William Gibson and the murder of Hans Blix

When they found Hans Blix dead, his throat was slit and his tongue was pulled through the hole, an arrangement apparently known as a ‘Cuban necktie’. William Gibson did not do the deed – it was the work of an overenthusiastic hit man – and nor is he the person who commissioned the hit; their identity remains unclear. But he can, with confidence, be held directly responsible. After all, it happens in one of his novels.

Hans Rutger Blix, ‘naturalised citizen of Costa Rica’, is a character in Virtual Light (1993); his death is punishment for losing the book’s macguffin, a rather special pair of dark glasses. Hans Martin Blix, future executive chairman of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission in Iraq, was already in a prominent position when Gibson was writing his namesake; he was more than ten years into his time as director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.