William Gibson is credited with having coined the term “cyberspace” and having envisioned both the Internet and virtual reality before either existed. He is the author of Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Burning Chrome, Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrow’s Parties, Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, Zero History, Distrust That Particular Flavor, The Peripheral, and Agency.From Gibson's Q&A with Adam Wray for GQ:
You’ve mentioned having a sort of ambient anxiety around people discovering that you’d lost it. How would you explain the “it” you’re worried about people figuring out you’ve potentially lost?--Marshal Zeringue
The “it” would be whatever it is that my anxiety can now afford to imagine I once had that caused people to value my work. Nothing more specific than that. Although, a more specific anxiety I had while writing Agency was that I was realizing for the first time that I had never before in my career appreciated what a feat of memory it is to write a novel-length fiction. It’s the equivalent of telling a lie that would take several days to tell, and as you do it, you have to imagine you’re telling the lie to someone who’s got a very good memory for detail and continuity and will flag you if you get anything wrong. I kept wondering if I was seeing the beginning of some kind of decline—I couldn’t keep the plot straight, and there were more incidences of unconscious repetition than I think I’ve had before. Anyway, I was really glad to have an extremely talented and conscientious...[read on]