Revelers celebrate during fireworks marking the start of the New Year on Copacabana beach on January 1, 2017 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Brazilian revelers traditionally dress in white to honor the New Year's holiday along with the Brazilian Goddess of the Sea- Iemanja. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Elephants munch on Christmas trees in their enclosure at Berlin's Zoologischer Garten Zoo on January 4, 2013 in Berlin, Germany. Traditionally, the animals get in the first week of the year leftover Christmas trees. (Photo by Andreas Rentz)

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.

Catherine Hollis of Chester, Pa., and Izzy Weintraub of Atlantic City eat Cherrystone clams at Atlantic City's annual clam-eating contest September 16, 1946. They finished 96 and 66 clams respectively in 20 minutes. (Photo by Sam Myers/AP Photo)

Eritrean refugee children play at Mai-Aini refugee camp near the Eritrean boarder in the Tigrai region in Ethiopia February 10, 2016. Each month as many as 5,000 people flee Eritrea according to U.N. figures, estimates the Eritrean government disputes. The government puts the population at about 3.6 million, while other estimates suggest it could be almost double that. (Photo by Tiksa Negeri/Reuters)

A red squirrel and a woodpecker having an “argument” over some nuts in a woodland near Lockerbie, Dumfries and Galloway in Johnsfield, England in September 2020. (Photo by Karen Crawford/South West News Service)

Icelandic horses walk in their paddock at a stud farm in Wehrheim near Frankfurt, Germany, as the sun rises Tuesday, June 1, 2021. (Photo by Michael Probst/AP Photo)

A dog sits in a plastic basin filled with water in Taipei, Taiwan, 05 May 2018. Betel nut seller Mr Luo, the dog's owner, said he puts his dog Ah Dai (Stupid Guy) in the water-filled basin whenever the weather get hot. Luo has a dozen pairs of glasses for Ah Dai, so the dog wears different glasses every day and many tourists take photos of Ah Dai. (Photo by David Chang/EPA/EFE)