Cool News
Alexandra DuPont Interviews William 'Freakin' Gibson!!!!
Hey folks, Harry here. And wow. Cool, Alexandra DuPont managed to seduce ol William "FREAKING" Gibson himself into an interview that is far more interesting than just some run of the mill.... "So uh um, what's uh happening with um, you know that uh NEUROMANCER film movie thing, huh?" and actually gets... dare I say it.... DEEP. You see, while there seems to have been moments in the interview where Alexandra felt like an inanimate dweeb, as the interview continues you can see her loosening up and becoming, SUPER-INTERVIEWER!!! And ya know what? Cool. If MATRIX was nothing really new to you, and just the realization of a story several textured layers beneath the brilliant cyberpunk work of William Gibson... then this is for you. In fact, Gibson talks a bit about MATRIX... and you MATRIX haters that love Gibson might be surprised... But personally... My favorite parts of this interview are when we move past 'Film' stuff and get into the literate and theoretical mind of William "FREAKING" Gibson. Enjoy this treat from that black latex wearing Alexandra DuPont....
Alexandra DuPont interviews William... freaking... Gibson
Toujours, Harry. Alexandra DuPont here. I had the good fortune recently
to chat with cyberpunk author William Gibson. Following are some
highlights from our hour-long chat -- including brief comments on his
"X-Files" episode and the long-in-development "Neuromancer" movie.
Mssr. Gibson is, of course, the granddaddy of cyberpunk -- that certain
breed of computer-obsessed, reality-bending science fiction that
influences film and television to this day. He invented the term
"cyberspace," and is generally credited with many of the concepts behind
virtual reality. "The Matrix," right down to its title, probably
wouldn't exist if it weren't for his writing (and, to be fair, Philip K.
Dick's). He also wrote that episode of "The X-Files" where the
computer's performing semi-omnipotent acts out of a remote trailer and a
virtual Scully kicks the crap out of evil nurses. (That's also the
episode featuring the woman with the ridiculous eye makeup, which I
actually asked him about.)
I'm probably insulting certain readers of this site by even bothering to
mention that Gibson's written two trilogies of mostly brilliant, gritty,
diamond-hard science fiction (in addition to a collection of short
stories and "The Difference Engine," co-authored with Bruce Sterling).
"Neuromancer," "Count Zero," and "Mona Lisa Overdrive" imagine the
emergence of a mass digital consciousness in an unnamed future; "Virtual
Light," "Idoru," and the just-released "All Tomorrow's Parties" imagine
the emergence of a mass digital consciousness in a future nearer our
own.
Gibson was out pimping "All Tomorrow's Parties" when I talked to him.
Here's what he had to say.
*****
I. THE REALLY BANAL QUESTION THAT FANS OF BOTH GIBSON'S WRITING AND "THE
MATRIX" SECRETLY WANT TO ASK
A. DuPont: I wanted to get the "dumb" question out of the way right off.
[affecting a moronic fanboy tone] So, uh, what'd you think of "The
Matrix"?
William Gibson: Actually, I liked it very much. I was extremely
reluctant to go and see it --
Q. I can imagine.
A. -- and finally, I was down in Santa Monica doing something, and a
friend of mine came over on a rainy day and said, "Come ON, you've got
to see this. I'm pretty sure you're not going to have the kind of
experience that you're imagining that you're going to have." And I
really liked it. I thought it was so well-done, and basically I thought
it was, in its subtext, a very good-hearted movie -- in a way that is
unusual at that budget level. It didn't have the kind of crypto-fascist
subtext that one might expect with that kind of money. I took it to be a
fable about the price of becoming more conscious. I thought that was
most beautifully expressed by the Judas character's deal he cuts,
saying, "Okay, I'll betray this guy, but you've got to guarantee that
I'll be in complete, airtight denial about it. I won't know that you
exist."
Q. "Ignorance is bliss."
A. Yeah, "ignorance is bliss." It's simple stuff, but I thought it was
good stuff. It was a very generous movie -- it really gave the audience
a lot of stuff, frame by frame. As far as having been an influence on
it, I thought they had digested their Gibson very well -- and also
obviously taken quite a lot of Philip K. Dick.
Q. Oh, definitely.
A. And you know, that's fair -- I mean, I do that myself all the time.
*****
II. THE "NEUROMANCER" MOVIE, CHRIS CARTER, AND THAT "X-FILES"
CHARACTER'S TERRIBLE EYE MAKEUP
Q. It's been a while since your last book, "Idoru"....
A. Well, I took a vacation. I hadn't taken any time off since 1981, when
I started writing short fiction, and I went straight from writing short
fiction into writing "Neuromancer." But somehow, when I finished
"Idoru," I just woke up one day and I thought, "Well, who am I? What am
I doing here? What's my life like? I'll check that out today and see
what's going on." And then I got to the next day and I thought, "That
was fun."
Q. [laughs]
A. So I just kept doing that, and I did it for about a year and a half.
But suddenly the little bells started ringing on my book contract. But I
got connected back to my life as something other than the author of
these books, which was long overdue.
Q. It also allowed you to hook up with Chris Carter and write an episode
of "The X-Files," which sounds like it's been a good move for you.
A. Yeah, that was fun -- that was the only writing I did in that period.
And I was very happy with the product. My partner and I are in the
middle of trying to do another one of those with him. We're trying to do
a final season of the "X-Files."
Q. Yeah, I really enjoyed your episode of "The X-Files." The only thing
I will say, though, is: What was UP with that chick's eye makeup?
A. Yeah, that was really strange. Plus, she was this extraordinarily
beautiful woman -- I know because she was friends with a neighbor of
mine in Vancouver. I guess it was the makeup person's take on
"cyberpunk." Actually, it might be my fault -- because I think when they
asked me about the makeup, I think I suggested that thing that Darryl
Hannah has in "Blade Runner," where they sort of silk-screened a dark
band, sort of like spray-on sunglasses. But instead it was kind of
weird. My daughter calls her "Racoony Babe."
Q. [laughs] Yeah, when you take the "Pris" character out of the "Blade
Runner" setting and she's not surrounded by flying cars, it does have a
slightly different effect. Now, about the "Neuromancer" movie. You've
got a music-video director named Chris Cunningham attached.
A. Yeah.
Q. Is it proceeding the way you want it to?
A. Well, yeah, insofar as nothing's happened -- nobody's come along to
disturb us. We're in such an early phase of the thing that there's just
these two weird imaginations at work on the idea of what the project
might be.
Q. Well, it will be nice to see the
Molly character [a total she-badass character that Trinity from "The
Matrix" is clearly modeled on, and who appears in the original "Johnny
Mnemonic" and "Neuromancer" stories] actually show up.
A. Yeah. See, that was one of the things with "Johnny Mnemonic," was
that I never WANTED the Molly character to show up, because if she HAD
shown up she'd be part of the "Johnny Mnemonic" franchise. That's why
Molly wasn't Molly.
Q. [sarcastically] Yes, that highly lucrative "Johnny Mnemonic"
franchise....
A. Yeah. Well, you know, that was always a possibility, too -- so I'm
very glad that we kept her.
*****
[Note to our remaining readers: The rest of this interview is about
Gibson's WRITING, not inevitably inferior filmic adaptations of same --
with spoilerific discussions of his latest tome, "All Tomorrow's
Parties," plus some very large words. Still here? Let's continue.]
*****
III. CONTINUITY GEEKS
Q. If I may become a continuity geek for a second, your novels form two
trilogies --
A. [anticipating a rather obvious question about whether his novels
comprise one consistent "universe" or timeline, a la Asimov or a shoddy
comic-book lineup] No, I'm not doing the Robert Heinlein "future
history" thing. I don't think you could get from the world of "Virtual
Light" to the world of "Neuromancer." In fact, with the latest three
books I don't think I was doing a future so much as a kind of alternate
tomorrow. Since I wrote "Virtual Light," I think enough things have
changed that I don't think we could get to "Virtual Light" from here.
When are we gonna get the black female president -- in time, right? But
these books are ten years off.
Q. Yeah, I think "Virtual Light" was set in 2005....
A. You know, it really pissed me off. [The date 2005] is not in "Virtual
Light." If you read very carefully and did a calculation based on the
date that Rydell saw a particular film, you could have figured out that
it was 2005. I think someone at the publisher in New York asked me the
date, and I told them, and they put it in the flap copy of the book, so
it got out. But I didn't want a date. Like with "Neuromancer," I was
very careful -- you can't really date it. I always assumed it was about
2035, but I kept it vague.
Q. That way it doesn't date.
A. Well, that's kind of the poignant thing about science fiction is that
it DOES date -- it all has kind of a "sell-by" date. But I was less
concerned with that with these last three books, because I deliberately
cranked the "futuristic" part in really, really close.
*****
IV. BILL GATES AND THE "BENT ARISTOCRACY"
Q. Now, you reserve no small amount of scorn for billionaires and the
media aristocracy in your books -- particularly in this last trilogy.
"Absolute power corrupts absolutely" in your books -- at least when
we're talking about human beings. Do you really think someone like Bill
Gates is susceptible to that kind of corruption?
A. Well, no -- not necessarily down to Bill personally. But the tendency
is there. You know, there's some kind of literary tradition that I'm
following here, where these are picaresque, in a way naturalistic,
social adventures -- and they require a bent aristocracy. In
"Neuromancer," I had to actually go to the original bent aristocracy and
have the Tessier-Ashpools in their private space station. But it says
somewhere in the text that they're an anachronism -- that they're kind
of dinosaurs of global capitalism.
Q. Right. The corporations are like organisms --
A. Corporations are like organisms and the Tessier-Ashpools are the sort
of Howard Hughes end of the evolutionary stick. But the shift in the new
books is that the bad guys are tabloid television shows and global
public-relations men.
*****
V. ANOTHER COLOSSALLY STUPID, OVERLY BROAD QUESTION, PLUS MISCHIEF
Q. What do you see as the biggest challenge we're facing in the new
millennium? [realizing colossal stupidity and obviousness and overly
broad nature of query] I know that's kind of a huge....
A. Well, "the millennium" is like Christmas -- it's a Christian holiday.
It's only happening because we kind of agreed that day is "Christmas."
For me, where we're going is more of what [Gibson's trademark
skinny-white-videodroning-obsessed-data-cowboy character] Laney in "All
Tomorrow's Parties" calls a "nodal point".... History is a sort of
consensual fiction which we perpetually revise -- but we've come far
enough along that sometimes now we look back, and in retrospect we can
see the emergence of changes that had enormous effects down the road,
but which just weren't visible at all to anyone....
Q. In "All Tomorrow's Parties," you made Marie Curie's husband getting
run over in 1911 a key "nodal point" in the past. Was that just an
arbitrary thing you chose, or did you have a reasoning behind that?
A. In a way, it's a viewpoint joke: Laney and [another character in "All
Tomorrow's Parties,"] Harwood are the only two people in the world who
have this peculiar sort of pathological vision that allows them to see
"OOP! that did it!" Somebody told me when I was in England that there
was a Virginia Woolf essay in which she had seriously pinned the
beginning of the modern era on a particular weekend in 1911.
Q. Really? I was wracking my head reading the book, thinking, "Well,
Marie Curie did research on nuclear material and maybe her husband's
death drove her into her research...."
A. Well, I knew that people would. But you can't get here from there.
Q. So there was some mischief in choosing that.
*****
VI. WILLIAM GIBSON PROBABLY SKIPPED BIOLOGY CLASS, PLUS SOCIOLOGICAL
PREDICTIONS
Q. In your books, you dwell on the data issues of the future -- issues
of hardware and software -- but not genetics.
A. I haven't dealt with it. I don't know why. Biology doesn't grab me in
the same way. But if you want great and thoughtful and scary treatments
of that, then you could go to my colleague Bruce Sterling. He keeps
right up on it.
Q. Sociologically, you get into it quite a bit, though -- you feature a
pretty stunning gap between the rich and the poor, technologically and
educationally. Is that sociological gap happening the WAY you predicted?
A. Well, the gap continues to widen. For me, the crucial question -- in
terms of the real world and how comfortable I am in it -- is, "Is there
a viable middle class?" And there still is in most of the industrial
Western world, and you have emerging middle classes in other places. And
then you have really nasty anomalies where suddenly there is no middle
class -- you can't even BE middle class in Mexico City because of their
situation with the devaluation. It's a situation where people literally
cannot save money.
Q. I also love how your characters have very specific knowledge -- how
they'll know nothing about history but a great deal about a particular
technology. Is that an emergent trend you see?
A. Well, I don't think that's so much a trend as it is naturalism. You
know, one of the things I count on to write these books is my sense of
what the real world is like and how it actually works. You need to have
that to start from before you start imagining changes and different
versions of it. And I find that [increasing specialization of knowledge]
everywhere. And I'm sure if you ask a high-school teacher that, they
REALLY find it everywhere.
*****
VII. THE "FINAL DIGITAL MOMENT," PLUS OTHER CONCEPTS THAT I SORT OF HAD
TROUBLE WRAPPING MY HEAD AROUND
Q. One of the things in both trilogies is the emergence of a sort of
mass Jungian collective consciousness out of data. Data in both your
trilogies has a kind of shape, and when you insert artificial
intelligence into that mix, you end up with a sort of deity.
A. Yeah.
Q. Is that just a nifty literary conceit, or is that something you
actually see coming to pass?
A. Well, it sounds very Biblical when you put it that way. [laughs] "And
he saw it, and it came to pass."
Q. I guess I'm getting carried away with the "prophet" thing...
A. Well, there's something we've been doing a long, long time as a
species, and we're the only species on the planet that does it, as far
as we know -- and that's that we find ways to extrude our interiority,
that we're self-aware in a way that other mammals don't seem to be, and
that we communicate that -- from cave paintings and standing stones to
temples and cities, all these things we've been building. And somewhere
in the last couple of hundred years, that activity started to produce
things that in some ways are more than models of consciousness, that are
more than models of the nervous system --
Q. Things that take on a life of their own.
A. We've got a situation where most human beings on the planet have
their nervous systems augmented -- to the extent that I can sit in this
hotel room and watch something happening in Tokyo as it happens, by
virtue of these systems that my species has created. So in effect, it's
like my sensorium has been augmented by my species to perceive things
that previously would have been quite inconceivable to my ancestors. And
I think we're doing that increasingly, and it's happening with
exponential speed. I don't know what the end point would necessarily be.
I mean, I've imagined it -- not so much in my fiction, but in some
nonfiction writing that I've done, that the final result of this will be
a final digital moment...
Q. Hmm.
A. ...where everything is happening -- that the speed of recall will be
so great that all digitally recorded time will sort of exist
simultaneously.
Q. You talk about it being inconceivable to our ancestors -- I wonder
what will be inconceivable to us in a hundred years.
A. You may not have to wait a hundred years. For me, what happens at the
end of "All Tomorrow's Parties" is that in the moment that the idoru
emerges from every 7-Eleven in Christendom in a form of realized free
nanotechnology, that's when the world as we know it ends -- because
that's the emergence of an absolute technological singularity. It just
doesn't take effect right away. On the other side of a technological
singularity lies a literally unimaginable world. And it's called a
technological "singularity" because what lies on the other side of it is
as unknowable as what lies on the other side of a black hole.
*****
VIII. THE TOM CLANCY OF CYBERSPACE -- NOT
Q. I thought your nanotechnology stuff in "All Tomorrow's Parties" was
really interesting -- the idea of an old watch descending into a bed of
nanobots and emerging brand-new. I was wondering: Are there
"Neuromancer" fans who are working on nanotechnology and call you and
say, "Check out what we're working on"? Do you get any "inside
information"?
A. [laughs] In a way, I'd like to pretend I'm sort of like the Tom
Clancy of cyberspace, and I hang out with these guys. And sometimes I DO
hang out with them, but I'm more inclined to take note of what they're
wearing.
Q. [laughs]
A. You know, I listen to them talk about their dating problems more
closely that I listen to them talk about what they're actually doing.
For me, I'm pretty sure the way I use nanotechnology in these novels
actually BUGS the real nanotechnologist to no end. They'd probably be
inclined to dismiss me as sort of willfully lightweight about the whole
thing. But when you've got somebody promising you a technology that will
make everyone immortal and abolish the very concept of wealth, I just
kind of throw up my hands and say, "You win -- I can't imagine that."
You know -- "There's no work for me here."
*****
IX. WHY THE INTERNET MUST BE AN ACCIDENT
Q. So you see yourself using these technologies for more thematic,
literary ends than as a technically accurate kind of device....
A. Well, I've never been TOO concerned about being technically accurate
-- but having science fiction as my native literary culture, I've still
got these sort of cultural prerogatives where I shouldn't be totally
stupid about it. For me, when I look at the world, I see that social
change is driven by emergent technologies. And emergent technologies are
almost NEVER legislated into emerging -- they just emerge. Consequently,
social change is out of control, and it doesn't actually seem to work
very well unless we ALLOW it to be out of control. When we allow it to
be out of control, we end up with something like the Internet. The
Internet emerged accidentally from a U.S. government think-tank project.
But if you had approached any government in the world with a proposal
for the Internet and told them what it was going to do, they would NEVER
have let you do it!
Q. Oh, yeah. Definitely.
A. Because you would have been setting out to do something that would
eventually undermine the very reason for there being nations. It could
only happen accidentally, and it's been this extraordinary leap into the
unknown for us as a species. And we haven't landed yet -- we're in
mid-leap. I don't know if we ever WILL land.
Q. Well, landing implies a destination. And there isn't really a
destination here.
A. The only destination would be some kind of total global catastrophe.
Q. That's a common theme in your work -- whenever anyone like the
billionaire in "All Tomorrow's Parties," or the billionaire in "Count
Zero," or the Tessier-Ashpools try to hold on to the technology and make
it their own, it blows up in their face.
A. Yeah. It blows up in their face for the sake of narrative drama in
those books, but in real life it either blows up in their face or it
just dies. It stops working if you try to control it.
*****
X. MR. GIBSON'S NEXT BOOK: NON-FICTIONAL SCIENCE FICTION
Q. With each new trilogy, you sort of dial back the technology and bring
things closer to our time. So I was wondering: What's next? Are you
going to set a series in the present day? Are you going to go into the
past?
A. Well, I'm playing with the idea of finding out whether the world
today is sufficiently strange and disturbing that I could produce a book
that would give a reader the experience the reader expects from me, yet
when they emerge from the book they would say, "Wait a minute! That
wasn't even science fiction!" or "Wait a minute! That WAS science
fiction, but it was also completely contemporary reality with next to
nothing made up!" It's very challenging, and I'm kind of edgy about
setting myself up to do it. But something in that direction may be where
I might be headed.
Q. Well, I certainly wouldn't want to jinx anything by having you tell
me, but...
A. Well, I'm playing with it, but it hasn't yet completely entangled me.
If I play with it sufficiently, it probably will.
*****
XI. MR. GIBSON vs. THE ART-WORLD TRICKSTERS
Q. Here's something I've wanted to ask you about: Didn't you once, like
10 years ago, write a story that could only be read once off a diskette?
A. Well, I wrote a long, narrative free-verse poem to my father, which
was going to be packaged in its initial form on a diskette that was
encoded so it would erase itself. And that end of it was being handled
by a bunch of New York art-world tricksters I'd hooked up with. And they
were very successful in getting an enormous, disproportionately huge
amount of publicity for this thing. But they were not successful at all
in actually producing the artifact. So it's kind of an interesting
question today as to whether or not any of these were ever really made.
I don't have one -- I've seen a photograph of one which I suspect to be
either a forgery or a kind of dummy prototype that these guys in New
York produced, and I don't know which. I mean, these were very
elaborately and expensively packaged things. You didn't just get a disk
-- you got this kind of art prop that you could kind of carry your disk
around in, and it was a large object. The outcome for me was actually
kind of poetically correct and satisfactory, in that someone got a hold
of a copy of the thing kind of early on, cracked the supposedly
uncrackable code and posted the poem on the Internet ,where it remains
to this day.
Q. Fabulous.
A. And the longer it stays there, the more for some reason it decays. So
every year or so, I have a look at it, and I find that lines have
changed and it's sort of mutating into something else.
Q. A digital version of Burroughs' cut-and-paste technique.
A. Yeah -- it's like it's being cut and pasted by cyberspace itself.
*****
XII. "THE GUY WHO WRITES THE BOOK"
Q. You know, your prose is really lean, and I was wondering how much
self-editing you do -- how many drafts you put a book through.
A. Well, I don't actually do drafts. I wish I did, because if I could do
that I'd probably be a lot more productive. I sort of start out putting
words in a row and continually revise the whole thing as I go along. And
there is a point at which I somehow know when a piece of it is done. I
look at it and say, "That's cooked." But otherwise, it's a matter of
going through it and looking for words that just somehow aren't the
right words and taking them out.
Q. How many hours do you write a day?
A. Well, it depends on what stage I'm in. For the bulk of this book, I
wrote about three or four hours a day, in something that pretty much
approximates a sort of nine-to-five situation -- I'd get up early, drive
my daughter to school, have breakfast, go down, answer the mail, start
writing, take a lunch, go back, do some more writing. And that's like an
optimal day. When I'm closer to the end of the book, and the buffer gets
overloaded and I'm trying to hold the whole structure in my head and
figure out what it needs next, it sort of demands I spend more time
doing it. And when I was younger, I could get into 12- to 14-hour
writing days at the end. But I can't do that any more because, you know,
quality control kind of becomes an issue. It takes more, shorter
sessions to maintain the right polish on the thing.
Q. You say you try to keep it all in your head. Do you do a lot of prep,
or do you just jump in there and start writing?
A. I just jump in. I usually have no more than a very, very vague
apprehension of what the end of the thing is going to be. I don't think
I could sustain my own interest in the process if I had it all plotted
out. I remember being very, very impressed as an English major reading
E.M. Forester's opinion that if you were a novelist, and you rather than
your characters were in control of where the book was going, you
definitely weren't doing your real job. And that stuck with me. It's
hard to explain to people who haven't been there, but I believe that
absolutely. When I meet another writer of fiction, one of the bonding
(or non-bonding) issues for me is when I discover whether or not the
human being I'm talking to who writes these books is WHO WRITES THE
BOOK. If I'm talking to the guy who writes the book, we're probably not
going to wind up being that close -- because NOBODY ever gets to talk to
the guy who writes my books, not even me. [laughs]
Q. So there's a dichotomy there.
A. Yeah. My job is to sandpaper down the membrane between my conscious
and my unconscious, and let my unconscious do the job. I mean, the
hardest thing I ever have to do is just get out of the way and let
whatever produces this material do its thing. I wish it were easy.
[laughs]
Q. It really isn't, is it?
A. No.
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Great interview - I just can't wait for the movie. Although after reading the book about 30 times I have some idea of how I feel the characters should look it will be very interesting to see how the author and one of the best directors in the world feel about the subject.
I just hope that it won't take too long to edit. -
Once again, Alex makes reading her articles so much fun! Keep up the great work. I now know a little too much about Mr. Gibson than I cared for, but it looks like you knew everything about him before the interview! It makes it more exciting to get past the lame-o questions that people get asked all the time. You're an asset to this website, don't ever leave!
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Can someone please make a good William Gibson Movie. I have liked the books ever since they were first published when it was impossible special effect wise to really do these books. But now there is really no excuse as the technology in the books is slowly coming beginning to exist and Digital special effects are so realistic
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...Neal Stephenson. Snow Crash is so much cooler than anything gibson ever wrote.
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I want a Vurt movie now, so much better than Gibson, although the man has some fascinating stuff to say. Anyway give us a Vurt movie now, Chris Cunnigham should be doing this instead. I'm off for a curious yellow feather. Oh yeah reason for posting, cracking interview, good stuff.
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Can't wait to see this film (if it happens) - CC is more twisted than a room full of twisted sister fans caught in a hurricane- his aphex twin stuff is totally mad.
Didn't he create the ABC-looky-likey robot for the Judge Dredd movie....?
If the Gibson link fails, Noon would be good, but how about Michael Marshall Smith? (I bet he could really have fun filming the Spares....) - if you see what I mean -
Feb 03, 2000 8:39:26 AM CST
The division between the classes - technology NOT money
by dixieflatline
Gibson is really a remarkable author, and I am surprised to find an interview with him *here* out of all places. It is really amazing how you can extrapolate themes and ideas from his work and apply them to what is happening all around us. THINK ABOUT THIS: our world is becoming increasingly dependent on technology, and yet there are still a large number of people who (due to economic, social, and even in some countries political reasons) have no access to computers, the internet, etcetera. Of course, "the street finds its own uses for things" and you can assume that there is sort of a "trickle-down" theory for outdated computers and such - but like the school here in Columbus that just recieved something like 100 386x PCs donated from a local military base because they were upgrading - the teachers looked at them and said "what the hell do you want us to do with these?" Meaning: the tech is too old for us to use - what are we going to do, teach our students how to use something that is outdated and they will never encounter out there in the "real world?" But I digress. My point was that economics are no longer going to be a factor in the division between the classes, but the access to technology and the ability to keep abreast of all of the new tech that we use in everyday life. I no longer call my friends, we communicate over email. What about the people who don't have PCs? I have a hard time keeping in touch with them. This is only one example, but you can take it much further (which I won't do in the interests of space). The point is, eventually the poor won't be considered the "have-nots," it'll be the tech-deprived. Old money who refuses to learn how to use a PC will lose the edge that their waelth gave them in the previous century. Adapt or perish.
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...Ms. DuPont.
Excellent questions. If only you could have locked him down to a release date for "Neuromancer." Kel d' mage.
Cheers,
??Pseudo??
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Feb 03, 2000 9:36:12 AM CST
An Interview with William Gibson COOL!!.......shame about whose
by mr logic
I hate it when egotistical lightweights do interviews with respected people. Verbally duel??
More like simper and fawn!!
The first two questions are the sort of crap Entertainment tonight would ask someone!.
Note to DuPont, please don -
Feb 03, 2000 9:37:39 AM CST
Don't want to sound like a nedok, but what does A. du Pont do?
by funny ha ha
As self-proclaimed president of her fan club, I realized I have no idea how she would happen to run into William Gibson in the first place. You definitely have a broad sci-fi literary range- no doubt about it - Alex. As for the rest of you - learn how to spell! I have this compulsive desire to hack at your posts with a red pencil!
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keep in mind that I've only read snowcrash and neuromancer. in snowcrash, i was spoonfed the sci-fi. i followed the well-explained plot from beginning to end. it was a good read. neuromancer was a completely different experience. while I know i'll never read snowcrash again, i plan on coming back to neuromancer. it's a book you have to work with to enjoy. it doesn't give you a comfortable plot. its characters are very complex. the imagery in incredible. neuromancer was a much more sophisticated novel than snowcrash and I just can't see it being put to film successfully.
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From what I gather, CC is setting this project up with a Kubrickesque pre-production schedule, in fact he's making a whole other movie before he even starts (some low budget movie about sexual obsession or something) just to practice, so I don't see this adaption coming any time before 2004. As for Gibson never using a computer, I read that he wrote Neuromancer on an old Remmington, but then that was is 1983! I think he's moved with the times along with the rest of us since then. And Mr Ant, you can't judge Gibson by his second rate imitators ("Hackers" indeed). I have read his books and I can't recall anything about typing inch high letters at computers while wearing shades. I fact, hardly anyone types at keyboards or looks at screens in his books at all ; they usually interact with computers in virtual reality, you know, CYBERSPACE -- IT'S WHAT HE'S FAMOUS FOR!
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I love William Gibson. However, Stephenson is definitely more coherent. Snow Crash was fab, but for the real Stephenson experience you need to read Diamond Age. It will blow your mind. This is a guy who can write about nanotechnology and make it come alive.
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Great fukkin interview. Gibson is such a genius of fiction. His stuff just blows you away with its innovation and intelligence.
Never thought I would read something like this here, but I guess that's why this site rocks. -
My kudos to you, Ms. Dupont.
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Ive been raped ...albeit by choice, physically...but when it has been mentally I was hurt...by passing on these words im continuing the domination...in the future, girls like me may be utterly dissapointed(I dont think so..)but...Ive been called a whore, slut, tramp..simply because im not ugly yet I love to fool around with a variety of guys...sex is a lie..we were tricked into doing it to survive, now its just for fun, eventually it wont be physically possible...discounting obligatory nostalgic flesh fetishists.. but to survive...(and WHO WANTS TO DIE?..well, id just love to be killed by Wolverine) biology is slowly becoming obsolete, and assuming immense circuitious electrical interaction coordinated with sensory input creates conciousness...the next step in evolution will involve battling viruses and predators of an interior sort.
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I will lose all faith in humanity. Alexandra's posts are consistently the best on the site (sorry, Harry, but...they are) A great interview with a fascinating subject. Hey, they get off the topic of movies, and you know what? That's pretty damn cool. Keep it up Lexy!
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great in-depth interview....but disappointed there were no questions re:Ferarras haunting rendering of NEW ROSE HOTEL....replete with a juicy performance by walken...and jucier one by asia argento!!!!!!!a must see for gibson fans
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i met gibson once and asked him how he wrote neuromancer and he replied..."on an underwood"!!!!!!!!!!
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Oh, you
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Thank you so much, Alexandra.
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Although I certainly respect the guy's descriptive abilities and flair for making extraordinary technology seem like household appliances... well... All Tomorrow's Parties sucked pretty hard. Admittedly, I came into it without reading the other two books of the trilogy, so maybe the characters had been set up to just be so fascinating that the utter lack of plot or conflict could be overlooked... but c'mon! It may seem formulaic, but you can't just eschew all hallmarks of the novel. As it stands, ATP was just a collection of interesting characters (and actually, only the peripheral characters were particularly interesting) going about their business and occasionally flailing about toward some mysterious objectives. A villain was set up, but never used. And the final resolution (the technological singularity referred to in the interview) comes out of the blue, is EXTREMELY tenuous in its connection to ANY of the characters in the book, and isn't followed by any sort of denoument to put it in perspective. All in all, extremely unsatisfying.
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I came to the site today expecting the same old news about the same old movies. Instead you have given me something else. I reread all of Gibson's, Sterling's (met him in person, got an autograph, but no interview), and Stephenson's books annually, and that was one of the best interviews of any of them I've ever come across. Incidentally, isn't a Gibson fan who doesn't like the Matrix an oxymoron? Any of you Talkbackers? Reasons why?
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My my, what a little busy bee do we have here. She starts off with a reviews of movies nobody cared to review and now she manages to talk to Mr. Gibson (i have to say that gibson character from X-files is better looking than our Gibson here) I wonder what did your daddy do to get you to this position Alex, or better yet, how you managed to survive Harry's 400+ pounds on top of you...did it hurt, honey, did it? But i know how all this will end. You'll become a decent writer, marry a great guy and subtly show us 'little people' the finger. God, why aren't we living in communism?
This 'who has money, talent and people skills will make it to the top' is killing me... crap... Ah well, there's nothing else to do than to tell Alex i'm single and await the wrath of fellow talkbackers (personal note alex- i was kidding here, pleeeeasse don't tell harry to kick me off talkback ;-) -
I think "wild Palms" har really overlooked
i think the miniseries was great and a mon -
I just love how when a female writer gets somewhere in the publishing world, it
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1) I was introduced to the W. Gibson through All Tomorrow's Parties (a gift) and found it fascinating. Frankly, after years of reading sci-fi/fantasy, my interest in the genre(s) had begun to wane, but Gibson's writing was a delightful kick in the pants. While the book wasn't quite in the straightforward narrative style that other TalkBackers seem to desire, it's ideas and multilayered story felt a great deal more meaningful to me than, say, Snowcrash. 2) Speaking of Snowcrash, I had high expectations for that novel and was greatly disappointed, especially by its lack of structure, planning, and the series of contrivances that took the place of a logical plot. 3) Man, you guys really can't get off the sexist comment kick, can you? How much effort does it take to acknowledge and appreciate intelligence and talent in a woman? I wish I could be as manly as the rest of you... 3b) (Perhaps that's my problem; perhaps I'm too nice. However, as I've been slowly learning to say, "F*** it!") 4) In the group of writers whose works ought to be considered for film adaptation, please add Terry Pratchett to your fanboy dreams. Or better yet, stay away from his work so I'll have a chance to do it justice (after I've finished my Egytian film noir and my epic on Paganini). 5) This is my quarterly post in TalkBack. Until Spring, adieu. It's back to lurking for me. Toodles.
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it's should be its... Egyptian is spelled with a "p"... and I always mess up the subjuctive for some strange reason...
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Feb 03, 2000 6:55:53 PM CST
Matrix Was The Movie Johnny Mneumonic Was Supposed To Be(Plus Th
by jake the snake
I'm one of the 7 people who saw Johnny Mneumonic. Johnny Mneumonic should be taught in film school as part of a lecture series on how not to adapt a novel for the screen. I put that piece of crap on my 10 worst of the 90's list and for good reason, it was a piece of crap. The Matrix and David Cronenberg's eXistenZ are head and shoulders above all other virtual reality movies precisely because they spend less time speculating on the technology of VR(which right now is in a very primitive stage) and more time concentrating on its possible effects on the human race. Matrix and eXistenZ, if anything, are highly critical of Virtual Reality and its consequences for humanity. I haven't read Neuromancer but have heard that that book would be very hard to adapt for one reason or another. But, then again, everyone said you couldn't adapt The English Patient and Anthony Minghella ended up doing a great job. Hopefully William Gibson had nothing to do with the making of Johnny Mneumonic or otherwise, Neuromancer is going to suck.
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Ms. Dupont, I, like yourself, could do without all the implications made by fanboys that whenever a female writer or director becomes succesful it happened because she gave someone oral favors. Any time a woman gets anywhere in an arena dominated by men, fanboys assume, it's because she spread her legs for the right people. That is not only insulting to all women but an unfair generalization of them. That being said, I'm about to say something that will piss you off as well as a lot of other people. While there are plenty of exceptions(Jane Campion, Katherine Bigalow, Anne Rice)most women just are not that creative, or funny for that matter. There is no scientific explanation for this. The closest thing you can come to an explanation is in the realm of psychology. Women are alot more sensitive to matters involving sex, gore and violence than men are. A man has no trouble telling a sexual joke or writing a story with alot of blood and guts in it while a woman(there are exceptions) would wince at the thought of doing so. Men are more uninhibited creatively than women are and, as a result, are more willing to probe topics that are generally considered much more risque. I am not saying women are not smarter or stronger than men, most women ARE smarter than men and certainly much more responsible. The problem they have when it comes to creative endeavors is that they're too afraid of things that are taboo. Once again, I will stress that while this is true in the case of most women, it is not true in the case of a large minority. Go ahead, rip me to shreds.
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AdP's only been operating on the other side of the fence for five minutes and already we're in "bloated sell-out" territory. I mean, do you people have some problem with authority figures or what?
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Feb 03, 2000 10:50:19 PM CST
Alexandra...close...pharcyde --I agree...Exquisite Corpse was..
by lickerish
am I a FUCK RAG..yes..do I care?.. of course..it didn't happen by accident..On the average women are not as creative,as what? men? sure.. and that is due to an age old bit of evolutionary selection involving child rearing and food gathering(connect your own fucking dots)...ill be the first to admit that..which is why ive had such a fractalated past with men...and why I pay no bills...do not have a job...can spend as much time pursuing my own libidinous and scholarly desires as is biologically possible...
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So a quick count of Canadian SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) members in the directory yields 23 women out of 54 or so. I'd count everyone, but you ain't worth getting cross-eyed over 1400 names. I doubt that everyone on the list is a creative genius, but I also know of a lot that don't belong, or are maybe members of HWA (Horror Writers of America), and a lot of them are bad-ass, disgusting and hugely talented writers. Who honestly don't give a fuck what you think, so I'll shut up now.
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(1) While it may be oddly comforting to you boys to reassure yourselves that ladies aren
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Well. Here's my talkback. Goddamn unreadable. I couldn't get past the question marks as apostraphies I see on this damn site w/ Netscape under Linux and there was WAY too much bracket enclosed editoralizing. I realize that one must do *some* of that to personalize a story or interview, but that was WAY too much. Just print the damn interview and comment at the end. Or beginning. Whatever, just not in the middle of nearly EVERY sentance. I'm not a negative person normally, but trying to read this article made my head hurt. Clean it up next time. Please.
--J(K) -
This has GOT to be the best out-of-context quote I've ever seen: "Well, I'm playing with it, but it hasn't yet completely entangled me. If I play with
it sufficiently, it probably will."
*I* found it funny, and that's all that counts.
--J(K) -
You might want to try your local Hollywod Video store and/or Blockbuster. I've seen it on the shelves their, but have yet to rent it myself.
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ahoy,
just wanted to mention to all the other gibson fans who were let down by the johnny mnemonic movie (and "hadn't heard this one yet") that his original script is actually worth the read (and on sale through your local book seller).
Why read?
1)a lot of the scenes had the interesting "makes ya think" details cut out/off.
2)it's more satisfying to visualize the script than watch the flic (though I loved the CG). In humble defense of the director, there was some mention at the time the movie released that the studios reedited the movie so it'd "make more sense" to us idiot americans. supposedly there's a japanese version with 15 min. extra footage and kanji subtitles on left screen side (the mcguffin of my life)
also, some asked if gibson was involved in the JM movie. and well, he was. I have this old fluff mag article that posted some of his nifty concept sketchs, and gave report from the set. but i wouldn't hold his involvement against him. for some reason even his cool sketches were re-interpretted.
(one that stands out was the pyramid of televisions in the final scene. a small detail, but he sketched a stacked tv pyramid that you or i could throw together. it looked real. then somebody thought "what if we hung these all tvs from cables and inverted the pyramid! lets spend money!" and IMO it was another example of too much style/aesthetic creativity for the lo-tek characters.)
anyway.
nuff said.
(feel free to email me if you want an ISBN or more info on the article)
-warren
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I love that whenever Gibson is mentioned the Snow Crash team comes charging in with their horseshit. You know what, having more technical knowledge doesn't make you a better writer. Gibson's vision came not through being a computer nerd/hardware head, but rather his acute sense of society and where it was headed. His imagination and amazing use of the language don't hurt either. And oddly enough, Snow Crash winds up being so much more plot-reliant than Gibson's amazing meditation of a novel. The reason a lot of geeks prefer Snow Crash to Neuromancer is because it probably would make a better movie. It is very cinematic. But I wouldn't go so far as to call it Literature on the same level as Neuromancer or many of the Burning Chrome stories. Some moron way up there called Gibson as mainstream as Grisham. I find that really amusing. Feel free go back and look at the reams and reams of hyperbole unleashed on Neuromancer in the form of reviews and awards. Even his more recent stuff is too thought provoking for the general public to digest. The guy's only the most original stylist in the last 20 years of Science Fiction; the ending of Neuromancer is one of the most haunting and poignant in the genre, which called to mind the best work of Philip K. Dick, which Gibson mentioned in the interview. It's about time someone of his stature points out how many are derivative of what Dick was doing. As much as I want to see Neuromancer, I long and fear for the day they attempt to adapt "Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said", "VALIS", or "A Scanner Darkly". Good luck. There are some things cinema can't wholly reflect.
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1. (the good) Ms. D - great interview, Gibson is one of my favorite authors and I, for one, think you handled it well. I appreciated your (as you put it) "front-loading" the movie stuff as anyone with 1/8 of a brain knows, Gibsons literary works are the meat and any movies would be just fluff at best.
2. (the bad) ssZero and Geekie - Honestly, who do you think you are. I (and presumably others) come to this site because I'm interested in movies, books, and related fandom stuff. What I'm not interested in is your immature, pathetic posturing. Save it for Jerry Springer - I understand he's having an episode entitled "My Woman Left Me Because I'd Rather Jerk Off To Star Terk Than Have Sex" - should be right up your alley.
3. A:(The intellectual)(women not beign creative as men, etc.) Frankly, I think most people are not very creative - not in a capitol A-"Art" way. (To paraphrase Theodore Sturgeon - 95% of SF is crap - 95% of everything is crap.) Perhaps the reason why we see fewer examples of women's creativity at large is not because they are less creative than men but because the sexist society in which we live limits their ability of expression and opportunities for exposure.
Anyhow, it's good to see some intellectual debate around here. Hey, I don't think anyone has used the phrase "ass-kicking" as a serious statement of virtue yet! Keep it up.
B: MacBest - sorry,pal, I love Neal Stephenson, but he is just not the writer Gibson is. Oh, I feel that big G's been slipping lately, but Snowcrash vs Neuromancer - no contest. Neuromancer is a literary, visionary work that operates on many different levels. It's brilliant. Snowcrash is fun, clever and charming. Plus, Stephenson doesn't know how to end a book. Look at Diamond Age - what was that?!?!?!? -
Comparing gibson to grisham is a crime. Agreed. But most people also seem to agree that Stephenson has the better and more original stories and that what counts for me. I don't bother if it would be a cool movie. I read the book, a movie could't be better. Never happened (to me). Gibson was a pioneer and is a great author. And yes, his charakters are much more complex than i.e. Hiro Protagonist or Y.T. - but what's the use of it if the story that surrounds them is rather weak and partly a cliche? Tell me the BEST Gibson book and the one(s) I have to read to really get it and I will do it. i ge en i e en nu ge en nu ge en us sa tur ra lu ra ze em
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The holy trinity - Philip K. Dick, William Gibson and Jeff Noon. We are not worthy...but we are well overdue for a Vurt-based film. Please????
Good interview, btw... -
it's not really smart to publish this interview in borked html. or does nobody mind seeing questionmarks all over the place?
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William I am a hugely influenced fan in Melbourne.au - and I noticed you mention here quite a bit - I know you have been downunder a couple of times. I just wanted to ask you how original this is....pasted for the unitiated (so it lost a lil format - damn browser....
---------
AGRIPPA
(A Book of The Dead)
Text by William Gibson
Etchings by Dennis Ashbaugh
(C)1992 Kevin Begos Publishing
1411 York Ave.
New York, NY
All Rights Reserved
I hesitated
before untying the bow
that bound this book together.
A black book:
ALBUMS
CA. AGRIPPA
Order Extra Leaves
By Letter and Name
A Kodak album of time-burned
black construction paper
The string he tied
Has been unravelled by years
and the dry weather of trunks
Like a lady's shoestring from the First World War
Its metal ferrules eaten by oxygen
Until they resemble cigarette-ash
Inside the cover he inscribed something in soft graphite
Now lost
Then his name
W.F. Gibson Jr.
and something, comma,
1924
Then he glued his Kodak prints down
And wrote under them
In chalk-like white pencil:
"Papa's saw mill, Aug. 1919."
A flat-roofed shack
Against a mountain ridge
In the foreground are tumbled boards and offcuts
He must have smelled the pitch, In August
The sweet hot reek
Of the electric saw
Biting into decades
Next the spaniel Moko
"Moko 1919"
Poses on small bench or table
Before a backyard tree
His coat is lustrous
The grass needs cutting
Beyond the tree,
In eerie Kodak clarity,
Are the summer backstairs of Wheeling,
West Virginia
Someone's left a wooden stepladder out
"Aunt Fran and [obscured]"
Although he isn't, this gent
He has a "G" belt-buckle
A lapel-device of Masonic origin
A patent propelling-pencil
A fountain-pen
And the flowers they pose behind so solidly
Are rooted in an upright length of whitewashed
concrete sewer-pipe.
Daddy had a horse named Dixie
"Ford on Dixie 1917"
A saddle-blanket marked with a single star
Corduroy jodpurs
A western saddle
And a cloth cap
Proud and happy
As any boy could be
"Arthur and Ford fishing 1919"
Shot by an adult
(Witness the steady hand
that captures the wildflowers
the shadows on their broad straw hats
reflections of a split-rail fence)
standing opposite them,
on the far side of the pond,
amid the snake-doctors and the mud,
Kodak in hand,
Ford Sr.?
And "Moma July, 1919"
strolls beside the pond,
in white big city shoes,
Purse tucked behind her,
While either Ford or Arthur, still straw-hatted,
approaches a canvas-topped touring car.
"Moma and Mrs. Graham at fish hatchery 1919"
Moma and Mrs. G. sit atop a graceful concrete
arch.
"Arthur on Dixie", likewise 1919,
rather ill at ease.
On the roof behind the barn, behind him,
can be made out this cryptic mark:
H.V.J.M.[?]
"Papa's Mill 1919", my grandfather most regal amid a wrack of
cut lumber,
might as easily be the record
of some later demolition, and
His cotton sleeves are rolled
to but not past the elbow,
striped, with a white neckband
for the attachment of a collar.
Behind him stands a cone of sawdust some thirty feet in height.
(How that feels to tumble down,
or smells when it is wet)
II.
The mechanism: stamped black tin,
Leatherette over cardboard, bits of boxwood,
A lens
The shutter falls
Forever
Dividing that from this.
Now in high-ceiling bedrooms,
unoccupied, unvisited,
in the bottom drawers of veneered bureaus
in cool chemical darkness curl commemorative
montages of the country's World War dead,
just as I myself discovered
one other summer in an attic trunk,
and beneath that every boy's best treasure
of tarnished actual ammunition
real little bits of war
but also
the mechanism
itself.
The blued finish of firearms
is a process, controlled, derived from common
rust, but there
under so rare and uncommon a patina
that many years untouched
until I took it up
and turning, entranced, down the unpainted
stair,
to the hallway where I swear
I never heard the first shot.
The copper-jacketed slug recovered
from the bathroom's cardboard cylinder of
Morton's Salt
was undeformed
save for the faint bright marks of lands
and grooves
so hot, stilled energy,
it blistered my hand.
The gun lay on the dusty carpet.
Returning in utter awe I took it so carefully up
That the second shot, equally unintended,
notched the hardwood bannister and brought
a strange bright smell of ancient sap to life
in a beam of dusty sunlight.
Absolutely alone
in awareness of the mechanism.
Like the first time you put your mouth
on a woman.
III.
"Ice Gorge at Wheeling
1917"
Iron bridge in the distance,
Beyond it a city.
Hotels where pimps went about their business
on the sidewalks of a lost world.
But the foreground is in focus,
this corner of carpenter's Gothic,
these backyards running down to the freeze.
"Steamboat on Ohio River",
its smoke foul and dark,
its year unknown,
beyond it the far bank
overgrown with factories.
"Our Wytheville
House Sept. 1921"
They have moved down from Wheeling and my father wears his
city clothes. Main Street is unpaved and an electric streetlamp is
slung high in the frame, centered above the tracked dust on a
slack wire, suggesting the way it might pitch in a strong wind,
the shadows that might throw.
The house is heavy, unattractive, sheathed in stucco, not native
to the region. My grandfather, who sold supplies to contractors,
was prone to modern materials, which he used with
wholesaler's enthusiasm. In 1921 he replaced the section of brick
sidewalk in front of his house with the broad smooth slab of poured
concrete, signing this improvement with a flourish, "W.F.
Gibson 1921". He believed in concrete and plywood
particularly. Seventy years later his signature remains, the slab
floating perfectly level and charmless between mossy stretches of
sweet uneven brick that knew the iron shoes of Yankee horses.
"Mama Jan. 1922" has come out to sweep the concrete with a
broom. Her boots are fastened with buttons requiring a special instrument.
Ice gorge again, the Ohio, 1917. The mechanism closes. A
torn clipping offers a 1957 DeSOTO FIREDOME, 4-door Sedan,
torqueflite radio, heater and power steering and brakes, new
w.s.w. premium tires. One owner. $1,595.
IV
He made it to the age of torqueflite radio
but not much past that, and never in that town.
That was mine to know, Main Street lined with
Rocket Eighty-eights,
the dimestore floored with wooden planks
pies under plastic in the Soda Shop,
and the mystery untold, the other thing,
sensed in the creaking of a sign after midnight
when nobody else was there.
In the talc-fine dust beneath the platform of the
Norfolk & Western
lay indian-head pennies undisturbed since
the dawn of man.
In the banks and courthouse, a fossil time
prevailed, limestone centuries.
When I went up to Toronto
in the draft,
my Local Board was there on Main Street,
above a store that bought and sold pistols.
I'd once traded that man a derringer for a
Walther P-38.
The pistols were in the window
behind an amber roller-blind
like sunglasses.
I was seventeen or so but basically I guess
you just had to be a white boy.
I'd hike out to a shale pit and run
ten dollars worth of 9mm
through it, so worn you hardly
had to pull the trigger.
Bored, tried shooting
down into a distant stream but
one of them came back at me
off a round of river rock
clipping walnut twigs from a branch
two feet above my head.
So that I remembered the mechanism.
V.
In the all night bus station
they sold scrambled eggs to state troopers
the long skinny clasp-knives called fruit knives
which were pearl handled watermelon-slicers
and hillbilly novelties in brown varnished wood
which were made in Japan.
First I'd be sent there at night only
if Mom's carton of Camels ran out,
but gradually I came to value
the submarine light, the alien reek
of the long human haul, the strangers
straight down from Port Authority
headed for Nashville, Memphis, Miami.
Sometimes the Sheriff watched them get off
making sure they got back on.
When the colored restroom
was no longer required
they knocked open the cinderblock
and extended the magazine rack
to new dimensions,
a cool fluorescent cave of dreams
smelling faintly and forever of disinfectant,
perhaps as well of the travelled fears
of those dark uncounted others who,
moving as though contours of hot iron,
were made thus to dance
or not to dance
as the law saw fit.
There it was that I was marked out as a writer,
having discovered in that alcove
copies of certain magazines
esoteric and precious, and, yes,
I knew then, knew utterly,
the deal done in my heart forever,
though how I knew not,
nor ever have.
Walking home
through all the streets unmoving
so quiet I could hear the timers of the traffic lights a block away:
the mechanism.
Nobody else, just the silence
spreading out
to where the long trucks groaned
on the highway
their vast brute souls in want.
VI.
There must have been a true last time
I saw the station but I don't remember
I remember the stiff black horsehide coat
gift in Tucson of a kid named Natkin
I remember the cold
I remember the Army duffle
that was lost and the black man in Buffalo
trying to sell me a fine diamond ring,
and in the coffee shop in Washington
I'd eavesdropped on a man wearing a black tie
embroidered with red roses
that I have looked for ever since.
They must have asked me something
at the border
I was admitted
somehow
and behind me swung the stamped tin shutter
across the very sky
and I went free
to find myself
mazed in Victorian brick
amid sweet tea with milk
and smoke from a cigarette called a Black Cat
and every unknown brand of chocolate
and girls with blunt-cut bangs
not even Americans
looking down from high narrow windows
on the melting snow
of the city undreamed
and on the revealed grace
of the mechanism,
no round trip.
They tore down the bus station
there's chainlink there
no buses stop at all
and I'm walking through Chiyoda-ku
in a typhoon
the fine rain horizontal
umbrella everted in the storm's Pacific breath
tonight red lanterns are battered,
laughing,
in the mechanism.
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Jesus fucking christ, write a fucking novel, why don'tcha? Fuck.
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First, I'd like to say that I quite enjoyed the interview.I think that Alexandra DuPont is pretty savvy and the interview is decent. I don't see any of you poseurs putting out anything better. I've read everything of Gibson's that I could get my hands on it's nice to read an interview that wasn't written by some clueless feeb.
Speaking of clueless feebs, you guys have GOT to be trolling. Right?
I mean, how could anyone who seriously reads sci-fi not know that Gibson invented "cyberpunk?" *twitch*
You guys must hanging with the wrong females. I know quite a few that kick ass in coding, gaming, martial arts, art, writing and music. No petite flowers here. Bawls to the wall, y'all.
-chaosgrrl -
well that was an interesting interview. it was full of the usual gibson. its kind of hard for people to describe him except for being a very interesting guy. that man is full of ideas and stories. most people would probobly lose their minds trying to deal with everything he has in his head.
i want to address a couple posts i saw on here. some stupid and some pretty good. first of all, dude, gibson wrote neuromancer when the matrix guys were in junior high. dont be so silly. if you had read the book you would know that. this man single-handedly coined the term cyberspace. he dreamed up the term jack in, cyberspace, as well as others. those are his. period. im sure if you read any interview the the matrix brothers you would know that they grew up thinking gibson is a literary god of sorts. why else would they make a movie like this? you should probobly lighten up and realize that what gibson writes is fiction. period, you may say you want your fiction true to life but think about how silly a statement that is. fiction by definition is something that isnt true in the first place. if you really dont like how something is done, do it yourself. write your own story. but dont talk bad about someone else work when you havent done any yourself.
personally, i cant wait for the neuromancer movie, im a little afraid of who they are going to pick to play case but i wish them the best. its going to be kind of tough to pick someone who can play a hot rodding cyberguy thats a complete scumbag at the beginning of the film. henry rollins i think has the look if he would lose all the muscles but there is no way he could pull it off. let alone the kind of acting he would need to do. i wonder what you all think about that. who do you think should play case, molly, armitage, and ratz?
anyway, thanks bill. ive enjoyed every story you read. i even somehow scored a copy of all tomorrow's parties first print signed by you. you came to albuquerque? i could almost shoot myself for missing that. but anyway, thanks for all the stories. you keep writing them, ill keep reading them..... -
To ol' painfull - your comment about count zero says something about your intellect. It was disorienting to you because I bet you like spoonfeed style fiction and movies don't you? Where everything is *really* easy to understand and the jokes are all slapstick? The "sprawl" books as they are called are roughly chronologically ordered thusly; johnny nmemonic (short story) neuromancer, count zero, mona lisa overdrive. I think that there are some others in burning chrome, can't quite remember. Anyway, if you read C.Z. 1st, you would have no idea that the a sortof separated left/right hemisphere brain style AI had infiltrated the matrix. You know those voodoo god things? they were AI's in there!!! They used the scientists daughter as an interface to the "real" world. Understand it now? I guess not. You came off like an idiot, he just wrote Johnny mnemonic and the story is better than that lame movie you f-wit. Have you never been disapointed by a movie adaptation of a book before.... oh sorry, i forgot you had only read a bit of C.Z. until it gave your tiny brain some trouble.
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...I can see how starting with
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A Vurt movie would rock. Of course, if Hollywood made it they'd move it to Los Angeles or Seattle or someplace and Americanise the whole thing.
Now if it was made with British actors (preferably young unknowns, though having someone like Jonathan Rhys Meyers or Kelly McDonald in there somewhere may be good; perhaps you could even find space for Ewan McGregor if you looked hard enough), set in Manchester and done by someone with the sensibility of Chris Cunningham, it could be good. It would have to have LOTS of computer graphics. -
Feb 05, 2000 2:17:34 PM CST
A note from one of those women who is genetically incapable of c
by dawn o' the dead
As a fan of William Gibson, I've gotta say it was a terrific interview. As a fan of Alexandra DuPont, I've gotta say ... well, there's so MUCH to say. First, as a writer, I thank the Almighty Du Jour that my editor didn't preface *my* recent interview with a nationally-known author with the sort of "isn't this adorable - the little girl talked to the Great Big Writer" pat-on-the-head, condescending introduction that Harry gave Ms. DuPont's chat with Gibson. I somehow find it unlikely that the same tone would have been taken if one of Da Boyz had offered it up. And I'd also like to add that I consistantly admire her aplomb at dealing with the adolescent mewlings of young men so obviously threatened by a Woman What Gots Smarts that they feel it necessary to sexualize her in the most hostile and repulsive of ways. But hey - that's why parents should keep an eye on what Junior's doing with the WebTV account after school, aint it? I'm looking forward to more missives from Alexandra.
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I'm new to this site and completely unfamiliar with this chick. Who is she? Where did she come from? What are her credentials? Dammit, enquiring minds want to know.
I have no comment on the interview -
I've been looking for specific information on the Neuromancer release date all day. I want to announce what I've heard, that it's coming out in 2000, but I cannot confirm it anywhere.
It's been nagging at me because I first heard about the script years ago, then that it was not being made. Then, several months ago, the official site for the film went up, and I actually read the Gibson screenplay.
Since the site was never updated in any way like their intro would lead one to hope, I wondered if it was again just a false start. Then today I read an interview with Chris Cunningham where he said that it definately was his current project. I looked further and found that Seven Arts Pictures had said the film would be out in 2000.
This has been enough for most sites I've been to to announce with confidence that it will be coming. I need more, though, before I say it's a sure thing.
I've seen nothing about possible cast or locations. Not even speculation, and there's always a lot of that. Maybe the hardcore rumour journalists like our friend who runs this site are just burned out on this after the film being so long in Development Hell.
This article here, though, with Gibson actually saying no progress has been made yet, and it's being posted in 2-00--has just absolutely swung me over to the cynical "it won't happen for at least another year" side of the pendelum. I've seen so many movies come out one or two years after their original release date after already being in post-production that with nothing in the can yet there is just no way it could be coming out by December of this year.
I'm still fired up for when it eventually does, as from what I've heard from Gibson and Cunningham themselves it will not be like other Gibson films. It promises to be a "tripped-out action-thriller" and not just a "cyberpunk-vehicle."
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