William Gibson Books in Order (The Sprawl trilogy and more)

William Gibson is an award-winning American-Canadian writer and essayist who is known as a pioneer in the science fiction subgenre known as cyberpunk. He started his writing career in the late 1970s, focusing on exploring the effects of technology on humans which led him to coin the term “cyberspace” in his short story “Burning Chrome,” published in 1982. He popularized the concept with his debut novel, Neuromancer, in 1984.

William Gibson wrote around a dozen novels, even more short stories, a lot of articles in major publications, and collaborated on other artistic projects–he co-wrote episodes of The X-Files… Speaking of television, Amazon has developed a series based on the novel The Peripheral.

How to read William Gibson’s Books in Order?

The Sprawl trilogy

1. Neuromancer (1984) – Case was the sharpest data thief in the matrix-until he crossed the wrong people and they crippled his nervous system, banishing him from cyberspace. Now a mysterious new employer has recruited him for a last-chance run at an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence. With a dead man riding shotgun and Molly, a mirror-eyed street samurai, to watch his back, Case is ready for the adventure that upped the ante on an entire genre of fiction.
2. Count Zero (1986) – A corporate mercenary wakes in a reconstructed body, a beautiful woman by his side. Then Hosaka Corporation reactivates him, for a mission more dangerous than the one he’s recovering from: to get a defecting chief of R&D-and the biochip he’s perfected-out intact. But this proves to be of supreme interest to certain other parties-some of whom aren’t remotely human…
3. Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988) – Enter Gibson’s unique world where multinational corporations and high-tech outlaws vie for power, traveling into the computer-generated universe known as cyberspace. Into this world comes Mona, a young girl with a murky past and an uncertain future whose life is on a collision course with internationally famous Sense/Net star Angie Mitchell. Since childhood, Angie has been able to tap into cyberspace without a computer. Now, from inside cyberspace, a kidnapping plot is masterminded by a phantom entity who has plans for Mona, Angie, and all humanity, plans that cannot be controlled . . . or even known.

The Bridge trilogy

1. Virtual Light (1993) – The millennium has come and gone, leaving in its wake only stunned survivors. In Los Angeles, Berry Rydell is a former armed-response rentacop now working for a bounty hunter. Chevette Washington is a bicycle messenger turned pickpocket who impulsively snatches a pair of innocent-looking sunglasses. But these are no ordinary shades. What you can see through these high-tech specs can make you rich-or get you killed. Now Berry and Chevette are on the run, zeroing in on the digitalized heart of DatAmerica, where pure information is the greatest high. And a mind can be a terrible thing to crash. . . .
2. Idoru (1996) – After an attack of scruples, Colin Laney’s skipped out on his former employer Slitscan – avoiding the rash of media lawyers sent his way – and taken a job for the outfit managing Japanese rock duo, Lo/Rez. Rez has announced he’s going to marry an ‘idoru’ by the name of Rei Toi – she exists only in virtual reality – and this creates complications that Laney, a net runner, is supposed to sort out. But when Chai, part of Lo/Rez’s fan club, turns up unaware that she’s carrying illegal nanoware for the Russian Kombinat, Laney’s scruples nudge him towards trouble all over again. And this time lawyers’ll be the least of his worries…
3. All Tomorrow’s Parties (1999) – Living a down-and-out existence in Tokyo, Colin Laney is determined to make his way back to the United States and to San Francisco, where, thanks to his special sensitivities about people and events, he believes a pivotal moment in human history will take place sometime in the future.

The Blue Ant trilogy

1. Pattern Recognition (2003) – Cayce Pollard owes her living to her pathological sensitivity to logos. In London to consult for the world’s coolest ad agency, she finds herself catapulted, via her addiction to a mysterious body of fragmentary film footage, uploaded to the Web by a shadowy auteur, into a global quest for this unknown “garage Kubrick”. Cayce becomes involved with an eccentric hacker, a vengeful ad executive, a defrocked mathematician, a Tokyo Otaku-coven known as Eye of the Dragon and, eventually, the elusive “Kubrick” himself.
2. Spook Country (2007) – In New York, a young Cuban called Tito is passing iPods to a mysterious old man. Such activities do not go unnoticed, however, in these early days of the War on Terror, and Tito’s movements are being tracked. Meanwhile, in LA, journalist Hollis Henry is on the trail of Bobby Chombo, who appears to know too much about military systems for his own good. With Bobby missing and the trail cold, Hollis digs deeper and is drawn into the final moves of a chilling game . . .
3. Zero History (2010) – Hubertus Bigend, the Machiavellian head of global ad-agency Blue Ant, wants to uncover the maker of an obscurely fashionable denim that is taking subculture by storm. Ex-musician Henry Hollis knows nothing about fashion, but Bigend decides she is the woman for the job anyway. Soon, though, it becomes clear that Bigend’s interest in underground labels might have sinister applications. Powerful parties, who’ll do anything to get what they want, are showing their hand. And Hollis is about to find herself in the crossfire.

The Jackpot trilogy

1. The Peripheral (2014) – In the near future in a broken-down rural America, Flynne Fisher scrapes a living as a gamer for rich players. One night, working a game set in a futuristic but puzzlingly empty London, she sees a death that’s unnervingly vivid. Soon after she gets word that it isn’t a game after all – the future she saw is all too real, she’s the only witness to a murder and someone from that unreal tomorrow now wants her dead.
2. Agency (2020) – Verity Jane, gifted app whisperer, takes a job as the beta tester for a new product: a digital assistant, accessed through a pair of ordinary-looking glasses. “Eunice,” the disarmingly human AI in the glasses, manifests a face, a fragmentary past, and a canny grasp of combat strategy. Realizing that her cryptic new employers don’t yet know how powerful and valuable Eunice is, Verity instinctively decides that it’s best they don’t. Meanwhile, a century ahead in London, in a different timeline entirely, Wilf Netherton works amid plutocrats and plunderers, survivors of the slow and steady apocalypse known as the jackpot. His boss, the enigmatic Ainsley Lowbeer, can look into alternate pasts and nudge their ultimate directions. Verity and Eunice are her current project. Wilf can see what Verity and Eunice can’t: their own version of the jackpot, just around the corner, and the roles they both may play in it.
3. Jackpot – Coming…

Other novels written by William Gibsons

• Burning Chrome (1986) – Tautly written and suspenseful, Burning Chrome collects 10 short stories, including some written with Bruce Sterling, John Shirley, and Michael Swanwick, and with a preface from Bruce Sterling, now available for the first time in trade paperback. These brilliant, high-resolution stories show Gibson’s characters and intensely realized worlds at their absolute best, from the chip-enhanced couriers of “Johnny Mnemonic” to the street-tech melancholy of “Burning Chrome.”
• The Difference Engine (1990; with Bruce Sterling) – 1855: The Industrial Revolution is in full and inexorable swing, powered by steam-driven cybernetic Engines. Charles Babbage perfects his Analytical Engine and the computer age arrives a century ahead of its time. And three extraordinary characters race toward a rendezvous with history-and the future: Sybil Gerard-a fallen woman, politician’s tart, daughter of a Luddite agitator; Edward “Leviathan” Mallory-explorer and paleontologist; Laurence Oliphant-diplomat, mystic, and spy. Their adventure begins with the discovery of a box of punched Engine cards of unknown origin and purpose. Cards someone wants badly enough to kill for…
• Distrust That Particular Flavor (2012) – William Gibson was writing fiction when he predicted the internet. And as his stories bled into reality so he became one of the first to report on the real-world consequences of cyberspace’s growth and development. Now, with the dust settling on the first internet revolution, comes Gibson’s first collection of non-fiction – essays from the technological and cultural frontiers of this new world.
• William Gibson’s Archangel (Graphic Novel, 2017) – The U.S. political leaders of 2016 abandon the radioactive planet they’ve destroyed and harness the power of humanity’s last hope: The Splitter, a colossal machine designed to manufacture a bright new reality for them to infiltrate and corrupt.

If you like reading William Gibson’s type of stories, you may be interested in Neal Stephenson’s work, Peter F. Hamilton’s, some of China Miéville’s novels, Andy Weir’s books, Stephen Baxter’s…