SOURCE: Yule, Jeffrey. “The Marginalised Short Stories of William Gibson: ‘Hinterlands’ and ‘The Winter Market.’” Foundation, no. 58 (summer 1993): 76–84.

In the following essay, Yule addresses the critical reaction to Gibson's short fiction and emphasizes the maturity and originality of Gibson's stories, focusing on two representative tales, “Hinterlands” and “The Winter Market.”

Critics discussing William Gibson's fiction generally focus on his novels—Neuromancer (1984), Count Zero (1986), and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1987)—and devote only brief mentions or book reviews to the material in his 1986 collection Burning Chrome. Even when the short stories are discussed, they are treated either as insignificant exercises that led up to the novels or as works that have no existence independent of them.¹ Even Gregory Feeley—the author of one of the collection's more substantial reviews—gives little attention to the legitimate literary substance of the collection. Instead he focuses on the “immaturity of the attitudes” (p. 97) that...