Writer William Gibson has seen the future -- and it is Grunge.

High-tech. Lo-tek. Artificial Intelligence. Nanotech. Sentient
Holograms. Corporate Assassins. Drugs. Hustlers. Low Life Proles. More Drugs.

Filtered through Nightmare Noir. Reframed by the Bad Karma-Mojo of pop culture icons William Burroughs, Phillip K. Dick and J. G. Ballard.

As Gibson himself admitted during a cameo appearance in the cult TV serial Wild Palms, he's been credited with inventing "cyberspace" -- and "they won't ever let me forget it."

Ever since his first novel Neuromancer, HyperNow has been extrapolated to a Surely More Decadent Tomorrow. And Gibson's Future still occupies a grotesque and detailed universe of Quaking Doom and Gloom, tinged with GeeWhiz, Flash and Buzz.

William Gibson is, after all, the Psycho-Cartographer of the Astral Plane.

In a strange anomaly -- or is it synchronicity? -- Orwell's Novel of the Future -- 1984 -- was published in 1948.