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"The Gernsback Continuum" is a short story by William Gibson about a photographer who has been...

"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 magazine science fiction 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 was published in Gibson's Burning Chrome anthology. During his assignment to photograph 1930s era futuristic architecture, Parker begins to realize a "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 modernism to postmodern reality. Parker's glimpses of this fantastical utopian future, characterised by massive multi-lane highways, giant zeppelins and Aryan inhabitants become increasingly frequent and disturbing until, on the advice of a friend,