William Gibson - We are all Science Fiction Writers Now

[Vince W]

William Gibson: We Are All Science Fiction Writers Now

 

[Danny McG]

In this piece Mr Gibson mentions how late he was to get an email address, saying he waited "until dogs and children could do it".

Only this morning I found myself setting up an email address for a two year old!

This was because I did a factory reset on an old 7" tablet and then used the email details to install YouTube kids onto it.

That kid sat for ninety plus minutes, happily scrolling up and down various cartoons and watching them for a few minutes apiece.

(The weather then finally improved and I could get him out to the local play park for most of the afternoon)

 

[Robert Zwilling]

It makes sense. Gibson is saying that so much of our lives revolve around science that you can't write a present day story that isn't impacted by technology. I suspect for most people, whether they can get it or not, they would want to use the latest and greatest, not the oldest, or simplest. To top it off, technology has decided to exist inside of our bodies because we can't get enough of it, and I would suspect most people have no problems with that. Technology has become a very addictive drug and even if a person manages to stay completely free of it, they know someone who interacts with them and is completely in to it.

People might say that since all these things have become real that they no longer constitute science fiction. That is only part of science fiction, another part is all about how things go so terribly wrong when existing technology runs a muck. The things that go wrong impact everything, shaping the life which is where people draw their writings from. The best part is that this world is set in a bad science fiction story which means there are even more things that are changing our lives in ways we can't control and probably don't want to happen..

It can easily be said we are living in a P. K. Dick world, it can't be said we are living in a J. R. R. Tolkien world. Gibson did say a purely Amish story would be exempt, except that if you scratched the surface just a little, I think we would find a lot of the things the Amish use that aren't grown on their farms interact with the internet one or another before they go into town and bring it home in their horse drawn wagon.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

So use to things as they are I forgot to add, when things go terrifically right, you can also write about that.

 

[Vince W]

Gibson thinks we are losing interest in the future. Is he correct?
Sci-fi author William Gibson: 'Future fatigue' is putting people off the 22nd century

BBC Radio 4 - Today, 20/01/2020