This blogpost is my review of the short story Burning Chrome by William Gibson. The Burning Chrome master blogpost is here.

“Cyberspace” And The Ono-Sendai VII

Burning Chrome is famous for two things. First, it is the story where the term “Cyberspace” was coined. Second, it serves as an unofficial prequel to Neuromancer, Gibson’s famous novel that mainstreamed the Cyberpunk genre.

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The story opens in Bobby’s loft as Bobby and the narrator are jacking into the matrix to burn Chrome. Bobby is a “console cowboy” – a hot shot hacker – looking for one big score. Bobby’s weapon of choice is the Ono-Sendai VII, a matrix simulator that allows him to access cyberspace.

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It is important to realize off the bat that the cyberspace in Burning Chrome is not the cyberspace of the internet in 2026 or even the internet of 1990-something. Cyberspace in Burning Chrome is “the electronic consensus-hallucination” that facilitates the exchange of mass quantities of data. And that SOUNDS like the internet as we know it. But it isn’t.

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The Cyberspace in Burning Chrome is closer to today’s virtual reality. It isn’t something that can be accessed on whim that is part of the every day world. Compare that to the internet today where I can look at the internet on my laptop and easily look up and talk to someone in “meatspace.”

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It is a second world separate from the physical world. It can only be accessed by having special equipment – the Ono-Sendai VII – unlike Grandma accessing Facebook on her phone.

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The people who call Gibson a futurist and a visionary because he saw Cyberspace coming before its time are very mistaken. Gibson wasn’t trying to predict the future and if he was trying to it, he basically failed. His Cyberspace is much more visual than our Cyberspace, where people navigate by clicking links that act as wormholes whisking you around the internet. In his Cyberspace you have to visually (although virtually) navigate and manipulate the various objects floating around. His Cyberspace is a much more physical space.

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Gibson uses Cyberspace as a purer form of the physical world. Gibson’s cyberpunk world is a world of mass deregulation where the economy is the wild west and everyone man is forced to fend for himself. Cyberspace visually mimics this by being a place where a person is untethered by any natural laws of physics and is just floating around like a character in a video game. This “floating around” parallels the borderless world the physical world has become.

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Second, Gibson uses Cyberspace to show how technology distances people from each other. Burning Chrome is very Black Mirror-esque in the way it shows how people relate to technology.

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It criticizes the “gee-whiz” Golden Age SciFi’s focus on cool gadgets, by showing that technology doesn’t just solve some problem, but it distances people from one another. Cyberspace shows this by being a second world. You enter Cyberspace by effectively leaving this world. You’re literally off in your own little world divorced from the real world.

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In fact, in several interviews over the years, Gibson has stated that the idea of Cyberspace came to him when he saw some teenagers in a video arcade and how they were just in their own little world.

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Cyberspace really has nothing to do with the modern internet.

“The Street finds Its Own Use For Things”

In addition to coining the term “Cyberspace”, Burning Chrome contains some famous quotes. One is “the street finds its own use for things.” This is mentioned near the end of the story about a drug that is supposed to be used by senile patients, but people going through breakups use it because it helps you to remember. People who have just broken up will want to replay every second of their relationship.

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The quote has gotten traction in tech circles in Silicon Valley because it shows how technology can be designed for x, but it’s ultimate use will by y. Radio is a good example because it was designed for rural church goers unable to attend church to hear some pastor’s sermon. And it wind up being used by the likes of Howard Stern.

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Another quote is the opening line: “It was hot, the night we burned Chrome.” I think this is a much better opening line than the Neuromancer line about the polluted sky being the color of TV tuned to a dead channel. The Neuromancer line is mannered and pretty for its own sake and doesn’t tell you anything other than the writer likes to be cute.

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But the Burning Chrome line actually tells you something. “It was hot” is such a simple phrase but that’s why I like it. Not only is it something people would actually say, but it tells you something of the world Gibson is creating.

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It tells you that this world is focused on the everyday tangible concerns people have rather than just some cool tech. It’s a revolutionary break from the Golden Age SciFi “gee whiz” stuff. And it tells you that in just 3 words.

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The rest of the line about “burning Chrome” is interesting because it hooks you right away: Who or what is Chrome and what does it mean to burn it? I usually find opening lines way too try-hard and I think this might be my favorite in all of literature.

The HOly Trinity of Cyberpunk

Burning Chrome is the last story in the collection also named Burning Chrome. Ordering the story that way seems to give the impression that all the other stories lead up to this one story. But that’s not how I look at it.

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I see the three cyberpunk stories in the collection, Johnny Mnemonic and New Rose Hotel and Burning Chrome, as equals. Together they not only started the cyberpunk genre but completely defined it. While Neuromancer gets the headlines, everything in Neuromancer is already in these stories. Including a number of characters and all the themes. If one wants to really “get to know” Cyberpunk it would be better to make an intense reading of these three stories than to plow through Neuromancer.

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And if you find Neuromancer a struggling read and too confusing, that is exactly what you should do.

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In short, Burning Chrome is a fantastic story and a must read if you want to understand the cyberpunk genre. But if you do read it, throw away your conception of Cyberspace and everything else. Instead ask yourself what Gibson is trying to do by incorporating Cyberspace and depicting it the way that he does.

THE LAST BLONDE

I wrote my own cyberpunk story. It is called THE LAST BLONDE and it is available at www.blackflagliterature.com