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I expected William Gibson to be one of those fast talkers who throws out a million words and ideas every second just like his novels. But he actually speaks quite slowly and clearly. His new novel, Pattern Recognition, is the first novel in a long career to actually take place in the present. In his long career?

Cayce Pollard is a market-research consultant. She is offered a secret assignment: to investigate some intriguing snippets of video that have been appearing on the internet. Her father was supposedly dead in the terrorist attacks on 9/11 is somehow mixed up with this business.

Gibson is a revolutionary in the field of science fiction having coined the term cyberspace and imagining the internet before it became part of our daily life.

Check out William Gibson's website for Pattern Recognition


Daniel Robert Epstein: Did you really have to research internet subcultures or did you just talk to fans at book signings?

William Gibson: It was kind of inadvertent research. I was hanging out with people who are interested in some things I am interested in that have nothing to do with science fiction or fiction. I was interested in people who are involved with special interested websites. I thought there was a lot more going on there culturally.

DRE: What kind of sites?

WG: There are people who are talking about knitting. There are people who are really interested in vintage electric guitars. They get together and talk to each other all the time about vintage electric guitars. But then other stuff happens and they start to have real personal interaction and feel real connected to one another when they stopped talking about the guitars.

DRE: Youve been threatening to set a novel in the present for years. Whats the reason it happened with this one?

WG: No I just called myself on it. Or maybe it seemed like the world was reaching a pitch of such adequate weirdness that I had to do it. If you had written a science fiction in 1965 that depicted the world as it is today with all its science fictional scenarios running simultaneously like global warming, AIDS and genetic manipulation, people would have thought you were crazy. Nobody would have published it. Its got too many moving parts for a science fiction novel. The future has turned out so much weirder than anyone could have imagined it to be. Which is what always happens. In a way that was also my point.

DRE: Was it also to address 9/11?

WG: No I was already committed to it. I had started writing this book about a year before 9/11. I had reset three parameters. I was going to have it set in the summer of 2002 which was the near future. I was only going to have one viewpoint character which is something I had never done before. I wanted to keep the narrative real time and have no jump cuts. I didnt think that would be particularly challenging but it turned out to be very hard. I proceeded very slowly and I had Cayse waking up in London but I couldnt figure out what she was there for or what was going on or why she felt the way she felt. I was writing in the present. It was new and hard for me. While I was trying to get it going I was working on her backstory in New York. A couple of weeks after 9/11 I realized that my novel had been erased by circumstances. The character of the world had changed. I told my publisher it was going to take more time than I thought. I had to reinhabit the story with this catastrophic piece of knowledge. What they ended up doing was twisting the story into something that I could never have imagined it would have become. Not that I have that clear idea of what it would become to begin with. I cant imagine what this book would have been like if 9/11 hadnt happened. For someone who had always pretended that he was writing about the near future it was very strange. It was like I accepted this challenge to write about the present and the present had become something stranger and more apocalyptic than I could have imagined.

DRE: Do you like it when the story dictates to you whats going to happen?

WG: Its the only time I like it. Its one of the reasons I dont produce as many books as some people do. I have to wait for that. My work is really just inducing that stage of writing where the characters are taking over.

DRE: What drugs go best with Pattern Recognition?

WG: Coffee. Triple shot lattes. Jet lag.

DRE: Will the internet eventually be the subject of science fiction and crime novels?

WG: Not anymore than telephone calls are. You and I dont think anything about having this miraculous long distance conversation but it actually depends on an enormous technological infrastructure. The telephone system is not as straight forward as we think it is. Its quite trippy when you look at how it works.

A hundred years from now people will find a novel like Pattern Recognition kind of interesting and charming in that these characters in this novel are so conscious of using the internet. If we go along the way were going it will be instantaneous. When you answer your cell phone you dont think Damn its neat, I can do this. I can call my girlfriend in Malaysia. I dont think they will be calling it the internet by then.

DRE: How autobiographical is the new novel?

WG: Not really anymore or less than anything else Ive done. I have to have some kind of life experience in order to have stuff to knit together to make the stuff that becomes the novel. The London parts are all places I know pretty well. That works better for me. If Cayse goes somewhere in London its a place Ive been too a lot. Theres no point in sending her to a part of London Ive never been.

DRE: What corporate logos make you sick?

WG: Louis Vitton makes me a little queasy. My daughter for some inexplicable reason since early childhood has been terrified of the Michelin Man. Thats where I got that for the book. I think that Cayses logo phobia came from the fact that I think that everyone has that on some level.

DRE: The funniest one is the way theyve turned Colonel Sanders, a dead man, into a cartoon character. Hes a dead man that runs around on TV talking about chicken.

WG: Thats exactly the sort of thing I was reacting to. That is spooky.

DRE: You've now reached a point where you are influencing other authors and artists. Have you seen yourself in other artists work?

WG: Well I think all artists have influences. But they are things you want to have and then get over. If people can spot your influences too easily then you havent digested your meal. When theres bits of gristle of whoever floating around in your work then you need to work harder and get some Tums.

DRE: Im not going to ask you too much about inventing the term cyberpunk. Except for the fact that its now an outdated term.

WG: I think it is. If it has any usefulness at all today, its as a clich. If you say to somebody Hey did you see that video? Its kind of cyberpunk. They probably know what you mean but it doesnt make them want to check it out.

DRE: What happened with Johnny Mnemonic? I blame Dolph Lundgren.

WG: Oh no [laughs]. I would blame Sony Pictures Imageworks. Nobody got to see the film that Robert Longo shot. Longo shot the script I wrote which I was happy with. The tragedy with Johnny Mnemonic is that we shot an ironic broadly comic action film that at some level was supposed to be about bad science fiction movies. We were not trying to make a blockbuster mainstream adventure film starring Keanu Reeves. When we started shooting that film Keanu wasnt a movie star. Speed came out while we were shooting. As soon as it was a hit we had guys from the studio coming out of the woodwork telling us that we shouldnt shoot a funny movie, wheres the bus? It just got worse from there. We kept doing what we wanted to do. Keanu and Dolph were both doing exactly what we told them to do. Sony cut 90 % of Dolphs role because they said it would offend the religious right. He doesnt even have a character in the movie they put out. Hes just this insane caveman who comes rushing in and flinging people around. It doesnt make any sense. In the film we shot you get his backstory where he is preaching stark naked to churches full of women whoa re afflicted with the weird disease in the movie. He completely got into doing this comic villain and it just ended up making him look like an idiot. I personally felt very bad about that because he was doing what he was told to do.

DRE: Are you excited about the Matrix sequels?

WG: Yeah Im curious to see where they go with it. Im looking forward to that. I think the Matrix is the ultimate cyberpunk artifact. Once thats done it could be put to rest. Nobody else can top that including me.

DRE: How is the collaboration with Chris Cunningham on Neuromancer going?

WG: I dont know at this point. We havent had contact for a while. Im trying to get in touch with him.

DRE: Are you working in any other mediums right now besides the novels?

WG: This is all Im doing right now. Novels are like my day job. Its what I actually do and anything else I do, I do for fun. Thats a good thing to know for people who want to hire me for other mediums. If I was making a really expensive project I wouldnt want to hire a guy who wants to do it for fun.

DRE: What are you buying on ebay nowadays?

WG: Theres one particular kind of weird 1960s celluloid animal. Thats along story. I cant get into it because I dont want people buying them and inflate the market [laughs].