Is it okay, do you think, to say I find William Gibson's cycle of short stories, Burning Chrome, to be a work of profound beauty? Probably not, but I'm going to say it anyway: Burning Chrome is beautiful.

But how can it be? How can something like the Sprawl, Gibson's pollution choked mega-city, and our shared technological-future-nightmare be beautiful? My description suggests it can't, yet I find much beauty in Gibson's future.

There's something magnificent about monomolecular wires and Razorgirl fingernails, something profound about the rejection of a sterile utopia for a filthy sprawl, something thrilling about dreamy future-noir, something tragic about the thirst to belong for even the most peripheral people, something eerily familiar in the desire to offer the ultimate sacrifice, something nostalgic about the Soviet era trappings that are long gone, something terrifying in the prescient vision of corporate power, something hopeful in the concept of future immortality, something touching in its melancholy, and something comfortable about improvements that can't hide a classic love story of the "if-you-love-her-let-her-go" kind.

Well...I'm a guy who loves the magnificent the profound the thrilling the tragic the familiar the nostalgic the terrifying the hopeful the touching and the comfortable. I find all of them beautiful. And if those aren't beautiful enough for you, consider this: Burning Chrome coins the word "cyberspace." William Gibson imagined it, and computer geeks made it. Can you beat that for beautiful?