William Gibson on the Origin of “Cyberspace”

William Gibson is the author of many science fiction books, including his debut novel, Neuromancer, the first novel to win the three top science fiction prizes—the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award. Gibson is credited with first coining the term “cyberspace” in his short story Burning Chrome. In this interview on Live from the NYPL, Gibson looks back at the moment of creation of the term, why he felt it was needed, and how he came to assign the term “cyberspace” to what he was looking for: in his words, “a need to find an arena in which he could set science fiction stories.”