Gothic Motifs in the Fiction of William Gibson

Dr Tatiani G. Rapatzikou read English at the University of Athens, Greece, and she subsequently completed her postgraduate studies at the Universities of Lancaster and East Anglia, England. She is now Lecturer in 20th century American Literature and Culture at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.

Gibson’s startlingly new form of science fiction opens inner vistas through his sense of how technological development increasingly removes the boundaries between the realms of the imagined and the real. This important new study focuses on the visual elements in Gibson’s work, suggesting how his extraordinary mindscapes are locatable in terms of both gothic and the graphic novel traditions in a subtle interweaving of physical and virtual space that creates new forms of spatial being. Gibson describes the space of the Walled City as 'Doorways flipping past, each one hinting at its own secret world.' Tatiani G. Rapatzikou's thoughtful analyses of those secret worlds will fascinate all those who have wondered where these fictions have come from—and where they may be headed. – Allan Lloyd Smith, Senior Lecturer, School of English and American Studies, University of East Anglia