William Ford Gibson is an American and Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist who began his writing career in the late 1970s. He is widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as cyberpunk, though he has repeatedly distanced himself from the category. Gibson's early works were noir, near-future stories that explored the effects of technology, cybernetics, and computer networks on humans. His writing combined what he described as "lowlife and high tech," helping to create an iconography for the Information Age before the widespread adoption of the Internet in the 1990s. Gibson coined the term "cyberspace" in his 1982 short story "Burning Chrome," defining it as "widespread, interconnected digital technology." He later popularized this concept, along with his usage of the "matrix," in his acclaimed debut novel Neuromancer, published in 1984. These early works have been credited with "renovating" science fiction literature in the 1980s.