Wang Zhengqing, a 74 year old pneumoconiosis patient, smokes his pipe at Yangjia Hospital in Wuyi County, Zhejiang Province, China October 19, 2015. Former miner Wang was diagnosed with the disease, which is caused by dust inhalation, when he was 24 and has lived at Yangjia Hospital for ten years. (Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

A ballet dancer stretches backstage during Nacho Duato's “The Nutcracker” at the Mikhailovsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia November 21, 2015. For theatregoers in St Petersburg, Nacho Duato's “The Nutcracker” demonstrates the global appeal of a Christmas classic. When the curtain rises at the Mikhailovsky Theatre, among the oldest opera and ballet houses in Russia, it's the culmination of hundreds of hours of toil and sweat by dancers, costume makers, set designers and musicians playing the famous score by Pyotr Tchaikovsky. (Photo by Grigory Dukor/Reuters)

Black-headed gulls sit on pickets at a riverside in Tokyo, Japan, December 27, 2015. (Photo by Toru Hanai/Reuters)

The Doppler on Wheels (DOW) vehicle scans a supercell thunderstorm during a tornado research mission, May 8, 2017 in Elbert County near Agate, Colorado. Doppler on Wheels (DOW) is a mobile doppler radar mounted on a truck that brings instruments directly into storms, allowing scientists to scan storms and tornadoes and make 3-D maps of wind and debris. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

A baby Black-crowned Night Heron squawks in its incubator while being cared for at City Wildlife rescue and rehabilitation center in Washington, DC on May 31, 2017. The heron is one of several that have been brought to CW by the staff at The National Zoo over the past few years. (Photo Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)

Cottbus Aviation Museum specialists prepare a Soviet Tupolev 134 A passenger plane for dismantlement in Gruenz, Germany, 10 July 2017. The team is preparing the 29 ton plane for transport from a garden in Gruenz to the Aviation Museum in Cottbus. The plane' s owner acquired it in 1991 and transported it with nine tractors and numerous helpers to his vegetable garden where he planned to open a cafe. The plane, formerly used by the East German Stasi for anti- terror operations training, is 30 metres long. (Photo by Jens Büttner/Zentralbild/DPA)

Kashir Mir, 34, poses for a photograph at his workplace, Juliet Wig Shop, in the London constituency of Brent Central, Britain, April 13, 2015. Mir, who was born in Pakistan, said: “I will vote but it's a secret. I also hope they can manage immigration better as I have been stopped and interviewed for hours returning from Pakistan. I'm an honest man, working here and paying my tax”. Brent, a northwest London neighbourhood that's home to Wembley football stadium, is among the most ethnically diverse areas in the United Kingdom. As the country approaches a closely fought election on May 7, Reuters photographer Eddie Keogh visited shopkeepers to get their views on the poll. (Photo by Eddie Keogh/Reuters)

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.