Paris Review: William Gibson, The Art of Fiction

Easily the most in-depth interview with William Gibson in years, David Wallace-Wells’s article is a must read.

I also wanted science fiction to be more naturalistic. There had been a poverty of description in much of it. The technology depicted was so slick and clean that it was practically invisible. What would any given SF favorite look like if we could crank up the resolution? As it was then, much of it was like video games before the invention of fractal dirt. I wanted to see dirt in the corners.

William Gibson & The Cyberpunk Influence

Excellent Backpage Magazine profile of William Gibson and his influence on music, film, tech and culture.

From the underground noise rock of Sonic Youth to the mainstream films of Nolan and Fincher, Gibson’s innovatory cyberpunk has become perhaps the key lens through which we view, understand, and criticize contemporary politics and technological forms of control. It’s not science fiction but the new realism.

William Gibson interview in CNQ

Excellent interview with William Gibson by August C Bourre re: Zero History, genre science fiction and “pushing back at the shabbiness of simulacra.”

[AUDIO] Gibson Interview on Sound of Young America

Great audio interview with William Gibson on The Sound of Young America via Maximum Fun

…and another audio interview via Authors on Tour.

Jalopnik’s A Vehicular Appendix To “Zero History”

Jalopnik has assembled a very cool catalog of vehicles in William Gibson’s latest novel Zero History:

In “Zero History,” Gibson fully explores his product fetishism and grasp of the automotive zeitgeist by featuring a many of the same vehicles we can’t stop talking about on the pages of Jalopnik. Click through the images for a chronological appendix to the most important vehicles used in “Zero History.” There are no real spoilers, but don’t read if you’re especially impressionable.

VIDEO: William Gibson on Nature of Celebrity

Cool video feature during after the 1997 release of Idoru:

VIDEO: William Gibson at IQ2

Flikr Stream of William Gibson / Cory Doctorow event

William Gibson: From Cyberspace to Reader Headspace

Excellent review of Zero History by By Scott Dickensheets, Mood Lighting in the Vegas Cube: William Gibson’s Zero History:

But Gibson’s stair colors, and hundreds of similar offbeat details, force you not only into a cohesive fictional world that’s both familiar and slightly off-kilter, but (allow me to go meta for a sec) a reading headspace in which the familiar is continually being overlaid with new, slightly exoticized detail. There’s an alertness to the prose that spills into the reading experience. It’s a crackling, electric place to be, despite the hard-to-buy plot twist at the end — spoiler alert: Bigend + Iceland + voodoo math — and even if you don’t care about fashion.

Excellent review of Gibson event in Bristol

An Evening With William Gibson #foigibson by Cheryl Morgan

Much of the questioning concerned Gibson’s writing career and his development as a writer. He talked honestly about how young men tend to write books that feature things like zombie plagues and post-apocalyptic wastelands because they lack the experience of life to write well about people. His later books, which a questioner described as much “warmer”, reflect what he sees as his greater interest in, and understanding of, people. He seemed particularly proud of one character from Zero History, Winnie the federal agent. Certainly you don’t expect such characters in a cyberpunk novel to spend time worrying about what presents they will bring home from London for their kids. Gibson noted that none of the characters in Neuromancer appear to have parents. They don’t have children either.