William Gibson: Signed Books & Author Biography

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VJ Books Presents Author William Gibson!

William Ford Gibson was born March 17, 1948 in Conway, South Carolina, and spent most of his childhood in Wytheville, Virginia. In 1977, Gibson earned a bachelor's degree in English at the University of British Columbia.

After his mother's death when he was eighteen, Gibson left school without graduating and became very isolated for a long time, traveling to California and Europe and immersing himself in the counterculture. Gibson was hired as the manager of Toronto's first head shop, a retailer of drug paraphernalia. He appeared, during the Summer of Love of 1967, in a CBC newsreel item about hippie subculture in Yorkville, Toronto, for which he was paid $500 _ the equivalent of 20 weeks rent _ which financed his later travels. Aside from a "brief, riot-torn spell" in the District of Columbia, Gibson spent the rest of the 1960s in Toronto, where he met Vancouverite Deborah Jean Thompson, with whom he subsequently traveled to Europe.

The couple married and settled in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1972, with Gibson looking after their first child while they lived off his wife's teaching salary. Gibson became friends with punk musician and author John Shirley who persuaded Gibson to sell his early short stories and to take writing seriously.

Gibson's early writings are generally near-future stories about the influences of cybernetics and cyberspace (computer-simulated reality) technology on the human race. Beginning in 1981, Gibson's stories appeared in Omni and Universe 11, wherein his fiction developed a bleak, film noir feel. His first novel, Neuromancer, was commissioned by Terry Carr. You can find a selection of William Gibson signed books below this author biography.

William Gibson Book List and Awards
His website: www.williamgibsonbooks.com
Similar authors: Clive Barker, George R.R. Martin, Kim Stanley Robinson, Dan Simmons

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