From: ah248@Freenet.carleton.ca (Marisa Golini) Subject: GIBSON Interview/Ottawa Message-ID: Date: 23 Sep 93 16:55:40 GMT ................................................................. Well gang...here it is as promised, the transcript of the chat I had with William Gibson when he stopped off in Ottawa during his book tour. I have to say again, what an incredibly cool guy he is...very charming. It's unfortunate I didn't get to ask all the questions I wanted to becuz of time restrictions, but you'll see Gibson was , shall we say, expansive with his answers (which I didn't mind at all, 'cept I probably would've structured my questions differently had I know he was so easy to talk with...I really had no idea what to expect). I will say that he told me he enjoyed the interview, and I got the feeling (IM *most* HO) that I was pobably one of the hipper interviewers he's had to deal with. (Can't imagine too many media types who dress in black denim, Docs, Bajoran earrings, and produce a hard copy of Agrippa to autograph.) ;-) Here we go! *********** MG: So what's up with this Cyberpunk revival? WG: Revival? MG: O.K. Re-emergence. Haven't you noticed? It's been around for at least 10 years, at least since "Neuromancer"...but as of late, Time magazine does a cover story, local newspapers publish articles. All of a sudden, it something completely new... WG: That's a good point. I think 10 years ago it was a literary term you used in pop culture analysis. So initially you could say "these six guys are writing cyberpunk science fiction"...and then it sorta became "see that video, that's very cyberpunk" and then it got to the point you'd hear, "man, those trousers...those are way cyberpunk" .....So it became one of the colourations of 80's pop culture. But I think the reason it's coming out now is becuz the meaning has changed. So now if you did a dictionary definition of cyberpunk, definition #1 would be something like "bohemia with computers" or "the underground with computers". It's the first time the underground has *had* computers. I mean the 60's would've been really different if all us hippies had had desktop publishing! MG: Techno rebels! WB: Yeah. I think we may be headed for something like that, but it's gonna happen in the early 21st century. People will probably look back from the mid-21st century at what we call cyberpunk, and see it sorta like the precursor phenomenon to whatever it is they're going through. MG: So you don't think [cyberpunk's remergence] has anything to do with just more people using computers and therefore finding out about that "scene"? WG: Well, there's that too. But I don't think we're gonna see anything too drastic happen culturally around computers until the user-interface evolves to the point where it's easy to use. I mean, the reason it's kinda sexy and far-out when you say "hey I do a lot of e-mail" or "hey, I hang out on the Internet" --the reason that has a kinda elite buzz to it, is that the learning curve is still too steep. MG: Since this is a rock station, I have to ask you...What do you think of these groups and artists such as U2, Donny Fagen and Billy Idol who say that *you* have inspired their latest works? Becuz, I know as far as U2 goes...their Zoo TV tour was like something out of the dark and squishy parts of your brain! WG: Yeah! I was really happy with that! I met them (U2) during both their stops in Vancouver. How I came to their attention was the men who designed the "Steel Wheels" set for the Rolling Stones were working totally from my early fiction, and sold the "Steel Wheels" design to the Stones by giving the Stones my books and saying "read this, this is what we're gonna do." I didn't know that at the time or I would've gone to see the show. Anyhow, the same company did "Zoo TV" and this time told me about it. Actually, one of the plans --it didn't work out 'cuz I couldn't convince my literary agents to let them go ahead and do it-- but Bono suggested they should run the one of my novels on one of those electric light-bulb ticker tape screens...just run the text through during the course of the concert. MG: That would've been great! WG: Yeah...anyway I've hung out with them and there has been some exchange of ideas. We've been trying to figure out some way we can work together on something. With Donald Fagen...after having so heavily larded my first novel with Steely Dan references, I was really delighted to find that he actually read them, and thought it was cool! Early Steely Dan tunes have always been huge favorites of mine. Now, we come down to Billy Idol... MG: Oh...oh...and he's getting flamed on the net... WG: Oh god I just don't know! I mean before I heard the album, I was dodging the issue by saying "hey, don't worry about that...the thing you really want to worry about is Pat Benetar's album is called 'Gravity's Rainbow.'" That's much, much stranger. Why does Pat Benetar's new album have the title of Thomas Pynchon's great underground classic. That's really weird. "Gravity's Rainbow" is arguably a much more famous and important book than "Neuromancer" ....at least Billy Idol didn't call his album "Neuromancer". I mean, what's next? Are we gonna have "Ulysses" by Bel Biv Devoe? (in psuedo-rap) 'Yo Joyce! Man, the things he does with language, it tore us up!' (big laughs) I don't know, it's a strange trend. Anyway, now I've heard the album...and I just don't get what he's on about. I don't see the connection. A London journalist told me when Billy did his "Cyberpunk" press junket over there, he made it a condition of getting an interview with him, that every journalist had to have read "Neuromancer"...Anyway, they all did but when they met with Billy, the first thing that became really apparent was that Billy hadn't read it. So they called him on it, and he said he didn't need to..he just absorbed it through a kinda osmosis. I don't know. I had lunch with Billy years ago in Hollywood and we were talking about the possiblilty of his acting in a film that someone was trying to make based on some piece of ficton of mine, and I thought he was a very likeable guy. He had a sense of humour about what he was doing that is not apparent in the product he puts out. If I run into him again, we can have a good laugh about what he's doing now! If you wanna hear a group that, to my mind, really does embody what I'm doing...there's a West German band called Plan B. They sound like early Elvis Costello turned into rap music...I've got them in heavy rotation! MG: Let's talk "Virtual Light"...it's a different vision than your earlier novels...some people have said it's less bleak, more fun, and more accessible. Would you agree? WG: Wellll, I think it's less bleak if you read it in a certain way. It's a comic novel. The intention is comic. But comic doesn't rule out bleak. In the sense that Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" was a pretty funny movie--but *very* bleak. I think the take on that is how you interpret the term "happy ending." So if you think, O.K., he gets the girl, the bad guys get the shaft -BUT- what have they bought into to get this to happen? You can read it both ways. MG: Yeah I guess so. I also think it's really cool that one of your protagonists is a bicycle messenger, and I like the whole idea of information--even in the hi-tech age--still having to be carried around by hand for security reasons. WG: Well, you can't fax a plane ticket! MG: It seems like it would keep you grounded..that you still have to rely on the "pony express" so to speak. WG: Yeah. Like the creepy guy from the Medellin cartel who gets his throat cut...he's another kind of bicycle messenger. He's flying around in a concorde and staying in luxury hotels, but his job is to physically carry this piece of information. Chevette's there because bicycle messengers, particularly in San Fransisco, are a really hot sub-culture. They've become a source for a lot of creative people. Lotta people, like designers, are watching what bicycle messengers are wearing. And they have their own bands ....there's places where messengers hang [out], and there's messenger fanzines! I got everything I know about being a bike messenger from "Mercury Rising" which is a fanzine put out by the San Francisco Bike Messenger's Association. There's this terrific coffeehouse hear the Haight called The Horseshoe where messengers hang and young people with lots of tattoos and multiple piercing go there too...and it's the only coffee house I've ever seen where they've got laptop computers super- glued to the tables. Each computer has it's own e-mail address so you can go in, log on and do your stuff. So these kids come in off the streets with bones through their noses, their bodies covered in heavy Somoan blackwork, and looking like extras out of the back streets of Bladerunner, and they sit down and they do their e-mail! The underground in San Francisco has mutated in a really astonishing thing. And people haven't taken San Francisco seriously as a source for alternative culture for a long time, but I think they're gonna come back with a vengence...Just don't wear any flowers in your hair! MG: Obviously setting the novel so near in the future didn't restrict you in any way...the problem being with predicting things 10 years from now, some of the beginnings of those changes have to be happening right now. WG: Actually one of the things that actually delayed the completion of the novel was that I had to wait for the Soviet Union to formally collapse. I didn't quite realize at the time what I was waiting for...But really, the world of Virtual Light is just "now" with the volume cranked up. It doesn't really say in the book that it's 2005...I think you can work out exactly when it is cuz you figure out when Rydell was born, etc. But in the proposal that I sent to the publishers, I mentioned 2005, and they put it in the flap copy which I wasn't entirely happy with, but I've sorta gotten into it now becuz people come in and say "hey that can't possibly happen now...things can't change that much in 10 years", and I say "yeah, that's what they said in Yugoslavia." (laughs) No really, alot can happen in 10 years...particularly as you near the end of the century and the millenium. We're gonna see a lot of pretty wacky religious stuff come down unfortunately. I mean, we've already seen it. That stuff in Waco weirded me out a little more than it did most people because I'd already written in that Sublett, the Texan from the video cult, was from Waco. The other thing I got really lucky with was Tommy Lee Jones. [In the novel, Sublett tells Rydell that he reminds him of Tommy Lee Jones] MG: That's right. He's really hot right now! WG: Yeah, cuz when I put that in, I did it just cuz I *love* Tommy Lee Jones, but there weren't that many people who knew who he was. MG: Now everybody knows! How the hell do you do that?! (laughs) WG: Oh I dunno...just prescient I guess.(laughs) MG: But, alot of the things you write about, at least to me, seem perfectly plausible...sometimes you really creep me out when I read this stuff! WG: Well, you know it's funny, sometimes when I go to do interviews with the press, an older interviewer will be both horrified and depressed by the book. One woman in Toronto said to me after the interview, "but is there nothing you can tell me to give me hope!" (laughs) That's one response...but then I saw some people being interviewed while standing in line for my book signing in Montreal and one guy said, "I can't wait to live in the world he's describing! I wanna live in a Willam Gibson novel!" But he was maybe 20, so there's very different responses. MG: Would *you* like to live in a William Gibson novel? WG: Well, not particularly...but I'd like to go there for a vacation! [At this point, the lit. agent was waving a watch at me thru the glass. I smiled and squeezed in a few more bits and pieces] MG: I guess we're running out of time, and there's so much more I wanted to ask you including "Wild Palms"...and "Johnny Mnemonic"--is that still a go? Tell me that's still a go... WG: Well, it's not *not* a go. That's about as good as it gets. I've seen some beautiful amazing sketches for the set designs. If it happens, the production will be based in Toronto-- probably shoot the interiors there-- and the exteriors may be shot in some kind of industrial ruin in Hamilton. They'll dress up this old steel mill to look like a sort of anarchist community hung under a bridge made of dozens of gutted Greyhound buses. MG: So they could start filming within the year? WG: Yeah, if they're gonna pull it off at all, they'll have to start shooting in late November. It's gotta chance to go, but my experiences in Hollywood have been so depressing with things falling apart that I don't like to say it's happening. MG: I understand, and I just want to mention that I read your "Aliens 3" script and I loved it. It was so much better than the dreg we ended up with. WG: Thank you. [My version] would've cost about 170-million dollars to film so that was part of the problem...a few thousand full- sized aliens on screen is asking for a bit much I guess! [At this point I handed him my copy of Virtual Light *and* a hard copy of Agrippa to sign...we had a good laugh over that] WG: Hey, where did you find it [Agrippa]? MG: It's still on the Internet...just ask and you shall receive! WG: Really? What I've sorta come to realize after the fact, is *that* was the whole point. Like, how else could you guarantee that a 2000-word poem would remain on the Internet forever? I *built* my daddy a monument in cyberspace! I thinks that's cool! MG: It's very cool. WG: I recently got an edited 70-page version of what happened [what was posted] on the Internet after Agrippa came out. It was very weird...all these messages started appearing from "W. Gibson"-- but they weren't from me-- they were kinda manifesting with no return address. And everyone was saying I was mad--but I *wasn't*! Now I kinda know what it feels like to *be* a UFO! (laughs) MG: Well, thanks a lot for chatting with me today. I really enjoyed this. WG: I enjoyed it too. Thanks very much. ******** 54 Rock Radio, Ottawa, Ontario Canada (Sept. 16/93) Cheers! Marisa the matrix moll. (my .sig is stuck in virtual reality)