William Gibson Quotations | Page 2

The thing that 'Neuromancer' predicts as being actually like the Internet isn't actually like the Internet at all!

Whenever I read a contemporary literary novel that describes the world we're living in, I wait for the science fiction tools to come out. Because they have to - the material demands it.

When I wrote 'Neuromancer', I had a list in my head of all the things the future was assumed to be which it would not be in the book I was about to write. In a sense, I intended 'Neuromancer', among other things, to be a critique of all the aspects of science fiction that no longer satisfied me.

If I'm practicing making up what the characters will do, it's never good. In fact, when I catch myself doing that, I try to get rid of that section, and try and let them start making the decisions.

I read a great deal of science fiction with consummate pleasure between, say, the ages of 12 and 16. Then I got away from it. In my mid- to late 20s, I started trying to write it.

I've had a growing frustration, particularly when I would go out and do book tours and interviews. I got frustrated with people asking me, "How do you know what the future is going to be like?" And I'd always say, "I don't.

The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet.

I've always been interested in people who aren't from anywhere in particular. I think it's all melting. This has been true for as long as I can remember in my adult life.

I don't think of myself as being particulary a subversive writer, but I like to think that my work could afford someone else, the extra degree of freedom that I found when I first found science fiction.

I have this prejudice that trilogies are long, three-volume novels.