[wjrb]

> I see so many people loving Gibson and crediting him for inventing the genre whole cloth, but of course he didn't! None of us write anything without standing on the shoulders of those who came before, building on the works and ideas of those that came before.

Not defending him or speaking for him, but based on his Paris Review interview, I think Gibson would be the last person to claim he invented the genre; he was trying to do something inside of science fiction, and instead science fiction "othered" the thing he was doing by calling it a sub-genre and continuing going on doing the science fiction writing they were already doing.

The article claims that cyberpunk and "Neuromanticism" are distinct, with the "Neuromantics" coming out and doing the same thing as Neuromancer, without the cyberpunk ethos being there underneath.

[ghushn3]

I agree -- Gibson is never the one saying he's invented the genre. He's been consistent about this for decades (and even finds the genre itself to be kinda nonsense.) It's mostly fans who push for the Sprawl Trilogy to be this bolt from a clear sky.