by Moe Zilla

Created on: January 24, 2009

William Gibson has been writing science fiction for 30 years - but "Burning Chrome" remains one of his most unique books. Instead of being a science fiction novel, the book offers a collection of 10 short stories. They deliver intense bursts of the author's imagination, showing new perspectives on science fiction - and on the author himself.

Gibson became famous in 1986 for his novel "Neuromancer" (in which he coined the phrase "cyberspace.") It sold 6.5 million copies and won multiple awards, and he'd released its sequel just two years later. It seemed like a good time to also release a collection of the short stories he'd written over the previous decade. And the first story in the collection was "Johnny Mnemonic," which 9 years later became a movie starring Keanu Reeves.

"Johnny Mnemonic" is classic Gibson, presenting an exciting story in a futuristic world featuring killers, hustlers, and a cyborg dolphin. There's matter-of-fact references to Navy technology, and a strange journey to an underworld called Nighttown. Data's been packed into Johnny's head, which he'd plan to deliver to a waiting customer. But now he's facing a double-cross, and he needs to engineer a new downloading option - or he'll die. But the futurism hovers in the background as Gibson grips the reader with non-stop action. The story's opening sentence? "I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag..."

It's the first story in the collection, but then Gibson swerves to entirely new wonders in "The Gernsback Continuum." Its second sentence describes "mere fragments of mad-doctor chrome, confining themselves to the corner of the eye." The tantalizing trippiness raises lots of questions, but Gibson's story provides a wonderful answer for the hallucinations. There's a publisher who's commissioned a book on futuristic architecture - "a kind of alternate America: a 1980 that never happened." There's some discussion of the 50s phenomenon of seeing UFOs - and the publisher has a prophetic sign in his lobby that reads "This way lies madness." In the end, he finds himself longing for the comfort of "the human near-dystopia we live in." This is science fiction that winds up in the present - but only after a harrowing glimpse of a future-past.

The book even presents Gibson's first-published story, "Fragments of a Hologram Rose" (written when he was just 29, in 1977). But the book's other treat is a preface by cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling, who argues that science fiction writers, unlike poets, may be the world's court jesters. "We are Wise Fools who can leap, utter prophecies, and scratch ourselves in public." The book even includes "Red Star, Winter Orbit," a story Sterling
had recently co-authored with Gibson in the early 80s. It's a story with political overtones, showing the Soviet Union controlling the world solely because of their dominance in oil production.

Ironically, the back of the book also includes a blurb from Sterling, praising Gibson's writing style... as "Hi-tech electric poetry."

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