Where to start with William Gibson: 7 award-recognized books
William Gibson helped invent cyberpunk with Neuromancer, and has spent his career writing about how technology changes people. His books come in loose trilogies.
If you read just one: Neuromancer by William Gibson, because it is the book that started it all.
The Sprawl trilogy
1. Neuromancer
Won the Hugo and Nebula Awards (1985) ·
A burned-out hacker is hired for one last job by a mysterious employer.
2. Count Zero
Finalist for the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards (1987) ·
Three storylines converge in the same world, years later.
3. Mona Lisa Overdrive
Finalist for the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards (1989) ·
The trilogy concludes.
Later Gibson
4. Virtual Light
Finalist for the Hugo and Locus Awards (1994) ·
A bike messenger steals a pair of high-tech glasses in a near-future San Francisco.
5. The Difference Engine
Finalist for the Nebula Award (1992) ·
Written with Bruce Sterling: a Victorian England where Charles Babbage’s computer worked. A founding steampunk novel.
6. The Peripheral
Finalist for the Locus Award (2015) ·
A young woman in the near future takes a job that connects her to a London decades ahead.
7. Agency
Finalist for the Locus Award (2021) ·
A tester of a new AI app gets pulled into events far bigger than the job.
Good to know: Follows The Peripheral.
How we chose
Every book in this guide won or was a finalist for at least one of the Hugo, Nebula, Locus or Arthur C. Clarke awards. Each book page lists its full award history with sources. Page counts come from English print editions and vary by edition. 7 books in all.