I SEEM to be hearing a lot about Vancouver these days. Not sure why, but it reminds me of my one trip to that glorious city to interview visionary novelist William Gibson. The writer often credited with foreseeing the Internet and much of hacker culture, Gibson was about to publish Spook Country, his second novel (after Pattern Recognition) to concentrate on the more-or-less present.
Gibson was as smart and easy to get along with as anyone I’ve ever interviewed: I was struck by his humility. HERE is my profile of him, where we talked about growing up in the conservative South, his flight to Canada, his breakthrough with Neuromancer, his clumsiness with technology and interest in rock n’ roll and country music, and what a loser his friends thought he was when he started writing science fiction.
(Doug Coupland, who also lives in the city, was one of my first author interviews, back in 1994; a reader of The Misread City has just dug it up for me, here.)
And if you end up in Vancouver, the best place I ate was the Rain City Grille (where I ordered the locavore menu) and my favorite place to drink there is an indie/ retro pub called The Morrissey.
I had the great pleasure of reading “Neuromancer” (thank you, Scott) and “Midnight’s Children” back-to-back on vacation a few years ago … restored my faith
Lost to history, Scott? I just found it: http://bit.ly/baIwFK
Many thanks to Mike for tracking down the Coupland piece!