Everyone wants to see the future, but few can. Yet once in awhile a writer comes along with the gift of seeing what’s ahead. It happened when William Gibson foresaw a vision of the future, a place that included the World Wide Web — the Internet– before it actually existed.

In 1984 Gibson, up until then exclusively a writer of short stories, wrote his first novel, “Neuromancer.” The title combines ideas about science/technology and romance. It’s the story of an on the skids computer techie who is hired, under buying drugs online without prescription suspicious circumstances, to commit a major hacker job.

The novel was Gibson’s debut as a long-form writer, and is firmly within the “cyberpunk”genre, a style of writing that foretells a future that is gritty, urban, techno-savvy but also tinged with hopelessness and decay – a dystopia. He was commissioned to write it by the editor of “Ace Science Fiction Specials,” and wrote furiously for a year to complete it on deadline. Gibson has admitted that he felt unready to complete a novel, but finished it due to contractual obligations.

The book was released after the ground-breaking, dystopian film “Blade Runner,”– but the author was well into the writing of “Neuromancer” at the time of its release.

Gibson’s futuristic vision of the Internet and modern culture captured the zeitgeist, and “Neuromancer” was given the triple crown of Sci-Fi literary awards — the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award and the Philip K. Dick Award . It’s an unprecedented achievement.

Gibson’s vision of the future was prescient in its telling of a computer web that would link computers and their users in worldwide communication. In describing his vision of “the web,” he coined the term “cyberspace, ” which quickly became part of the American cultural vernacular.

Acclaimed for his literary style and mind-blowing cultural insights, Gibson has become one of the most acclaimed futurist writers of our time. “Neuromancer” was the beginning of the “Sprawl” trilogy, which he then followed with another trilogy. His latest novel, “Zero History” is his tenth. Luckily for his fans, Gibson shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.