William Gibson on Why the Present Is Stranger than the Future
Rolling Stone has a great interview with science-fiction novelist William Gibson:
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.
Future Imperative
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.
Future Imperative
posted by Ralph Cerchione | Thursday, November 22, 2007
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