William Gibson: Technology, Science Fiction & the Apocalypse

On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of his landmark novel "Neuromancer," CHF favorite William Gibson returns to the Festival. This autumn he’ll celebrate the publication of his latest work, "The Peripheral," a high-tech thriller set partly in a decadent postapocalyptic future. Gibson is joined in conversation by author Carol Anshaw.
This program was recorded on November 6, 2014 as part of the 25th Anniversary Chicago Humanities Festival, Journeys: chf.to/2014Journeys
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[@KriminalKrampus]

30:25 I think he really hits the nail on the head here about what makes old science fiction awesome to read in the Present Day. The beauty isnt in the accuracy but rather the inaccuracy and these wild, outlandish, unprecedented settings that they spin. It's the stuff they get wrong that makes it fun. And it's also a little nostalgic because you don't really see that kind of reckless imagining of the future too often in modern fiction.

[@Ner0mancer]

Yeah I re-read Neuromancer almost every year and the fax machines and faxes flying around on one hand and the consensual mass hallucination of the cyberspace matrix on the other hand always crack me up! Love this strange contrast, it's almost like retro-futurism

[@mudfondler]

"...A rupture in our fantastic membrane of hubris" is a marvellously eloquent turn of phrase to come up with off the cuff.

[@sp33glar]

17:45 him saying he wants to write/see sci-fi like the clash warmed my heart

[@briandecker8403]

I love how she laughs at the idea of paying people to play video games for you. Today Twitch has more viewers than most streaming services.

[@thelegendaryblackbeastofaa115]

This is one of the only William Gibson interviews I could find where he actually gets to talk about his writing. (As opposed to just philosophical discussions about technology or the future.) Thanks so much for posting this!

[@austinshirley564]

that brief awkward silence after 15:30 is something special.

[@joekelvaneenknoepert1302]

Put it on 1,25. Just try it, its worth it.

[@sikhsikhsikh]

thanks, the first minute before reading this I thought he was either stoned or recuperating from a stroke.

[@robertplautz9722]

this is a good comment. even 1.75 is good

[@nicolasdecicilia9195]

as we all already did !

[@sterlingmisael133]

I guess Im randomly asking but does anybody know a way to log back into an Instagram account? I was dumb forgot my account password. I love any tricks you can offer me

[@xavierandres9875]

@Sterling Misael Instablaster =)

[@RobinTurner]

I love the comment about a 12-year-old reading Neuromancer and thinking it was all about what happened when all the cell phones disappeared.

[@greyrunner8565]

Thank you Mr. William Gibson. Your writing has most probably saved my life. Seriously thank you sir.

[@MS-ii1sv]

Can you tell me one book of his to read which was the most prophetic or just the most interesting.

[@peterkanasz5920]

@@MS-ii1sv I know I am not the one you asked but let me suggest Neuromancer. That one is the best.

[@MS-ii1sv]

@@peterkanasz5920 I asked anyone who could tell me. Thanks.

[@robinsss]

the William Gibson on a documentary I saw today from 1990 is a very young looking man who in 14 years would have aged slightly and the Gibson on this video looks like he's about 80...……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..those are two different people : this is the worst look a like ever

[@mgBabylonRocker]

Although being well known it still baffles me that not every child today knows his name. He is what Musk desperatly wants to be and i hope history will not forget his contribution to mankind.

[@user-be7gp8ce7k]

Why do you think Elon (?) wants to be William Gibson?

[@emilecormier5085]

Musk is the evil corpo that Gibson is warning us about in his distopia.

[@rpscorp9457]

@@user-be7gp8ce7k implantable cybertech.

[@agapologia]

It's a shame we're so used to rapid information dissemination, especially with super fast-talking youtubers and podcasters. It took me a minute to adjust to Gibson's normal talking speed, but now I'm loving it.

[@kzinful]

Of all the interviews and talks with Bill, this one personally is the most interesting Starting around 40:00 when he is discussing about fashion and mentions that he was an" branding consultin " was for me one of those "wow" moments... you dont think the people he cannot mention might be Blue Ant, Lol.? Carol if you should ever read this comment, you were wonderful.. William was very relaxed here and it reflects in his responces. One last thing: Bill mentions re-reading the book :for you "miss out" the first time ( and I will Bill,) when only recently I re-read ' Neuromancer' after many years and it struck me how my 'perception' of the novel changed (which by the way caused me to give up reading science fiction after reading it..Lol)

[@tuukka8592]

"Somebody get me a modem!" I chuckled aloud.

[@HeatIIEXTEND]

great upload, much appreciated

[@TheNecropolis20]

its the 2020 and the Apocalypse is here These Cyberpunk authors they said that the world ended with Pandemic and a cyber war about the 2020 to January 1 2022 . some time in here the apocalypse came according to these cyberpunk authors that predicted the internet as we know it in the 1980s. first we get the pandemic from Wuhan City ,China on March 11 2020. and then the cyber war the Cyber Hackers from Eurasia ( in the book they were predicting cyber hackers from east Asia the Yakuza or the some Chinese Triads / criminal gangs hacking the western allies) the Colonial Pipeline was hacked on May 6, 2021 thus beginning the great Cyber War. in the book it was the Yakuza was the bad guys. Hopefully these Cyber Hackers are defeated. we got to march in the troops on the Russian states and get all these cyber hackers rounded up and dealt with like we americans did with osama bin laden. in real life it was a Iranian -American 10 day war from January 3, 2020 to January 13, 2020..after this the war ended with the Americans and the Iranians deescalating by joining forces against the corona virus , after this work was begun on the vaccine so "a race to a vaccine" sputnik program in russia ..Russia and Iran are on the same team.. but these cyber hackers they are in the russian states , Ukraine Russia and Belarus..so we got to root them out . in real life it was not the yakuza it was the Darkside Russian hackers that did the colonial pipeline.... id love to look at more of the predictions.. but all i got so far is the next moon landing takes place by the year 2028.

[@TheNecropolis20]

at Heat I -yes it was a great upload i liked it.

[@FastJimmyC]

This guy’s the doppelgänger of my seventh grade teacher.

[@robinsss]

the William Gibson on a documentary I saw today from 1990 is a very young looking man who in 14 years would have aged slightly and the Gibson on this video looks like he's about 80...……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..those are two different people : this is the worst look a like ever

[@henryburby6077]

a lot of great stuff here.

[@rpscorp9457]

I read Neuromancer at 14 then played the game adaptation on the C64.

[@henryburby6077]

i love how old sf stories always assume that the cold war will continue forever, in some form or another. makes you wonder what stuff we take totally for granted that might fall apart or change totally.

[@TallicaMan1986]

The cold war is still raging. The playing field just changed.

[@meowmeowmeow1243]

In my humble opinion, the cold war never ended, it just changed and more players joined on each side.

[@ferroxglideh5621]

The Best Fiction Writer of his age. Genre has held his star back, but history will vindicate him. Personally, I wish that he would just go back to the short stories...

[@darnellmajor9016]

What do you mean genre has held his star back?

[@peachmelba1000]

@@darnellmajor9016 I think he means that in terms of becoming a star writer of the likes of Stephen King or JK Rowling (both of whom I mention not because they are technically superior writers to Gibson, but rather because they are arguably the two most famous authors in the world, currently). King and Rowling are both decent writers, but their fortunes were/are partially bouyed by the fact that they both write in genres that are more widely consumed and are more wildly popular than is Gibson's. Witness as well the fact that both King's and Rowling's stories have been adapted, to varying degrees of success, to the silver screen, whereas the few of Gibson's stories to have been thus adapted have been failures (perhaps owing to the complex nature of their narratives). The genre of contemporary science fiction, and Gibson's work within it, is deeply philosophical and question-asking, rather than solution-seeking. Because of this, the vast swathe of readers who need to reread (essentially) what Joseph Campbell called "the hero's journey" - wherein the world is at stake, and is ultimately saved, tend to not find that sort of satisfying pattern in work from the likes of Gibson, and from the genre of science fiction generally.

[@TallicaMan1986]

26:25 hahaha. Hell, yes. He's on quality control.

[@greatsea]

Gibson cares so much more about the pure elements of prose craft than Neal Stephenson does. Stephenson's primary problem is that unlike Gibson, he too often can't tell when his writing is bad, or maybe just doesn't care. Gibson would never allow himself to keep pages of bad prose, while Stephen does all the time. Now Stephenson definitely has the potential to be as good as Gibson, he just lacks a caring editorial eye.

[@artdodger5053]

He wrote nuromancer on a typewriter

[@johnsanchez9580]

i wonder who those three authors he was talking about were

[@seagrey75]

Very actual, 7 years ago, 2022.

[@CAVEDATA]

For the record, Philip Dick predicted cell phones quite precisely.

[@CAVEDATA]

@@JoshTheTechnoShaman identification

[@eymerichinquisitore9022]

Does anyone think that Orwell wrote 1984 simply by relying on his creative fertility and not because his contacts with the Fabian Society allowed him to know in advance the world projects of the powerful? Same for A.Huxley.

[@nishanthbijja]

Just bought igoru and completed 50 pages off it. It's kickass so far

[@skiphoffenflaven8004]

Around 34:45 - 35:05...The Singularity.

[@zarkoff45]

"Human, all too human," - isn't that the title of a book by Friedrich Nietzsche?

[@mntnwzrd66]

Who predicted that? Marshall McLuhan, in a roundabout way. I have seen shades of McLuhanesque thinking in WG's work before. In 1964, McLuhan predicted the television, Satellite, and computer would become 'One Thing.' He was not specific that access to it would be Mobile, but now it seems in line with the rest of it.

[@richardmatheson5693]

16:50 Lol

[@SailfishSoundSystem]

One last midnight.

[@jcgrx2251]

12:50

[@IBMCs2009]

icon

[@talon6890]

Listen on 1.5 speed for normal speech flow.

[@Larkinchance]

crystal..

[@lifeinsaltlakecity4001]

1:50 - the sky, the color of a television tuned to a dead channel

[@tejuinosanchez636]

Great interview by Jonah Hill

[@getshwifty1873]

Damn

[@GameofRubik]

Brilliant 😂

[@TheGusWho]

Tejuino sánchez 🤣

[@NineSeptims]

Best comment here

[@chencharoo]

Based on what i think I know about science, evolution, history art etc... we create many distrsctions that give us confort from death to the point of even glorifying it for a cause a purpose as a distraction from thinking about the big picture., We are slated for extinction, it's part of cycles and process of something bigger. We have an idea about the beginnings of humanity on this planet., the the exact way and cause of our end as a species we yet not know. Like every story with a beginning middle and end., what will we do with ourselves in the middle of it?

[@Devon_maloy]

Somebody get me a modem!

[@mashroom2927]

The fact that chat GPT exists

[@ronrendon]

What is twitter?

[@batchint]

bring me my rod bring me my mod

[@simeonbanner6204]

Strange how they describe the plane that was downed. Disrespectful I thought. That's the virtual reality, when you can describe things like that with no emotion, though for the victims.

[@kenclarke5966]

what would you call that accent?

[@Akai111]

Look at the size of those mugs.

[@BubbaHotepMothership]

Incomprehensible present? Spend some time imagining seeing Gibson standing over you in the NYC subway and saying, is that what's his face? The Great Dismal himself. The Peripheral chapter of the male and female at the window of the highrise had to be taken from the UN Plaza ad still running in the NYT. The female goes tumbling and dissolves on the way down. Like the book. His short "The Belonging Kind" minus the ending is exactly what's happening right now. How did Gibson nail it so early? Easy. Is there anyone left who knows what "it" is? It is far from paranoid drug fueled delusion. The Reptilian Illuminati are put into popular finge conspiracy culture deliberately, as Gibson said, to protect us from the incomprehensible truth taking place right in front of us. It's also put on YT on all the gangs-talking, chemtrail deliberate nonsense. Did I say a deliberate quota of misdirection put there by very sane ppl? Is this a meta conspiracy to outdo all other conspiracies? Is everyone involved? Well golly, who knows?

[@trancosa13]

+Klaatu so much mindfucking in one comment. Bravo.

[@BubbaHotepMothership]

+John Clarke - do you know what I mean by the reference to Gibson's The Belonging Kind? (I have to retread it to refresh my memory) On YT this same phenomena is called gang stalking or as I said, gangs-talking. The videos deliberately get it wrong. That's why they're made. To get it wrong and protect society from...

[@lanslater]

+Klaatu Yes that's quite interesting even if youre posing a few too many questions That Illuminati crap is just ignorance fuelled bullshit it comes naturally but more so in the locale of extreme priviledge over privilege ofc I mean, where in the USA the wealth is divided so so bizarrely - 0.1 percent of the pop. owning 90 plus percent of the wealth

[@Joe-mz6dc]

lanslater Illuminati crap? Prove to us that the Illuminati doesn't exist smart guy.

[@c1ph3rpunk]

What caused the shift from the utopian to the dystopian views of science fiction? Easy: the 60’s and 70’s.

[@emilecormier5085]

So, Nixon?

[@rpscorp9457]

@@emilecormier5085 Technology and restructuring of corporate entities.

[@luigicorrias]

"People never did that before" Always people look at the sky or other phenomena and discusses together simultaneously (even without mini ipad)

[@earinsound]

But people weren't posting such things online pre-internet? That's what he's talking about.

[@michaelpaoneofficial]

I don't think he looked at her once.

[@StephanBreuerFLYING]

he did at 15'33 kind of

[@JH-ji6cj]

Sometimes I'm the same with my phone and You Tube....in fact I was the same with this video....in that I had a hard time meditating on the ideas by being distracted by watching the video itself. I expect he was looking away to give her questions the respect they deserved instead of catering to a persona on stage?

[@joehigashi11]

@38:45 did he just claim the illuminati to be protectors of mankind

[@jasonalt7110]

Weird, maybe he meant they are the protectors of the human illusion? I don't really understand his statement as it goes against his entire persouna(sp?) He just might be a part of the Illusion?

[@joehigashi11]

Jason Alt Considering the fact that he actually makes a living of writing novels on transhumanism which is actually the illuminati antichrist agenda I wouldn't actually be surprised if he was high up on the masonic pyramid

[@dawnmathieson]

+joehigashi11 eh you know people cant really turn into reptiles right...

[@joehigashi11]

dawn mathieson Yeah but they can still work for them and their transhumanism agenda. Isn't it funny how what neuromancer and blade runner has in them about neo Tokyo is the same sort of city we are now seeing in real life it's all a globalization plan of the ultimate human slavery into transhumanism by the antichrist and it's now slowly starting to take place by getting us introduced to things like virtual reality in gaming and chipping us. Now my question is how is it that all these things happening right now are kind of sounding familiar with gibson's novels and blade runner. This means that it's already been pre planned 100s of years ago by the powers that be that's the machine that seeks to enslave us all baby

[@KT-nl7rp]

+joehigashi11 At the time neuromancer was written, Tokyo was already a high tech city of neon and light. Get a grip you nut. It's called fiction. Nostradamus, the end times foretold in the bible, the modern day "illuminati"...it's all fiction.

[@rolithesecond]

Press shift+.

[@ChrisKHensley]

I'm going to be honest, I've read his work... and watching this interview I feel like Dorothy when Toto pulled the curtain back. Just sounds like he is trying too hard to be introspective. Whatever, to each their own.

[@deathsheadknight2137]

people get like this with age. maybe it is a little sappy but it's natural.

[@ChrisKHensley]

@@deathsheadknight2137 You are probably right.

[@ChrisKHensley]

@Tara Chew No. Pretty simple stuff. If this stimulates you, good. I'm happy you got something from it.

[@justinlavine9209]

I have 2 comments for Mr. Gibson. 1) Eunice having an introductory party similar to saying "Hello World" was brilliant from a cyberpunk perspective and reminded me why Neuromancer and Pattern Recognition made me a long time fan. 2) With regards to Mr. Gibson's personification of U.S. military personnel, it is my opinion he is personally glorifying war criminals and cyberterrorists as brave, heroic, and deserving of my attention as a fiction character or caricature of DARPA/U.S. military personnel.

[@balleronabudget2371]

She looks like Jeff Daniels in drag as hunchback

[@danacoleman4007]

😂 LOL

[@brianm1750]

Love William Gibson, but... cell phones, who could have predicted that everyone would be running around with them? No one. Well, Tesla...

[@cogcog6601]

On not predicting cellphones in the future at 5:10 Anshaw- "Who could have predicted that? That we would walk around and be available to everybody anytime....". Gibson- "No one" How about Nikola Tesla in 1926. I find it hard to believe this science fiction author hasn't thoroughly studied one of the most important and brilliant scientists of all times.

[@ryanbennett2650]

COG COG oh come on.

[@cogcog6601]

@@ryanbennett2650 "When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket." -Nikola Tesla, 1926, Collier's magazine.

[@whataheapofpish]

COG COG gorgeous x

[@douglasmilton2805]

COG COG: That Tesla quote. Bloody hell, never read it before, sends shivers (of admiration) down the spine. And should be more widely known. Many thanks!

[@danacoleman4007]

THANK YOU!!!!

[@richardhegyes8702]

The worst nightmare is if. God disappeared and the apocalypse was no longer valid. The world that was created disposable and redeemable would go on. There would be no purpose, no hope no reason

[@lynianore7891]

Read Camus, basically, make your own reason

[@jeffstone2136]

Ooooooh, Gibson invented cyberspace, wank wank wank. No he bloody didn't. He wasn't even the second person to use it in fiction. The man who actually created it was Charles Menville (1940-92), with his 1974 TV script _The Practical Joker._ And British writer Robert Holmes (1926-86) also beat Gibson to the punch by several years, with his 1976 teleplay _The Deadly Assassin._

[@anameyoucantremember]

Where can I find this Menville work? Because I can't find it in Google. As for the Dr. Who episode, can I have a quote mentioning "cyberspace"? I'm all in for original sources, but these too seems to be just a wank, wank wank, from you.

[@Calypso694]

PKD in the 50s

[@zealot8904]

No he coined the term "cyberspace" you fucking bufoon.

[@dnnysrock]

this guy its little boring. anyone recomeds his books? whAT MAKES HIM UNIQUE?

[@jonathandavis9507]

Neuromancer, dude. It's like Blade Runner meets The Matrix. Better author than speaker.

[@huntergoncalves6812]

DW MCTWIST. I think he's a pretty fascinating speaker. listen to some other stuff where he's interviewed about his ideas and not on a book tour

[@orfelutoli9265]

I have no idea what you're talking about; Gibson is a magnificent author and modern-day philosopher. His works are poetic, distinctive and extremely relevant in today's society.

[@greyrunner8565]

Try reading his books?

[@marcosd3976]

His brain is fried, many years on acid and others substances...

[@noestreet760]

He talks like a luddite.

[@richardhegyes8702]

Without Jesus ....nihilism

[@AleksandarBloom]

it depends on your iq.

[@richardhegyes8702]

No matter how complicated the thoughts and conversations. Jesus is the answer to every question. You must be born again

[@Winduct]

He is the complete opposite of his books; boring.