[LINK] "William Gibson: The Rolling Stone 40th Anniversary Interview"

[rfmcdonald]

Thanks to james_nicoll for linking to Rolling Stone's interview with Canada-based science fiction writer William Gibson. The first question explains why Gibson began writing novels set in a gritty late 21st centuy future but has since moved on to the contemporary world.

You made your name as a science-fiction writer, but in your last two novels you've moved squarely into the present. Have you lost interest in the future?

It has to do with the nature of the present. If one had gone to talk to a publisher in 1977 with a scenario for a science-fiction novel that was in effect the scenario for the year 2007, nobody would buy anything like it. It's too complex, with too many huge sci-fi tropes: global warming; the lethal, sexually transmitted immune-system disease; the United States, attacked by crazy terrorists, invading the wrong country. Any one of these would have been more than adequate for a science-fiction novel. But if you suggested doing them all and presenting that as an imaginary future, they'd not only show you the door, they'd probably call security.

james_nicoll and commenters suggest that this is debatable, though I'm unsure about either contention. I mostly agree with both sides: I suspect that successful novels that included several of these tropes would have to be great sprawling epics done in the styles of either James Michener or Thomas Pynchon.