Johnny Mnemonic

This 1981 short story by William Gibson is a landmark in the history of the cyberpunk movement, preceding his novels Neuromancer (1984) and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988). Its text circulates widely on the web, for example at the University of Buffalo, a copy of which is available below.

Gibson's career continues--most recently with Spook Country (2007)--, spanning the creation, refinement, and devolution of cyberpunk as a literary genre.

He is well-known for his acerbic sense of humor and pithy, aphoristic observations, e.g., "The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it" (title of a NY Times Magazine article he published 14 July 1996).

He has also said, "On the most basic level, computers in my books are simply a metaphor for human memory: I'm interested in the hows and whys of memory, the ways it defines who and what we are, in how easily memory is subject to revision" (interview with Larry McCaffery in Storming the Reality Studio : A Casebook of Cyberpunk and Postmodern Science Fiction, Duke University Press (December 1991).