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    A Study Guide for William Gibson's "Johnny Mnemonic"
    A Study Guide for William Gibson's "Johnny Mnemonic"
    A Study Guide for William Gibson's "Johnny Mnemonic"
    Ebook38 pages21 minutes

    A Study Guide for William Gibson's "Johnny Mnemonic"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for William Gibson's "Johnny Mnemonic," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJul 15, 2016
    ISBN9781535826631
    A Study Guide for William Gibson's "Johnny Mnemonic"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for William Gibson's "Johnny Mnemonic" - Gale

      08

      Johnny Mnemonic

      William Gibson

      1981

      Introduction

      Johnny Mnemonic was originally published in Omni magazine in 1981, four years after William Gibson first began writing it. That same year, the story was included in The Second Omni Book of Science Fiction; in 1986 it was also included in a collection of Gibson's short stories, titled Burning Chrome (recently available in a 2003 edition). The story tells of Johnny Mnemonic, a high-tech courier who has had his brain altered to serve as secure storage for sensitive data. Johnny discovers that he is the target of a hit man sent by a criminal organization seeking to ensure that no one is able to access the information stored in Johnny's brain. Johnny Mnemonic is an early example of the genre known as cyberpunk, fiction characterized by advanced technology and dystopic, disintegrating societies. Though the story is set in the future, it is written in a style more reminiscent of 1930s hard-boiled detective novels than of traditional science fiction. Using this retro, film-noir-type style to write about futuristic events is another hallmark of cyberpunk, and Gibson is widely recognized as the father of the genre.

      Written over twenty-five years ago, Gibson's story (and much of his other work) was remarkably prophetic, raising questions about the invasion of individuals' personal lives by the government and corporations through the use of technology, the proliferation of plastic surgery, identity theft, and many other issues. Identity is an important theme in the story; in a world where one's face, body, even gender can be easily altered, where even one's brain can be offered up for rent, how do people define themselves? Where does virtual reality end and reality begin?

      Some of the characters in Johnny Mnemonic appear again in Gibson's acclaimed first novel, Neuromancer, considered a seminal work in science fiction.

      Author Biography

      William Gibson was born on March 17, 1948, in Conway, South Carolina. His father, William Ford Gibson, worked for a construction company building housing developments throughout the south, and frequently traveled on business. In Since 1948, an autobiography featured on Gibson's

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