The sky above the Shelbourne was the colour of...
But seriously, here is the text of the interview as promised. I'm sorry it
took so long but his accent is really strong and the tape wasn't so good
and I was busy with a deadline.
At his reading of _Virtual Light_ later that night he read the text slowly,
almost ponderously, which gave me a new insight into his composition. His
stresses rendered what might have been a frenzied narrative into a more
reflective, metered tract.
He said some good things during the question session. Postmodernism was
a phrase that used to make him grit his teeth and think of party hats on
tower blocks, but now it's kind of diluted. Sylvester Stallone owns the
rights to the Burning Chrome film version. Earlier, he asked
what the reaction was of an Irish person to the section at the end of The
Difference Engine concerning the Famine in Ireland in the 19th Century that
pretty much devastated the country to this day. He seemed a little hesitant,
and mentioned that the piece was supposed to be a sarcastic rant, but that
if it didn't come across like that then that was what you deserved for messing
with other people's cultures. He had a special disdain for that RPG 'that
mixes cyberpunk with elves'. I think Shadowrun sucks incredibly as well.
The ellipses try to capture his frequent pauses. I found his sentence structure
fascinating. As a English-speaking Irish person, the rather bizarre formulations
that reach here via the films, etc., can seem outrageous. I'm thinking of
'Slackers'. But it's all true. Apparently. Even the incredible lassitude of
the Southern US speech. Quite distinctive.
I have, like, ten or so very long interviews from his present tour and he was
getting asked the same questions in a lot of them and parroting the same
answers so here I've tried to avoid the usual questions. I was not always
successful. I didn't get hardly any of the questions covered that I'd
intended to, even though I was quite peremptory. This can come across as
impatience (maybe, maybe) or sarcasm, even rudeness. But it *was* a short
interview slot.
I have not rendered the dialogue into dialect, but have stuck to standard
English, 'don't know' for dunnoe, etc. This is kinder to non-English
speakers, and using that can look patronising and corny.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Interview with William Gibson by Mike Rogers.
Text copyright 1993 by Mike Rogers. Permission is granted for distribution of
this text via electronic or electromechanical means providing
a) no hardcopy is produced save for comment or reference extracts;
and
b) that this notice accompany all electronic copies.
October 1st, Shelbourne Hotel, Dublin, Ireland.
