By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Johnny Mnemonic’ is a 1981 short story by the Canadian-American author and cyberpunk pioneer William Gibson. Although many people, when they hear the name ‘Johnny Mnemonic’, will probably think of the 1995 film starring Keanu Reeves, Gibson’s story is somewhat different from the film which it inspired, and so some words of analysis may be illuminating.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
1. William Gibson popularised the term ‘cyberspace’ in a short story of 1982.
Defined as ‘the notional environment in which communication over computer networks occurs’, cyberspace first appeared in fiction in William Gibson’s 1982 story ‘Burning Chrome’ (no relation to Google Chrome, we’re told), a story about a couple of freelance hackers. (Before it was published, Gibson read this story out at a science fiction convention – to an audience of four people.)
By Patrick Smith, Bainbridge State College, Georgia Writers have drawn on vivid descriptions of the visual arts to enhance their work since Homer famously used 130 lines to describe the chronicle emblazoned on Achilles’s shield in Book 18 of Homer’s Iliad more than 2,500 years ago. Ekphrasis—the representation in language of a work of art—acts … Read more