William Gibson is not one of the authors that spits out novels like a machine – in his long and fruitful career he has only published 11 novels andof short stories and articles in the tens each. Still his impact on modern literature was huge – the “noir prophet” of the cyberpunk subgenre (that he was one of the pioneers of) has predicted the rise of reality television, virtual reality, video games and the internet. He is a Hugo and Nebula award winning science fiction writer, with a special eye for what the future might bring.

Racegoers attend the opening day of the Grand National Festival horse race meeting at Aintree Racecourse in Liverpool, north west England on April 7, 2022. (Photo by John Mather/Image View)

School students attend a pioneer induction ceremony in Moscow's Red Square in Moscow, Russia on May 22, 2022. Pro-Communist Russians are trying to preserve the Young Pioneers, which used to be the Communist league for pre-teens in the Soviet Union. (Photo by Sergei Karpukhin/TASS)

Participants of the Cologne Pride rally pose in front of the Cathedral in Cologne, Germany, Sunday, July 3, 2022. This year's Christopher Street Day (CSD) Gay Parade with thousands of demonstrators for LGBTQ rights is the first after the coronavirus pandemic to be followed by hundreds of thousands of spectators in the streets of Cologne. (Photo by Martin Meissner/AP Photo)

People celebrate outside the Supreme Court, Friday, June 24, 2022, in Washington. The Supreme Court has ended constitutional protections for abortion that had been in place nearly 50 years, a decision by its conservative majority to overturn the court's landmark abortion cases. (Photo by Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo)

Racegoers brave the rain during 2022 Melbourne Cup Day at Flemington Racecourse on November 1, 2022 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Martin Keep/Getty Images for VRC)

Visitors to West Midlands Safari Park in Bewdley, UK on October 17, 2023 are enjoying the bright October sunshine ahead of the storms to come. A curious giraffe meets eye to eye with a car full of happy visitors while licking the car windscreen with his long tongue. (Photo by Lee Hudson/Alamy Live News)

Jose Sabas Gomez pastes eyelashes to a statue of El Jesus Nazareno in his workshop in Apastepeque, El Salvador March 9, 2016. Sabas is one of a small number of artists still working on traditional religious art in El Salvador. According to him, there used to be more workshops engaged in the work of restoring statues of saints, but only four remain today as the labor-intensive craft is no longer a popular choice of profession. (Photo by Jose Cabezas/Reuters)