Everly Base, six, sees the funny side of a TV carol-singing performance with her classmates in which her father had dared her to cross her eyes while she sang in Yate, Gloucestershire, UK on December 19, 2024. (Photo by Tom Wren/South West News Service)

A young woman jumps into the river Rhine to cool off during high temperatures, near Kaiserstuhl, Switzerland, Sunday, June 22, 2025. (Photo by Michael Buholzer/Keystone via AP Photo)

Alex “Torreto” Vellios, a 26-year old barber sports his tattoo of an open razor as he holds a real razor while preparing for his first customer of the day at his Torreto barber shop in Frankfurt, January 6, 2015. Inspired by a childhood trip to the barbers with his grandfather in Greece, Vellios, a formally trained hairdresser and self-taught barber, fulfilled his dream of opening his own gentleman's barber shop five months ago and has turned it into a successful male grooming and shaving business with customers now waiting up to three to four weeks for an appointment to see him. (Photo by Kai Pfaffenbach/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.

Cemetery workers lift a corpse from a coffin to a metal plate as they prepare the body for cremation at a cemetery in Maracaibo, Venezuela, November 27, 2019. Some overcome the financial burden of a relative's death by renting caskets, a cheaper option than buying one. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)

A patient solves a rubik's cube at a temporary hospital converted from “Wuhan Livingroom” in central China's Hubei Province on February 10, 2020. In face of the outbreak of the novel coronavirus pneumonia epidemic, Wuhan authorities have transformed public venues such as exhibition centers and gymnasiums into temporary hospitals. The hospitals have a large capacity of treating patients with mild symptoms and play an important role in isolating the source of infection and cutting off the routes of infection during epidemic prevention. The first batch of patients was hospitalized on Feb. 5. (Photo by Chine Nouvelle/SIPA Press/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A health worker wearing a protective suit is disinfected inside a portable tent outisee the Gat Andres Bonifacio Memorial Medical Center during an enhanced community quarantine to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus in Manila, Philippines, Monday April 27, 2020. (Photo by Aaron Favila/AP Photo)

Clarice Hui and her Corgi dog Padfoot enjoying the hot weather in London Fields park, east London on May 19, 2020, after the introduction of measures to bring the country out of lockdown. (Photo by Yui Mok/PA Images via Getty Images)