SOURCE: Montesano, Anthony P. “Johnny Mnemonic: Keanu Reeves Goes Cyberpunk in William Gibson's Bleak Future.” Cinefantastique 26, no. 2 (February 1995): 14–15.

In the following essay, Montesano traces the cinematic adaptation of Gibson's short story “Johnny Mnemonic.”

In the future world of writer William Gibson, nuclear annihilation, alien invasion, and sword-and-sorcery space operas are not preoccupying factors.

Information and its dissemination are. Information is power and those who control it, he argues in his cyberpunk stories, control the world. Governments are rendered obsolete as multinational corporations, who trade on bio-engineering and valuable bytes of information control entire economies.

Despite Gibson's meteoric success in the science fiction publishing world in the mid '80s, Hollywood didn't seem quite sure what to do with him. As early as 1987, producer Edward R. Pressman (Phantom of the Paradise) announced he was developing Gibson's story “New Rose Hotel” for the screen. But, while “Hotel” is still caught...