Burning Chrome: Gibson, William: 9780441089345: Amazon.com: Books

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Burning Chrome Mass Market Paperback – October 1, 1986

by William Gibson (Author)

843 ratings

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Ten stories deal with a human memory bank, UFOs, sleep machines, interstellar travel, a Soviet space station, and computer crime

Print length

208 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Ace
Publication date

October 1, 1986
Dimensions

4.2 x 0.58 x 6.86 inches
ISBN-10

0441089348
ISBN-13

978-0441089345
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Customer reviews

5 star		71%
4 star		19%
3 star		7%
2 star		2%
1 star		1%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Austin C. Beeman

The Iconic Collection of Gibson's Short Fiction. 90% positive rating.

Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2020

Verified Purchase

Burning Chrome is a collection of 10 short stories by Cyberpunk Master William Gibson. It includes many of his most famous stories: including Johnny Mnemonic, Gernsback Continuum, Belonging Kind, and Burning Chrome. These are tightly written adventures jam-packed with science fiction invention. The style of writing is tense, crisp, and clear and definitely pulls you into the world of these tales. If there is anything to complain about, it is that Gibson has been so influential in the genre that many of these don’t impress upon the reader the originality that they held upon publication.

Burning Chrome is rated 90%.

8 good / 2 average / 0 poor.

Johnny Mnemonic.

Good. This is probably the best story in the collection. Far superior to the awful film of the same title. The story crackles with excitement, razor sharp writing, and lots of speculation about the future. It is great first cyberpunk story for any reader as you follow Johnny with a secret trapped in his brain that he can’t access and many people want to kill him for.

The Gernsback Continuum

Good. A fantasy fable of science fiction’s past as Hugo-Gernsback-era design bleeds enticingly into the present world.

Fragments of a Hologram Rose

Average. A little scattershot as the main character reminisces about a girl he knew

The Belonging Kind. By John Shirley and William Gibson

Good. A dreamlike fantasy story as a man follows a mysterious woman through a hypnotic cityscape.

Hinterlands

Good. Atmospheric tale of the horrible price of space exploration

Red Star, Winter Orbit. by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson

Average. Mutiny aboard a Soviet-controlled space station.

New Rose Hotel

Good. Enough invention here for another writer’s trilogy of novels. This is a crime story and spy story and a love story - within a complex cyberpunk world.

The Winter Market

Good. Another spectacular story. This one tells about a man who writes dreams in to VR entertainment and an artist genius of a \ woman at the end of her rope.

Dogfight. by Michael Swanwick and William Gibson

Good. The dogfights here are the airplanes of world wars past. A transient man with dreams of winning money from virtual dogfights meets a privileged college girl and begins a friendship. Visceral and heartbreaking.

Burning Chrome

Good. Another classic. A deep run in the Matrix against a brutal mob figure. A beautiful girl caught up in transhuman technological upgrades. Love, betrayal, and greed.

From ShortSF

9 people found this helpful

Pure futuristic, cybernetic awesomeness

Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2021

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I have had some exposure to the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction in the past; namely The Matrix Film Trilogy, the film Hackers, the classic and underrated computer game “Beneath a Steel Sky,” the anime films “Ghost in the Shell” and “Akira,” and the “Otherland Trilogy” by Tad Williams. But reading the collection “Burning Chrome” by William Gibson was my first real foray into the material of one of the literary masters that started the whole cyberpunk subgenre.
This collection really has everything a cyberpunk fan could ask for; brooding futuristic cityscapes with neon and lasers cutting through the night; futuristic vehicles and unfolding, replicating highways; a neo-noir atmosphere with shady enemies armed to the teeth just waiting to strike; seedy bars, discotheques, and clubs in which cybernetic freaks of nature with hologram tattoos are ready to decimate you in a brawl just for looking at them the wrong way; evil corporate overlords and corrupt media powerbrokers; designer drugs that will turn your entire nervous system to ash if you so much as go over the prescribed dosage by a microscopic amount; battles and voyages through virtual alien vistas in cyberspace; and a lot more.
Not every story within is pure cyberpunk in essence, but every story has at least one element or edge of the cyberpunk genre within it. William Gibson is a writer like no other whose pen flows like digitized silk and has the feel of a futuristic version of Dashiell Hammett.
I loved nearly every story within except a couple that simply were not to my taste, and my favorite one has to be a toss up between the eponymous title and Johnny Mnemonic. There’s just so much good stuff here.
I give “Burning Chrome” by William Gibson a 5 out of 5.

3 people found this helpful

Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2022

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Love the author and happy to have the story the movie Johnny Mnemonic is based on

Fascinating, but leaves a hollow aftertaste

Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2020

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Admission -I did not like the Neuromancer. I usually remember the plots, and even whole sentences from books and short stories that I liked, but with Neuromancer I draw a blank. That's why I thought Gibson's short stories would be interesting to read. And initially they were, at least most of them. Gibson's technical writing skills are awesome and deserve five stars for sure. After a few stories, however, I felt uneasy. There are two weighty problems about the basic designs of the story - 1. Gibson describes, or better, wallows in his futuristic universe of software-hardware-biowere interfacing with added accents on psychoactive design drugs. His descriptions create a hype throwing various words that create atmosphere without really trying to get to the nitty-gritty and explain (at least some of it). Moreover, he creates an atmosphere in which an iconoclastic reader who might say "Come on. What did you really mean by that? Is it remotely possible or likely?" is posed as ignoramus and unbeliever. In a word, if you do not swim with this current, you're an old fuddy-duddy out of touch and out of grace. 2. Although the setting is 'the future according to Gibson', the skeleton underneath are the deathless motifs. Boy meets girls, boy loses girl, boy loses friend, greed is bad for your soul, etc, etc, etc. The tension is created not by waiting breathlessly for the hero's synapses to snap, but by a question as old as the world, will he/she score? I felt cheated when I realized that all that cyberspace is just a window dressing for our old spy story. Just substitute multinational behemoths or crime syndicates for evil government - and its Dr. No with electrodes. All said, I liked 'Fragments of Hologram Rose' best with 'Hinterlands' a close second, while 'Burning Chrome' is only so-so and 'Red Star' Winter Orbit' is definitely the last on the list and in my opinion shouldn't be in this anthology at all.

9 people found this helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Tom

Spectacular.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 10, 2018

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Being an avid fan of Gibsons' work, I avoided reading this collection of short stories for quite a while. I've read short story collections from other authors, where one or two pieces in the collection meet expectations, but where a number are poor to the point of exasperation.

I'm glad I took the bait on this collection, however. Gibson gives us a variety of writing styles, with my anticipated jumps into his trademark Cyberpunk genre (Johnny Mnemonic, New Rose Hotel Burning Chrome) with other stories in universes not unlike our own, though always with an edge that makes the book very difficult to put down.

I first came across Gibson in the Omni Magazine, a publication that is sadly no longer with us, feasting on the dark world presented to us in  Johnny Mnemonic. Years later, I read through all his early Cyberpunk (Sprawl Trilogy) work, becoming a huge fan in the process.

The Difference Engine was the next publication I found, which puzzled me.  A completely different style, which I must admit, took me several attempts over many months before I finished to book. It’s still not a favorite, I’m afraid.

Virtual Light was different again, and I started to appreciate that Gibson’s skill set was much wider than I had first appreciated.  For me, Gibson reverts back to a far more readily absorbed idiom, and I quickly became absorbed in the characters and storylines that are compelling and absorbing.

More recently, The Peripheral was another book I found very difficult to read initially. It took me three attempts to read it, finally managing to comprehend the language and piece together a vision of the story.  I’m so glad I persevered too.  The story is stunning, with well-maintained consistency to a complex multi-dimensional storyline and a thoroughly engaging group of characters.  I must have re-read that five or six times now and I get something new from it every time.

In conclusion, Gibson is an amazing author, with the skills to render his compelling characters in a stupefying collection of different worlds/ages/environments with a narrative that's consistently gripping and emotive.

If you’ve not read any of his work before, or if you have and just want more, then Burning Chrome is a fabulous introduction/addition to a collection of William Gibson novels.  I can’t recommend his work highly enough.

3 people found this helpful

Teh 0r4Cl3

Core essential.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 9, 2014

Verified Purchase

First read this on paper a few decades ago. I didn't enjoy it fisrt time; having come right from Neuromancer I thought it was another novel in the series.
Just done with the collection this morning and as a proper grown up I loved it. I have grown up reading Gibson and his own fiction has developed in parallel. This collection of short stories shows no sign of being first published in 1986, his ideas are still bleeding edge today. It informs and deepens the world of the sprawl so is required reading for anyone wanting to understand Gibson's fiction. When I got to the end of the book I have realised I need to revisit the sprawl yet again for th 'nth' time. Time to settle the trodes on the temples and jack in methinks...

One person found this helpful

Novel Resources

like me, this is your first experience of science ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 6, 2018

Verified Purchase

William Gibson's collection of short stories are a gripping take on the possiblities of the future, some of which have come true today. If, like me, this is your first experience of science fiction stories you are also in for a treat. Many of his stories have been adapted into movies and he inspired the cyber punk culture.

Tim Weber

It's like watching Gibson draft the foundations of his universe.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 8, 2019

Verified Purchase

Pretty awesome book. Now these stories are obviously not as well developed as his later novels, but they are fascinating and show us how he developed the characters, ideas etc that later pop up in his various novels. Must read for Gibson fans.

F

I feel like I'm coming to the party a bit late

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 16, 2015

Verified Purchase

I feel like I'm coming to the party a bit late, as Burning Chrome belongs to a genre which isn't the latest literary fashion anymore. But this doesn't matter. The social anxieties addressed throughout the stories are still relevant (perhaps even more relevant) today and this is certainly not a book which is trapped in its time.

The short story format means that it is really easy to dip in and out of, so if you are looking for a book to read on your commute, or if you only get a few minutes to read each day, your enjoyment of Burning Chrome won't suffer.

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