His eyes were eggs of unstable crystal, vibrating with a frequency whose name was rain and the sound of trains, suddenly sprouting a humming forest of hair-fine glass spines.

His thought has been cited as an influence on science fiction authors design academia cyberculture and technology. During this period he worked at various jobs including a three-year stint as teaching assistant on a film history course at his alma mater. " Literary critic Larry McCaffery described the concept of the matrix in Neuromancer as a place where "data dance with human consciousness.

After expanding on Neuromancer with two more novels to complete the dystopic Sprawl trilogy Gibson became an important author of another science fiction sub-genre—steampunk—with the 1990 alternate history novel The Difference Engine written with Bruce Sterling. His most recent novels—Pattern Recognition (2003) Spook Country (2007) and Zero History (2010)—are set in a contemporary world and have put his work onto mainstream bestseller lists for the first time. After spending his adolescence at a private boarding school in Arizona Gibson evaded the draft during the Vietnam War by emigrating to Canada in 1968 where he became immersed in the counterculture.