was. Cyberpunk could then be embraced and given prizes and patted on the head, and genre science fiction could continue unchanged.”

Want Has Beens Two Lasts Given My Own Fiction Careers Influence Science Fiction Lists Labels Genre Prize Mainstream Dissidents Cyberpunk Manifestos

Author:William Gibson

“As a writer of fiction who deals with technology, I necessarily deal with the history of technology and the history of technologically induced social change. I roam up and down it in a kind of special way because I roam down it into history, which is invariably itself a speculative affair.”

Way Kind Social Deals Fiction Technology Special Affair Social Change Up And Down

Author:William Gibson

“I can't do fiction unless I visualize what's going on. When I began to write science fiction, one of the things I found lacking in it was visual specificity. It seemed there was a lot of lazy imagining, a lot of shorthand.”

Writing I Can Found Fiction Science Fiction Visuals Lazy Lacking Shorthand Specificity

Author:William Gibson

“I think the least important thing about science fiction for me is its predictive capacity. Its record for being accurately predictive is really, really poor! If you look at the whole history of science fiction, what people have said is going to happen, what writers have said is going to happen, and what actually happened - it's terrible.”

People Ifs Thinking Looks Said Important Whole Happens Poor Fiction Records Happened Terrible Capacity Important Things Science Fiction History Of Science

Author:William Gibson

“When I was a child, science fiction was the first source I've found for information. Science fiction was a very very low cultural stream in those days. It was completly below the radar and no one bothered to censurate it.”

Firsts Children Found Fiction Information Source Lows Science Fiction Streams Bothered Radar Information Science

Author:William Gibson

“I don't think of myself as being particulary a subversive writer, but I like to think that my work could afford someone else, the extra degree of freedom that I found when I first found science fiction.”

Thinking Firsts Found Fiction Degrees Science Fiction Extras Subversive

Author:William Gibson

“The culture is still there, and people are still doing it. I imagine some people are doing it very well indeed. As for me, it definitely was my native literary culture. Science fiction was where I'm from, but on the way to now, I went through a lot of other territory, and I wasn't really that culturally conventional an SF writer when I started.”

People Way Wells Stills Culture Fiction Imagine Science Fiction Native Territory Conventional

Author:William Gibson

“I had a list of things that science fiction, particularly American science fiction, to me seemed to do with tedious regularity. One was to not have strong female protagonists. One was to envision the future, whatever it was, as America.”

America Strong Fiction Female Science Fiction Lists Tedious Protagonists Regularity Strong Female Female Protagonists

Author:William Gibson

“I think science fiction gives us a wonderful toolkit to disassemble and reexamine this kind of incomprehensible, constantly changing present that we live in, that we often live in quite uncomfortably.”

Thinking Giving Kind Fiction Wonderful Science Fiction

Author:William Gibson

“In effect, I grew up in a sort of timewarp, a place where times are scrambled up. There are elements of my childhood that look to me now, in memory more like the 1940s or the 1950s than the 1960s. Jack [Womack] says that that made us science fiction writers, because we grew up experiencing a kind of time travel.”

Looks Kind Made Memories Fiction Childhood Effects Grew Elements Grew Up Science Fiction Time Travel 1960s Fiction Writers

Author:William Gibson

“One of the liberating effects of science fiction when I was a teenager was precisely its ability to tune me into all sorts of strange data and make me realize that I wasn’t as totally isolated in perceiving the world as being monstrous and crazy”

World Realizing Ability Fiction Crazy Effects Strange Science Fiction Data Teenager Tunes Isolated Liberating Monstrous

Author:William Gibson

“The future is there," Cayce hears herself say, "looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become. And from where they are, the past behind us will look nothing at all like the past we imagine behind us now.”

Trying Looks Past Behinds Fiction Imagine Make Sense Looking Back

Book:Pattern Recognition

Source: Pattern Recognition

“When I began to write fiction that I knew would be published as science fiction, [and] part of what I brought to it was the critical knowledge that science fiction was always about the period in which it was written.”

Writing Would Be Fiction Written Periods Science Fiction Critical

Author:William Gibson

“Fiction is an illusion wrought with many small, conventionally symbolic marks, triggering visions in the minds of others”

Mind Fiction Vision Illusion Mark Symbolic

Author:William Gibson

“The future is there... looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become.”

Trying Fiction Make Sense Looking Back

Book:Pattern Recognition

Source: Pattern Recognition

About the Author

Born: March 17, 1948
Known for: Novelist
Quotes: 279

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