A good day today. Upon logging into my e-mail account this morning I discovered that William Gibson (for one of his characters this blog is named) was to be speaking at the Amazon.com Fishbowl at lunch time. I promptly cleared my calendar and mentally began to prepare my questions. Mr. Gibson read chapter 2 of Spook Country after telling us that this was originally written as Chapter 1. After the reading he answered questions. I asked him if he consciously was moving his stories back in time (Spook Country is set in 2006). He explained that he writes by pulling the strangeness he finds in everyday life into his stories and no, this was not a conscious decision. He was asked about product placement in his stories (ref. the "Sony TV" in Chapter 2 of Spook Country). Mr. Gibson explained that he intended to "[allow people of the future] to access the texture of our daily lives". That "it's not product placement ... it's memetic coloration". He signed a copy of Spook Country. I shook his hand. Today was a good day.
1 comment:
Hi, enjoyed your blog post re: William Gibson. I am a big fan too and have followed his work very closely for years.
If you are interested, I am posting chapter summaries of Spook Country at http://node.tumblr.com. There are definitely tons of spoilers, maps and pictures of key locations in the real Spook Country, and links to related topics. You might also want to check out Memetic Engineer’s Spook Country website [http://www.spookcountry.co.uk/] with a UK angle on the book.
- patternboy [nodemagazine.com]
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