Burning Chrome
William Gibson
Language: English
Pages: 224
ISBN: 0060539828
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Best-known for his seminal sf novel Neuromancer, William Gibson is actually best when writing short fiction. Tautly-written and suspenseful, Burning Chrome collects 10 of his best short stories with a preface from Bruce Sterling, now available for the first time in trade paperback. These brilliant, high-resolution stories show Gibson's characters and intensely-realized worlds at his absolute best, from the chip-enhanced couriers of "Johnny Mnemonic" to the street-tech melancholy of "Burning Chrome."
stars have become increasingly androgynous in an attempt to capture this segment of the audience. But Angela’s own tapes have never intimidated him before. (But what if she has recorded a lover?) No, that can’t be it – it’s simply that the cassette is an entirely unknown quantity. When Parker was fifteen, his parents indentured him to the American subsidiary of a Japanese plastics combine. At the time, he felt fortunate; the ratio of applicants to indentured trainees was enormous. For three
highway –a flat packet of drugs –a switchblade honed on concrete, thin as pain. Thinking: We’re each other’s fragments, and was it always this way? That instant of a European trip, deserted in the gray sea of wiped tape – is she closer now, or more real, for his having been there? She had helped him get his papers, found him his first job in ASP. Was that their history? No, history was the black face of the delta-inducer, the empty closet, and the unmade bed. History was his loathing for the
seemed to be full of breathable air. In the twin beams from the massive helmet, he saw tiny globules of blood and vomit swinging slowly past, swirling in his wake, as he edged the bulky suit out of the crawlway and entered the command module. Then he found her. She was drifting above the navigational display, naked, cramped in a rigid fetal knot. Her eyes were open, but fixed on something Kurtz would never see. Her fists were bloody, clenched like stone, and her brown hair, loose now, drifted
edged one mirrored eye around the corner to report a single Volks module in front of the Drome, red lights flashing. They were sweeping Ralfi up. Asking questions. I was covered in scorched white fluff. The tennis socks. The gym bag was a ragged plastic cuff around my wrist. ‘I don’t see how the hell I missed him.’ ‘Cause he’s fast, so fast.’ She hugged her knees and rocked back and forth on her bootheels. ‘His nervous system’s jacked up. He’s factory custom.’ She grinned and gave a little
sometimes. ‘Automatic Jack, Rikki. My associate.’ He laughed, put his arm around her waist, something in his tone letting me know that I’d be spending the night in a dingy room in a hotel. ‘Hi,’ she said. Tall, nineteen or maybe twenty, and she definitely had the goods. With just those few freckles across the bridge of her nose, and eyes somewhere between dark amber and French coffee. Tight black jeans rolled to midcalf and a narrow plastic belt that matched the rose-colored sandals. But now