Hackers (anthology) - "Burning Chrome"

"Burning Chrome"

This story, written by William Gibson, was first published in Omni in July, 1982. It tells the story of two hackers who hack systems for profit. The two main characters are Bobby Quine who specializes in software and Automatic Jack whose field is hardware. A third character in the story is Rikki, a girl with whom Bobby becomes infatuated and for whom he wants to hit it big. Automatic Jack acquires a piece of Russian hacking software that is very sophisticated and hard to trace. The rest of the story unfolds with Bobby deciding to break into the system of a notorious and vicious criminal called Chrome, who handles money transfers for organized crime, and Automatic Jack reluctantly agreeing to help. The break-in is ultimately successful, but Rikki decides to leave the group and go to Hollywood, to the grief of Quine and Jack who have grown to love her.

One line from this story — "...the street finds its own uses for things" — has become a widely-quoted aphorism for describing the sometimes unexpected uses to which users can put technologies (for example, hip-hop DJs' reinvention of the turntable, which transformed turntables from a medium of playback into one of production). Bobby Quine is mentioned in Neuromancer as one of the mentors of the protagonist. The Finn, a recurring character in Gibson's Sprawl trilogy of novels, makes his first appearance in this story as a minor figure. The events of the story are referenced in Count Zero, the second entry of the Sprawl trilogy.

The word cyberspace, coined by Gibson, was first used in this story.

This story and "Dogfight" were later published in a collection of William Gibson short stories, also titled Burning Chrome.

The story functioned as a conceptual prototype for Gibson's Sprawl trilogy of novels.