Listening To William Gibson

Buy an ad on DigitalJournal.com

Hosted by Mark Askwith the evening was a rare one when the words of an author and the process of writing a novel were on the forefront.



Mr. Gibson entered the stage wearing khakis and a black long sleeve shirt, his black lace up sneakers belying the age of this famed author of nine novels.

The Virginia born author came to Canada to avoid being drafted into the military during the Vietnam War in 1967. He currently resides in the Vancouver area.

His latest science fiction novel is entitled Spook Country. Tonight the book could be purchased at the venue. Gibson is known for his cyber-punk method of weaving a story that captivates his audiences.

He related that when he reads to a crowd the first time it's like he's reading his novels for the very first time. Tonight he read the fourth chapter to an entranced audience.

"Writing springs from Zeus- that hasn't been the case for me."

Gibson talked about sitting in front of his computer waiting for the words to come as he prepares to write a novel. Google is generally on his screen while he writes and erases and writes again.

When I discovered what was in the box it was a lovely day for me in the basement."

He told the audience that when he starts the writing process he isn't always sure what will happen. He enjoys it when things start to form together delighted with the revelations that he gets while a novel is being worked out.

He described his love for both Google, "What's a little Google" and E-Bay.

He liken Google to a the beginning of a universal prosthetic brain. The web site helps him with his writing by offering so much information at his fingertips. Considering all the research he needs for his novels it's a handy little tool that he readily uses.

If it disappeared tomorrow you would miss your Google.

One instance that Google helped was when his current novel should have been two days into publishing. He was informed that GPS can not locate a person through walls. He had a day to fix that portion of his story. Google and his own wry intelligence saved the day.

As for E-Bay he has a boyish love and fascination for the web auction house saying that you could become someone's worst nightmare with the buying. When asked what his current wants on the site were he laughed and said he wasn't telling so no one else would get it.

He goes to the site everyday and misses when he could check out what others were bidding on. He also uses E-Bay to JPEG toys that he had when he was a kid. Of course his childhood toys are items he doesn't bid on. It's be too creepy.

Books are the oldest mass media. We're still making wheels-making books until we come up with something better.

Using the wheel analogy for marking those black marks on a page that draws people's interest to read Gibson gave praise to the creativeness of readers. No one reader reads the same book because of the internal visualizations that their personal views bring out.

While two of his short stories have made it to film including Johnny Mnemonic starring fellow Canadian Keanu Reeves, Gibson thinks much of his work is too visible to adapt into screenplay. He simply describes the surroundings too clearly.

To him reading and writing novels are very formal medium. Blogging is more one on one than a novel where one "falls into a good book like a warm bath."

While many perceive science fiction as futuristic Gibson thinks that using the genre in the present time period works well. His last two novels show that idea. Spook Country is written present day.

Some of his novels during the 1980's seemed to have warnings mingled into the themes. The cold war with Russia and the United States and a fear of no real future seemed to be a part of science fiction of that time. Gibson stated that he thought a world corporation could easily take the place of government because it was bad for business.

He doesn't think his characters are well rounded enough to see people emulating them. He's still working on that.

As wonderful as life is a fair bit of it is creepy."

Those words sum up Gibson's writings. He writes about a world that needs a happy ending even with it's seedy underbelly. It's part of his reality.