The world is like a bad sci-fi story
Interview with William Gibson in the New York Times:
If I had gone into a publisher in New York in 1981 and told them I wanted to write a novel that is set in a world where the climate is out of whack and Mideast terrorists have hijacked airplanes and in response the U.S. has invaded the wrong country — it's too much. Contemporary reality is like an overlapping set of dire science-fictional scenarios.
I will probably have to read his new book.
Comments
Have you read any of his previous books? He started very SF (he invented cyberpunk, pretty much), but he's been getting steadily more "real". His last one, Pattern Recognition, is very good.
Posted by: simon | 2:09AM, 08.21.07
The only one of his books I've read is Neuromancer, but I've had Pattern Recognition on my "to read" list as well.
Posted by: andrea | 8:10AM, 08.21.07
I think I need to ask him to my reading list. Recommendations?
Posted by: Jane | 8:35AM, 08.21.07
Depends on your tolerance for jargon-heavy cyberpunk. Neuromancer would be the obvious place to start. They're mostly set in the same world and feature some shared characters, but can be read in pretty much any order. "Idoru" is one of my favourites.
Posted by: simon | 1:23PM, 08.21.07
He has a cool blog too. Check out his "bed-bagging" photos of all the hotel rooms he stays in while he's on the "Spook Country" signing tour: http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/2007_08_01_archive.asp
Posted by: simon | 3:07AM, 08.22.07