A performer wearing a lion mask performs the Ise Daikagura lion dance at the remote village of Yamanawa on February 08, 2021 in Ryuo, Japan. Ise Daikagura is a group of traditional Lion Dance performers who pray in front of farmers houses and businesses for good grain harvests and disease-free lives. (Photo by Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images)

Children hold Taliban flags during a celebration marking the first anniversary of the withdrawal of US-led troops from Afghanistan, in front of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, August 31, 2022. (Photo by Ebrahim Noroozi/AP Photo)

A visitor stands in the exhibition “I Am A Drop In The Ocean” dedicated to the artistic and visual expressions of the protests that shook the Ukraine from November 2013 until February 2014 at the Kuenstlerhaus gallery in Vienna, Austria, Thursday, April 10, 2014. The exhibition opens its doors from April 11 until May 23, 2014. (Photo by Ronald Zak/AP Photo)

An injured NATO soldier lies on the ground following a suicide car bomb attack that targeted foreign military vehicles in the Afghan capital Kabul on June 30,2015. A powerful blast hit downtown Kabul on June 30 as a suicide car bomber targeted foreign military vehicles, officials said, with casualties feared. The blast came on the main road to the airport, around 500 meters (550 yards) from the US embassy and near a base for foreign troops.“It was a suicide car bomber targeting a convoy of foreign forces in Kabul”, interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediq said. (Photo by Wakil Kohsar/AFP Photo)

“Woman with Umbrella in Rain” by Raimund von Stillfried. Artist: Kusakabe Kimbei (Japanese, 1841–1934), 1870s. Commercial photography studios in Meiji-era Japan were renowned for the subtlety and refinement of their coloring techniques. This hand-tinted image of a young woman caught in a heavy rainstorm achieved its naturalistic effect by knitting together multiple strands of artifice: the greenery in the foreground was a studio prop; the flaps of the kimono were suspended by thin wires to create the impression of a strong wind; and long, diagonal marks were made on the negative to suggest streaks of rain. (Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

A woman dressed in Ukrainian national costume poses for a photograph in front destroyed Russian military equipment at Khreshchatyk street in Kyiv on August 20, 2022, that has been turned into an open-air military museum ahead of Ukraine's Independence Day on August 24, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP Photo)

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.

Public Space series, 2015. This series by Morteza Niknahad and Behnam Zakeri tends toward cinema, taking an almost cartoonish view of modern life in Iran. This work was inspired by the social life of dolphins. (Photo by Morteza Niknahad and Behnam Zakeri/The Guardian)