The comparison with the Beats is interesting (I know next to nothing about the Beats). Thanks for sharing!
As an interesting aside, There’s an old Canadian documentary film about Rochdale and the hippie scene in Toronto, shot around 1970, that, by pure chance, features a very young William Gibson well before he had published anything - I stumbled across this by chance in the York University film archives about 30 years ago - no idea if it’s available anywhere online and may no longer exist anymore.