Burning Chrome by William Gibson

This document is about William Gibson's book Burning Chrome. The book itself can be found in Cyberpunk Library.

Facts

Title: Burning Chrome
Author: William Gibson
Year of publishing: 1986

Burning Chrome is a collection of ten Gibson's short stories, ranging from conventional science fiction to cyberpunk novellas of the 'Sprawl'-series. Stories include, among others, Johnny Mnemonic, Burning Chrome and Dogfight. With their vividly human characters and their remorseless, hot-wired futures, these stories are simultaneously science fiction at its sharpest and instantly recognizable Polaroids of the postmodern condition.

Gibson's screenplay for the Johnny Mnemonic movie was later released as a separate book.

Gibson used the word "cyberspace" first time in the story "Burning Chrome".

Stories

Burning Chrome contains following stories.

• "Johnny Mnemonic"

1981, originally published in Omni magazine
• "The Gernsback Continuum"

(William Gibson's first professional publication, originally published in Universe 11, 1981
also contained in: Mirrorshades
made into a brief TV film, Tomorrow Calling in the UK, 1995
• "Fragments of a Hologram Rose"

William Gibson's first published story
(c) 1977 by UnEarth Publications
• "The Belonging Kind"

(with John Shirley ), first appeared in Shadows 4, (c) 1981
• "Hinterlands"

originally published in Omni
• "Red Star, Winter Orbit"

(with Bruce Sterling) originally published in Omni; also in Mirrorshades
• "New Rose Hotel"

originally published in Omni
• "The Winter Market"

originally published in Stardate 1986
• "Dogfight"

(with Michael Swanwick) originally published in Omni 1985
• "Burning Chrome".

originally published in Omni 1982, Omni

The stories in Burning Chrome were published in various magazines and two were published in the Mirrorshades anthology edited by Bruce Sterling.

Synopsis

Burning Chrome:

Chrome was a streetwise hi-tech whore who cooked up her own custom variation cancers for customers who annoyed her - until somebody got annoyed with her... ...It might have been in Club Justine, or Jimbo's, or Sad Jacks ot the Rafters; Coretti could never be sure where he'd first seen her. At any time, she might have been in any one of those bars. She swam through the submarine half-life of bottles and glassware and the slow swirl of cigarette smoke... she moved through the natural element, one bar after another. Now, Coretti remembered their first meeting as if he saw it through the wrong end of a powerful telescope, small and clear and very far away.....

Links & References

Burning Chrome

The book by William Gibson.