Like Pattern Recognition before it, William Gibson's eighth novel, Spook Country, feels like dictation from the zeitgeist. Its "illegal facilitators," nonexistent magazines, terrorists, pirates, junkies, mad art dealers, and WMD are all woven together into something more unsettling and blackly comic than anything he's done before. Gibson and I started talking in 2004, shortly before meeting in person while I was in Vancouver working on a doomed TV pilot based on my comic book series Global Frequency. At the time, he disclosed that near-future events would determine whether Spook Country would be comedy or horror. We've stayed in touch electronically ever since, and when wired asked me to talk to him about the book, set for release in August, we picked up right where we left off.
Wired: So, comedy or horror?
Gibson: I think it turned out to be satirical, which is what comedy best aspires to in tragic times. I can't make a narrative up beforehand, can't write before I start typing, so I literally don't decide what a story is or where it goes.
Wired: I was surprised to see Hubertus Bigend from Pattern show up. It made me wonder if that novel and Spook are consciously building to form your third trilogy.
Gibson: You know, I've never wanted to write a trilogy. I tacked that "He never saw Molly again" on the end of Neuromancer to indicate no sequel was to be expected. The fact that I've done it twice now ... Well, it seems to be one result of my "method." I wasn't suspecting H.B. either, for the longest time, but then it became apparent that Node, the shadowy magazine startup, was way Bigendian.
Wired: One of the details that leaped out at me was the Adidas GSG9, named for the German counterterrorism squad. I felt certain you'd invented the shoe, but then I Googled it.
Gibson: The Adidas GSG9s were the obvious choice for the thinking man's ninja. Nothing I could make up could resonate in the same way. There's code in name-checking the GSG9 history — esoteric meaning. Something that started with Pattern Recognition was that I†discovered I could Google the world of the novel. I began to regard it as a sort of extended text — hypertext pages hovering just outside the printed page. There have been threads on my Web site — readers Googling and finding my footprints. I still get people asking me about "the possibilities of interactive fiction," and they seem to have no clue how we're already so there.
