[gchance]

Two guys I work with are very young (22 & 25) and are the current iteration of geeks, into all manner of not only current pop culture sci-fi, but all manner of older as well. The 25-year-old drives me nuts with his Star Wars & Lord of the Rings crap that nobody until his generation cared about.

One morning I asked, are you excited about The Peripheral? He hadn't heard of it and within seconds googled it... and said oh, so The Matrix? I said no not The Matrix, William Gibson pre-dates The Matrix. Then the kicker: he had never heard of William Gibson, and all his references were post-Gibson. I was absolutely dumbfounded.

 

[gchance]

I know the concept of "time travel into the past creates an alternate timeline" has been used elsewhere, although I'm not sure the term "stubs" has been used to describe it. The first thing that came to mind was the short story "Mozart in Mirrorshades," which involves time travelers in the 18th century drilling for oil, plundering other resources, and sleeping with Marie Antoinette -- and the Wikipedia page for that story says that it was indeed an influence on the novel "The Peripheral."

 

[gchance]

Exactly, it's the equivalent of when I was in my teens and knew Heinlein, Asimov, & Clarke. I would say that now almost 40 years after Neuromancer's publication, Gibson would be a modern equivalent.