Tessier-Ashpool [SEP] present in work
Tessier-Ashpool
Tessier-Ashpool is a fictional family appearing in William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy. The family owns Freeside, a space station shaped like a spindle Bernal sphere constructed in high orbit. The family resides in the Villa Straylight, which occupies one end of the spindle.
The family is organized and run as a corporation, Tessier-Ashpool S.A.. Family members are kept under cryogenic stasis and thawed out periodically so that governance of the family is cycled between members. According to "orbital law" they are
typically soap operas, from the point of view of a fictitious media personality.
Comparative setting.
The Sprawl is a typical (perhaps archetypal) example of a cyberpunk setting. Related places visited in Gibson's fiction include Chiba City, a high-tech district near Tokyo, and Freeside, an orbital complex which includes the family estate of the rich Tessier-Ashpool clan, as well as the Rastafarian colony New Zion. A notable non-fictional precursor to The Sprawl is the Northeast Megalopolis, the present-day