William Gibson aleph 
OTHER WORKS
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OTHER WORKS |
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*NOTE: Please refer to the |
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Fragments of a Hologram Rose (1977)This is William Gibson's first published story and is about a simstim technology
called 'Apparent Sensory Perception' (ASP). The narrator, whose girlfriend Angela
has just left him, finds two of her possessions in his room: a postcard with a
hologram rose and an ASP tape. He shreds the postcard into a thousand fragments
and watches the tape, which has been erased except for a short sequence of Angela's
holiday in Greece. Afterwards, he muses about what it was like before being able
to record and play back the full range of sensory perception of another person.
He compares people with the fragments of the hologram, since every fragment shows
the whole image from a different angle. ¶ |
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8 pages ¶ |
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The Belonging Kind (1981) By John Shirley and William Gibson. Coretti frequently goes to bars but doesn't
know how to dress and how to contact people. One day, he meets a beautiful woman
in a bar and notices her ability to adapt to other people's style. He follows
her to another place and sees her transform into another woman. She meets with
a man, and they continue going to different bars while changing their look. He
realizes that they are some kind advanced species who can transform into whatever
form and create matter out of nothing. After a while, he quits his job and finally
turns into one of the 'belonging kind'. ¶ |
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17 pages ¶ |
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The Gernsback Continuum (1981) This story is about a photographer who is assigned by London artists to take
pictures of 1930s and '40s style buildings in America. On his travels through
America he starts seeing things from an imaginary future in that style. He also
sees people inhabiting this world whom he is afraid of, because they look like
the Nazi idea of a Übermensch. After finishing his job, he is glad that our world
is not that perfect. ¶ |
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14 pages ¶ |
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Hinterlands (1981) This story takes place in the not-so-distant future where humankind has gotten
into contact with an alien civilisation. But the only way to reach them is to
drop a single astronaut in a spaceship at specified coordinates in space and wait
if he is taken away by their superior power. Returning spacemen usually carry
some advanced knowledge, like the cure for cancer with them, but they always go
insane and commit suicide. Toby Halpert works in a space station called Heaven
where arriving spaceships are taken to. Toby meets arriving astronauts and tries
to cure their insanity, but so far it never works out. When he finds the latest
arrival inside of her spaceship, he realizes that she already killed herself with
a surgical machine. She left some ballpoint paintings which reveal new molecular
structures. In the end we learn that Toby had been on such a mission but was refused
by the aliens, which is why he still feels connected to the whole thing. ¶ |
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23 pages ¶ |
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Johnny Mnemonic (1981) Gibson's short story 'Johnny Mnemonic' contains many ideas he used in his
later Sprawl novels. The story is about Johnny who is a data courier, which means
he carries important data in his head. As he meets his employer Ralfi to get rid
of this apparently dangerous data Ralfi is killed by a Yakuza assassin. Johnny
manages to get away with the help of the heavily modified Molly Millions (who
appears later in 'Neuromancer' and 'Mona Lisa Overdrive'). One of Molly's friends,
a military cyborg dolphin with sophisticated communications equipment is able
to retrieve the code for accessing Johnny's data. Johnny and Molly are confronted
with the Yakuza assassin after climbing on the upper levels of Nighttown. Molly
manages to kill the assassin on the 'Killing Floor', a weavework of steel cable
miked and amplified on a synthesizer. Afterwards, Johnny makes his living with
retrieving the data he'd carried before. ¶ |
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Burning Chrome (1982) Automatic Jack and Bobby Quine are console cowboys and have been partners
for a long time. Because of his new girlfriend Rikki, Bobby wants to start a big
run to get rich. He plans to burn the 'House of the Blue Lights' which belongs
to Chrome, a hi-tech whore with immense influence. They carefully plan the run
and manage to crack Chrome's ice with a Russian icebreaker that Jack bought from
the Finn. As they intercept an hourly transaction to a comsat, they can access
Chrome's account and put all the money through to a fence. In the meantime, Rikki
bought Zeiss Ikon eyes and leaves for Chiba City to become a simstim star. Jack
learns that Rikki earned the money working in the 'House of the Blue Lights',
where the prostitutes are put into REM sleep during work. ¶ |
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26 pages ¶ |
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Red Star, Winter Orbit (1983) By Bruce Sterling and William Gibson. This story takes places on a Soviet
space station in the middle of the 21st century. The Soviets are the only power
in space since the Americans have given up their space program. As the space station
Kosmograd is about to be shut down, the remaining astronauts decide to flee in
escape pods and publish what the Russians plan. As all but the old Korolev have
left, he is joined by American families who decided to live on the space station
and came up with their sun balloons. ¶ |
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25 pages ¶ |
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New Rose Hotel (1984) The anonymous narrator tells about the corporate defection of Hiroshi, a very
talented genetic engineer who works for Maas Biolabs GmbH in Frankfurt. The protagonist
and his partner Fox cut a deal with Hosaka corporation to deliver them Hiroshi.
They contact Hiroshi via Sandii, the narrator's latest affair, who prepares the
defection in Vienna. Hiroshi disappears in Berlin and is flown to a Hosaka lab
in Marrakech. During the next few days, Hosaka's leading engineers are flown to
Marrakech to learn from Hiroshi, but then they all die from a virus that was created
by a DNA sequencer modified by Sandii. In Vienna, she defected to Maas Biolabs
and programmed their virus. Hosaka kills Fox and hunts the protagonist, who hides
in 'New Rose Hotel' near Narita International Airport and reflects about his lost
love Sandii. ¶ |
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16 pages ¶ |
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Dogfight (1985) By Michael Swanwick and William Gibson. The story is about a no-future guy
named Deke who comes to a town in Virginia. In an arcade he watches a game called
'Spads & Fokkers' which is played with miniature planes created by the mind. From
then on he is obsessed by the game and does anything to play against Tiny, a war
veteran in a wheelchair. During the war, he got addicted by a drug called hype
which was used by the military to provide extra concentration. Deke starts practicing
and gets his equipment augmented by Nance, a girl who he meets at his highstack.
17-year old Nance is a student and works on some holographic projections with
ultramodern equipment, but her parents provided her with a chastity brainlock
which makes it impossible for her to be touched by someone. She manages to get
two hits of hype for her presentation, but Deke steals it from her by sexually
abusing her. With the hype he is able to win against Tiny, but after his victory
Tiny has a breakdown and Deke realizes that there is nobody left to talk to. ¶ |
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28 pages ¶ |
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The Winter Market (1985) Casey is an editor for a kind of simstim called fast-wipe. His friend Rubin
is a famous artist who makes art out of gomi (trash). On one of Rubin's parties
Casey comes to know Lise. Lise has a severe disease which forces her to wear an
exoskeleton and causes much pain so she is also addicted to a drug called wizz.
Lise's extraordinary dreams are recorded and edited by Casey and published under
the title 'Kings of Sleep'. This tape becomes very famous and makes both of them
rich, and Lise decides to merge with the net and have a ROM construct of her personality
built. She also wants Casey to cut her next film. ¶ |
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27 pages ¶ |
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Short fiction 
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