SOURCE: Booker, M. Keith. “Technology, History, and the Postmodern Imagination: The Cyberpunk Fiction of William Gibson.” Arizona Quarterly 50, no. 4 (winter 1994): 63–87.

In the following essay, Booker outlines the defining characteristics of Gibson's fiction, emphasizing his attitude toward and treatment of technology.

The disneyland theme park, as Jean Baudrillard has noted, is in many ways the ultimate postmodern phenomenon, the ultimate example of the kind of simulated environment with which we deal in less obvious ways every day. Its younger but bigger brother, Disneyworld, is even more perfectly postmodern, especially with addition of the technological and cultural marvels of Epcot Center. One of the most striking aspects of Epcot Center is its “World Showcase,” an array of pavilions from various nations, which—arranged in a circle around a manmade lake—allow one to take a simulated tour of the world without actually traveling at all. At first glance this compressed...