The voice at the other end of the phone was all charm, from the South by way of Vancouver, B.C.. I took a seat in the lobby of the posh Clift Hotel. I drank coffee, a tall Starbucks' Misto, from a cardboard cup. And I thought about the man I was about to meet...
Gibson. William Gibson. Celebrated novelist. The man who coined the term "cyberspace." Treated like a rock star by Wired. Sent to interview U2 some years back by Details. Recently asked to write about the Net by the New York Times.
At 48, Gibson has just published his fifth novel, Idoru (the Japanese word for idol). And so he is here, in San Francisco for a few days before heading on to the next city. Traveling the book promotion circuit, moving from one first class hotel to another, picked up by a limo and driven from interview to book store, book store to interview. Gibson is not the first to benefit from the '90s concept of author-as-celebrity, but he is, 12 years after the publication of Neuromancer, the novel that made him a star, certainly accustomed to the fine art of late '90s book promotion. "Writers are people who work away in the basement by themselves," he'll tell me shortly. But this, this book promotion thing, "is like being a rock star, only without the parties."
Probably one of the best introductions to an influential work I've read in agea. Gibson is more than a pioneer, he is a visionary, and the future before us is a testament.
