Interview with Author William Gibson on His Writing

his debut novel Neuromancer was the
first to win the Triple Crown of science
fiction awards for literature hi my name
is Stephanie welcome to watchmojo.com
and today we’re speaking to author
William Gibson about his writing your
work has been first categorized as
cyberpunk and then steampunk and now
it’s being categorized more as
speculative or contemporary fiction why
would you say your writing has moved in
this direction I think it’s less a
matter of my writing having having
changed as the descriptors which are
applied to my writing having having
changed quite a bit of the second half
of the 20th century I was writing about
the 21st century it was an imaginary
21st century
I can only invent that stuff out of the
material of the present that I was I was
working in so I knew that in some sense
Neuromancer would of my first novel
would ultimately be about 1981
in which it was fear in which it was
written
and I I continued to take that for
granted so it always seemed to me that
in this sense I was I was writing about
the present and when I found myself
finally in the real 21st century I
thought well this is interesting
Here I am in what was previously an
imaginary future it’s it’s actually much
more complex than any imaginary future
anyone would ever be able to to imagine
and it seems to contain it’s kind of an
amazing number of overlapping world
affecting science fiction scenarios got
global warming the AIDS epidemic it’s
the Internet all these things that each
of which would have been more than
enough to base a science fiction novel
on in 1981 they’re all happening
simultaneously in an era of exponential
technologically driven social change so
that’s really science fictiony I thought
so given all of that I thought why not
use the toolkit of science fiction that
I’ve developed in the 20th century to
work with that material and I would just
I would treat the present of the first
decade of the 21st century as though it
were imaginary future and and just use
use my standard-issue sci-fi writer
toolkit on the unthinkable present you
coined the term cyberspace and you’ve
also been credited with helping the
growth of virtual environments on the
internet and in video games so what
would what do you think about the impact
of your work on the information age I
don’t actually see myself as having been
a very large influence on that stuff
because I was only able to do what I did
because there were actual entrepreneurs
and technologists around who were
developing things like the things I
described in my novels and I always
access as much of that as I could
now given that a lot of that I was doing
it prior to the World Wide Web I was
what little of that stuff I could find I
had to sort of find it in in the
physical world so often I would find
things that most people had
way of knowing about like I always had
my antenna out and if I met scientists I
would ask them what the crazy what’s the
craziest that new invention you’ve heard
of and and you know I remember that and
and it would eventually find its find
its way into a story so even there I was
working with a lot of existing material
but the the public didn’t have the same
sort of access today that’s really
different because I’m unlikely to hear
about I’m unlikely to hear about it
before Wired or gizmo dino hear about it
and I usually hear about it from them
the information on potentially
game-changing emergent technologies
travels like at the speed of light thank
you so much for your time thank you