The Gernsback Continuum

"The Gernsback Continuum" is a short story by William Gibson about a photographer who has been given the assignment of photographing old, futuristic architecture. This architecture, although largely forgotten at the time of the story, embodied for the generation that built it their concept of the future. The titular "Gernsback" alludes to Hugo Gernsback, a pulp science fiction writer and publisher during the early 20th century. By using this titl... more

"The Gernsback Continuum" is a short story by William Gibson about a photographer who has been given the assignment of photographing old, futuristic architecture. This architecture, although largely forgotten at the time of the story, embodied for the generation that built it their concept of the future. The titular "Gernsback" alludes to Hugo Gernsback, a pulp science fiction writer and publisher during the early 20th century. By using this title Gibson contrasts the future envisaged during Gernsback's style of science fiction and the present, cyberpunk era that Gibson was establishing. The story appeared in Gibson's Burning Chrome anthology. During his assignment to photograph 1930s era futuristic architecture, Parker begins to come into contact with the "continuum," an alternate reality containing the possible future of the world represented by the architecture he is photographing – a future that could have been, but was not, thereby contrasting modernist insanity to postmodern... less