>> funding for "overheard" with evan smith is provided in part by mfi foundation. improving the quality of life within our community. and from the texas board of legal specialization. board certified attorneys in your community, experienced, respected, and tested. also, by hillco partners, a texas government affairs consultancy. and by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation. and viewers like you. thank you. >> i'm evan smith. he's the most famous science fiction writer in the world, the best-selling, award-winning author of "neuromancer" and ten other novels over the last 30 years. his latest book is "the peripheral". he's william gibson. this is "overheard". [ cheering and applause ]. >> actually, there are not two sides to every issue. >> so i guess we can't fire him now. >> i guess we can't fire him now. [ laught ].

the night that i win the emmy. >> being on the supreme court was an improbable dream. >> it's hard work, and it's controversial. >> without information there is no freedom, and it's journalists who provide that information. >> window rolls down and this guy says, hey, it goes to 11. [ laughter ]. [ music playing ]. >> william gibson, welcome. >> thank you. >> so nice to meet you and very nice to have you here. >> very nice to be here. >> and congratulations on this book. >> thank you. >> another big one. a big winner, i think. >> i hope so. >> sell a lot of books. but i think also your fans -- 30 years after "neuromancer", i think your fans are going to see something of a return to form. that's one of the early reactions to this book, is that it feels very much like some of the earlier books that you've done. do you think that's a fair point? >> i think it's a combination. i was -- i think it's a combination of the two, that's what i was trying for. i wanted this kind of big, double scoop future -- >> yep.

>> -- thing. and i wanted the kind of social observation and character-driven story that i had gotten into with the previous three books. >> and very much about the future, which is a loaded phrase, right? and in some cases people associate you with writing about the future when, in fact, as you've said to me and to other people, in many ways you're writing about a present, not a future, but -- >> well, i don't think -- well, nobody really writes about the future -- >> right. >> -- because nobody knows what it's going to be. >> right. >> and if you look at any old science fiction, it looks like it was -- it's really about the day in which it was written. >> right. yeah. >> victorian science fiction is about the victorian era -- >> right. >> 1940s science fiction is about world war ii. >> right. >> and we're going to-- my -- but i knew that going in, so i knew in the '80s that whatever

i wrote would one day be read as a -- as a kind of veiled social commentary on the early '80s. >> on the time in which it was written. >> yeah, on the time in which it was written. >> and in fact this book which is set alternately in a near future and a future future. i don't know if that's the best way to characterize it, but it sort of shifts back and forth -- >> yeah. >> -- between these two time periods, is set in part in the world of gaming culture. >> yeah. >> online gaming, which feels very much of the moment now. >> yeah. >> so it doesn't seem like it's all that far off. >> no. the near future, which i assumed was about fifteen years away is like "winter's bone" with better cell phones. >> oh, is that right? >> yeah. >> let me think about that for a second. >> justified with lots of drones. >> okay. >> it's really kind -- >> right. >> it's a familiar kind of bad, rural american back water -- >> well, and, in fact, the "winter's bone" analogy is interesting, because the near future portion of this is set in

a rural community that had that same bleakness -- >> yeah. >> -- actually as the movie that you're referring to. >> yeah. >> yeah. >> could you say a word or two about that -- if you were going to distill -- it's a very complicated and -- and interesting plot, but if you were going to characterize it to somebody, what would be your back-of-the-envelope characterization of it? >> well, given that i'm not a marketing person, my -- >> thank god for that. >> yeah. my back of the envelope is different, and i -- i would say that it's about colonialism, and third worlding the past. >> you're not a marketing person, that's right. [ laughter ]. right. well, that's -- that's the big theme -- >> yeah. >> -- you are aspiring to. >> yeah. >> as a practical matter, though, the plot is about a woman -- >> yeah. >> -- who is involved by way of her brother in gaming, an online -- what is it, she's an online scout, is that right? she's done -- >> she -- well, she's played

video -- online video games for a living. >> for some time, yeah. >> yeah. and it's the only way people -- people in her town can either play on salary for other people. >> right. >> people who can -- >> a concept, by the way, that is very interesting to think about. >> and or -- >> my son would like that. that would be his chosen career for instance. >> yeah, lots of -- >> he'd like to play "call of duty" for somebody else and get paid for it. >> yeah, lots of people would -- lots of -- >> best thing ever. >> yeah, lots of people would -- would go there, and the other -- because the only other thing you can do in this town is work for people who manufacture elicit drugs. >> right. so in that respect it's got a little bit of a "winter's bone" thing going too, it feels like, right. >> yeah. >> so her brother is former military. i guess former is probably the right way to describe him. >> yeah he's a -- he's a veteran and he's got ptsd -- >> ptsd. >> -- and he moonlights doing things and tries to keep the v.a. from finding out --

>> right. >> -- that he's -- that he's getting this money but -- >> for work -- for doing work in the online gaming world? right. >> yeah. and he tells his sister that he's -- he's beta testing a video game, which he believes, and she has to fill in with him, because she has to be away for the night, so she fills -- she fills in with them, and she's a horrible killing in -- in the beta test. >> right. >> and it turns out, of course, that it's not a game. >> it's not a game at all. >> yeah. >> but it's really kind of a window into that other future future. >> yeah. >> right. >> and she's the only witness and that part of it is just like classic pulp -- >> well -- >> -- detective plot. >> the noire tag, which has been applied to you before -- >> yeah. >> -- is absolutely in evidence in this case -- >> yeah. >> -- because as you say, if you strip away the fact that it's futuristic to some degree

and that there's all this technology -- >> yeah. >> -- it really feels like an old noire, you know, pulpy kind of noire novel. >> yeah, my read -- because i was an english honors major, my reading of noire detective fiction is that it's one of the -- the decadent forms of naturalism. >> uh-huh. >> so -- and naturalism was a radical literary idea about analyzing what was really going on socioeconomically and what was really going on with class -- >> yeah. >> -- interactions, and it wound up being dashiell hammett and chandler and they were sort of -- still sort of doing that, but it became its own -- >> right. >> -- thing, so when i reimport it back into science fiction, i'm both looking for the -- the noire flavor -- >> right. >> -- that i love myself. but i'm also looking for those

original tools of social analysis which it can -- which are still readily there. >> what's interesting is that you don't really consider this necessarily to be a science fiction book as far as it goes, right? it's really -- as you say, it's more of a traditional bit of literary fiction that happens to have science fiction elements to it, but you don't pigeonhole this book necessarily as science fiction? >> well, it's -- that's, as they say on facebook about relationships, is complicated. >> okay. [ laughter ]. >> well -- well-played. >> it's very compli -- >> explain. >> it's very complicated indeed. well, science fiction is absolutely my native literary culture. i can no more not be from science fiction than i can not be from southwest virginia, and i both from southwest virginia and science fiction, but that's not --

>> that's not the totality of who you are. >> yeah, it's no longer the totality of -- the totality of who i am, and i'm -- i'm, i like to think, quite self-aware -- >> right. >> -- of both of those aspects of -- >> right. >> -- the origin story. >> right. well, but of course, it is the horse you rode in on, right? >> yeah. >> in some respects -- >> yeah, absolutely -- >> -- science fiction genre has been good to you and you've been good to it. >> oh, it's -- it's -- it's been -- it's been -- it's been very good, and so i find myself emotionally sort of on both sides of the wire -- >> right. >> -- with this. and really my -- in some very idealistic way, i wish that there weren't genres. i'm always delighted when somebody produces some -- some boundary-melting hybridization of two or three genres -- >> yeah. >> -- that i haven't seen before. like nothing delights me more than the dissolution of genre.

>> well, as you kind of come back to marketing for a second, in some ways, those genre definitions are themselves a marketing -- >> yes. >> -- construct, right? if i walked into a book store -- >> yes. >> -- if they were any book stores -- >> yes. >> -- in existence anymore, i would see your books pigeonholed in a certain place. you would not be mixed in with the more general fiction writers, at least not after awhile. >> no. >> i mean this book having just come out, you might -- >> the kind of career i've -- >> yeah. >> the kind of career i've had, i'm, you know, grateful to say, when the book comes out, it will be just on the table at the front of the store. >> there it is, new book. >> and there it is. and then for awhile it will be in general fiction, but by the time it's become a reprint, it will migrate back to my section of the science fiction shelf, and both of those are really, you know -- professionally, both of those are good things to have going on. >> well, your fans, in fact,

probably don't mind that association with the science fiction section of this book, right? >> no, not at all. >> they come too. >> i -- well, i had -- the thing is i think i now have readers on both sides -- >> on both sides. >> yeah, on both sides of the water. >> well, in fact your last couple of books were less -- this is -- generally accepted that this book is let's say a return to an earlier form, if not to the form of "neuromancer" 30 years ago, to the sort of late '90s, as sort of the last time it's said that you did a william gibson style science fiction writing and that the last few novels -- >> yeah. >> -- the last ten or fifteen years have been a little bit more -- a little more traditional. it's hard to really parse this finely, but that you've kind of come back. and i just wonder if you took a step away for a deliberate reason, or if that was more of a perception on the outside than one that you make yourself. >> well, the three previous novels which were all the fiction that i had produced until now in the 20th century, 21st century, where i thought of

as speculative -- speculative fiction of the very recent past, because each one was set -- >> yeah. >> -- in the year in which i wrote it, which would then be the year before -- >> right. >> -- the year before it was published. >> blasphemy that it would actually be set now. >> i used -- i used the full toolkit -- >> yeah. >> -- that i had been using before. >> right. >> so i know for sure from reading amazon reviews that there's a certain percentage of readers who never even figured out that those books were set in the press. >> didn't even pay attention. >> yeah. >> yeah, right. >> they totally missed that and they really liked the book. and i thought, okay, this is, okay, proof -- this is proof of a theory that i had about this. but when i got to the end of those books, i felt like some certain yardstick of like the absolutely weirdness of this moment, and that was what i brought to "the peripheral", so

i said, okay, it's this weird right now. it's very weird. how much do i have to stretch that to induce cognitive dissonance in the reader, which is, i suspect, part of the pleasure of reading -- >> oh, most definitely. >> yeah. >> so what's weird about the world that you encounter right now? from your -- from your perspective, what's weird about it that gives you material for a book like this? >> oh, virtually everything. it would probably be easier like what's not. >> not weird, give you a shorter list. >> yeah, what's not -- it seems to me that -- >> because you know weird. i mean, let's -- let's -- let's be candid about this. you, for 30 years, have been living in the world of weird, and for you to make the point that you think the world is particularly weird now, that's saying something. that's a high bar to get over. >> well, when i began -- when i began to write, there -- it -- it seemed to me that there was the world and there was cyberspace. >> right. >> and cyberspace was a new thing and it was like this other realm -- >> concept that you have been credited with -- or the term

maybe is -- >> i named it, right. >> named it, right. i gave it -- i gave it that name having no idea what it meant or what it might become in real life, so -- but, you know, there's this, and the -- the virtual. there's the -- the internet. there's -- there's virtual -- virtual reality. there's cyberspace. and they were separate. but i think in those 30 years, cyberspace colonized this, and that this is now in some sense a subset the virtual -- >> you think we've given ourselves over to that world completely? >> in effect we -- we have because so many things -- so many things that affect us -- >> uh-huh. >> -- directly occur in that world, and the digital can kill you. anyone who -- whoever dies in afghanistan in a -- in a drone

attack has been killed in -- >> digitally, right? >> digitally. >> yeah. >> and in large part in virtual reality by a system that's utterly post geographical, where the -- the man who shot him is outside of las vegas -- >> somewhere all around the way -- >> -- in a hangar. >> right. >> it's -- everything inter -- it's all interpenetrated -- >> right. >> it's being like thoroughly interpenetrated. >> but think about what you just said, and let's -- let's kind of consider the significance of this, because you said it matter of factly, and it is kind of matter of fact, but it's also kind of amazing if you step back. >> yeah. >> everything that we do in life today exists to some degree -- significant things -- in that virtual world. >> yes. >> communication. romance. >> uh-huh. >> banking and other finance. >> yeah. >> right? commerce more broadly. >> yeah, it's -- it's where the -- >> life and death as you pointed out.

>> it's where the stock market happens. >> right. >> it's where the bank keeps your money. >> right. >> what's more -- what's more real -- >> more fundamental, right? >> yeah, what's more real than that? >> yeah. >> it's where, for many of us, the majority of the criminals who might readily do us harm operate. >> right. hackers. >> yeah. >> or identity theft, right? >> yeah. >> that kind of -- even crime is done in cyberspace. >> yeah. when i wrote about hackers, which is before -- i first wrote about hackers before i had ever heard the term "hackers", i imagine them as being rather esoteric operators. >> yeah. >> and kind of remarkable characters, but that's not the way -- >> as opposed to 17-year-olds -- >> yeah. well, that -- today the 17 -- the 17-year-olds that are most likely to do you harm on internet are -- are sitting in really large offices somewhere in russia at long tables. >> right.

>> long tables -- >> it's become institutionalized, right? yeah. >> yeah, institutionalized and it's not -- there's nothing romantic or daring about -- >> yeah. >> -- about -- what they're -- what they're doing. >> so go back 30 years when you wrote "neuromancer" or a little earlier than that. or go back to any period of time in the last 30 years when you've been writing and thinking about this and imagining what might be. has it turned out the way you thought? worse or better? or do we tend to attach too much significance to what was predicted at the time or speculated about to the speculative fiction concept versus what's actually come to pass? >> we have -- as humans, i think, we have a longing for there to be someone or something that's prescient. we -- we want someone who can read the pigeon's entrails -- >> right. >> prognostication. >> yeah. we want -- we have like a space in our very being for prognostication, but that said,

if i were a bright, 13-year-old, reading "neuromancer" today, i would be 20 pages into it, and i would go, okay, the mystery in this is going to be what happened to all the smartphones. [ laughter ]. and i missed that. like who -- who knew? >> right. >> and -- and i -- >> but that's generally the point, isn't it? >> yeah. >> whatever -- whatever vantage point you happen to be, you look out into the future and you imagine a world that could exist -- >> yeah. >> but you can't possibly imagine everything that other people are imagining and so you missed it. >> something that occurred to me occurred to me recently along those lines is that i've been trying to imagine if someone -- a writer in the '60s had a sort of magical dream in which she saw our entire world of smartphones and cellular telephony and just how -- how

that works -- >> yeah. >> -- in complete detail, and she recalled it all when she woke up and she wrote a novel, a science fiction novel about it. i've been trying to wonder -- i've been trying to figure out what it would look like and whether or not she could have sold it. >> well, the reaction is nobody would believe it, right? >> i don't even think it would be -- no, i don't think she could have sold it. she might have been able to write it, but if you think about how weird and boring a book that would be, where everybody is carrying around these little -- in their pockets they have these little flat radio televisions, and all day long they're talking to their friends, listening to music and playing angry birds, and -- and sending one another like letters and like how would that look -- how would that look in the novel? and they're never alone. and so for the reader -- >> always connected. >> yeah. for the reader in say 1963, this

would just be like, you know, it wouldn't be like science fiction. >> right. >> it would be like something some crazy person would have written. >> what interests me about your -- the arc of your career and in fact going back before you started writing book, but the influences on you. >> yeah. >> you were a big fan of "the beats", weren't you? burrows was an early influence? >> well, i had a funny -- a funny kind of pop, literary upbringing that way, because i'm absolutely positive that i discovered william burrows and edgar rice burrows in the same months. >> all the burrowses, right. [ laughter ]. every burrows you can come up with. >> making lunch. tarzan of the apes. >> right. >> which shall i read first? >> but don't you -- don't you think that the stuff that influenced you actually wouldn't have suggested immediately pointing you and your literary orientation forward? i mean -- >> well, "the beats" were

apocalyptic in a sense. they were a response to -- to post war, cold war, so something like ginsberg's "howl" is -- it's not that it's science fiction, but it's about the -- the decay and unraveling of america and the human universe and -- and it had this message that everything is totally not all right, which i think for me, when i was 12 years old, was kind of -- kind of like reading apocalyptic science fiction. i mean, i had no framework which to place this -- >> but in fact, if you think about "howl" in that way, and that's a legitimate way to characterize it -- >> yeah. >> -- it actually rolls forward into so much that you've written because the fact is -- >> yeah. >> -- in none of your books is everything all right. >> no -- yeah. not that it's totally dreadful,

but it's not -- it's not totally okay. and the people -- people who would tell me that it was totally okay, i would instinctively distrust. >> recoil from those people. >> yeah, i would recoil from those -- those people. >> well, the reality it's been good material for you. >> yeah. >> to have that be the basis. >> yeah. >> so you read the works of other people. >> yeah. >> you're not just buried in your own work but you -- >> uh-huh. >> so when you make a choice to read somebody else now, what interests you? what interests you? what are you -- because you're such a great -- a guidepost for a lot of other people to follow so tell us what -- >> well, i'm looking -- >> -- what interests you now. >> i'm particularly interested in -- in -- i'm interested in younger writers, and i'm interested in writers my own age or slightly older. i'm still very interested in what thomas pynchon is -- is going to do next. but for -- you know, a

recommendation for a younger writer, well, two younger writers, and just accidentally they're both male writers, but one is ned beauman, who has written -- written -- published three novels. he's -- b-e-a-u-m-a-n. he's british. and he has a novel out called "glow" that's kind of like my three previous novels written on the head of a pen, because it's like a really small thing, but it totally has -- it totally has all of that going on, and much more. not that he's trying to do me, but he just very similar -- >> yep. >> very similar -- >> so ned beauman. >> yeah, ned beauman. and nick harkaway, who -- whose current novel out is called "tiger man". >> yeah. >> and he -- he's like, i don't

know mervyn -- like mervyn peak for the 21st century. >> but how -- how great. this is sort of like the reverse oprah. >> yeah. >> you know you're -- >> yeah. >> you're laying hands on these guys and then we'll see if maybe that has a big impact. >> yeah. i would hope so. >> are you working on something else? >> it's -- it's a mere twinkle in my eye at the moment, but i usually get my idea for the next book when i'm out on the book tour, as i -- as i am now, and i think it's starting. >> yeah. >> it's starting -- it's starting to happen. >> is it likely to be connected to any of the previous books? you've written books that have kind of been looked at as a -- as a unit, right? >> well, i managed to do three three-volume sets which i'm sensitive about calling trilogies. >> right. >> because they're not really -- they're not really sequential. this one i'm hoping very much will remain a stand-alone, but i think the next book -- i'm

hoping the next book will be more overtly comic and almost kind of slapstick, because -- i mean not that this is a grueling, depressing slog or anything, but it was very, very hard work -- >> yeah. >> and kind of -- it's in some ways a very serious book. >> i think -- i think it's a really good one, and i think your fans are going to love it, but also people who have never come to read your stuff before are going to find it really interesting so let's hope it's a big success. >> well, thank you. >> william gibson, thank you very much. good to see you. >> thank you. >> appreciate you being here. [ applause ]. >> we'd love to have you join us in the studio. visit our website at klru.org/overheard to find invitations to interviews, q&as with our audience and guests, and an archive of past episodes. >> for me the end point of a novel is just a novel and -- and adaptations are adaptations.

generally, really good films aren't adaptations of prose fiction, that they're created from the ground up like brazil, the gilliam film, to be a film. [ music playing ]. >> funding for "overheard" with evan smith is provided in part by mfi foundation. improving the quality of life within our community, and from the texas board of legal specialization, board certified attorneys in your community. experienced, respected and tested. also, by hillco partners. texas government affairs consultancy, and its global health care consulting business unit, hillco health. and by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation. and viewers like you. thank you.