Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
In a new documentary, the archetypal cyberpunk author displays his new obsession: Media, not technology.
Feb 7, 2001 | Sitting in the back of a limousine, alternately smoking a cigarette or smiling at the unexpected results of his own eloquence, William Gibson looks comfortable. That's a good thing, too, since the vast majority of "No Maps For These Territories" -- an 88-minute documentary about the science-fiction author that screened at this year's Slamdance festival -- is shot, literally, on the road.
As he reclines, protected by his seatbelt, and occasionally, by a pair of dark sunglasses, he exists in nowheresville. We don't know where Gibson's going or where he's been. Every now and then we glimpse a freeway sign or some shimmery neon. Director Mark Neale also likes to play visual tricks -- overlaying images across the car windows that are obviously not the local landscape. Neale has a background in music video, and he employs plenty of MTV jumpiness to illustrate his narrative. The general effect is unsettling -- we're always moving, but never getting anywhere. But the technique also helps concentrate the viewer on what's important -- Gibson's words: his elaborations on the act of writing, his personal history, drugs, religion, pornography and, of course, the Internet, or, to use the word that most everybody knows by now Gibson coined, cyberspace.
Gibson's 1984 novel "Neuromancer" is widely credited with creating an iconography for the Internet age, long before the mainstream world had embraced the Net (or Gibson had even embraced the computer). As a result, Gibson is a kind of cyber-pop-star, endlessly profiled and interviewed, sought after as a writer for magazines like Wired and TV shows like "The X-Files." He's also not the easiest person to ask questions of. I interviewed him in the fall of 1993, as he was doing book promotion for "Virtual Light," and found him politely resistant. His answers had the tone of a person who has answered too many questions already. The soft traces of his Virginia drawl helped him sound friendly, but not too forthcoming.
Which is why "No Maps For These Territories" is a delight: Gibson lets his hair down and comes clean. He is refreshing as he discusses such topics as his own history of drug use -- at one point, he notes, his goal was to sample every narcotic substance in existence -- and Vietnam War draft dodging: It wasn't so much politically motivated, he says, as it was a result of his desire to continue sleeping with "hippie chicks."
But he's most interesting when he talks about his own philosophy of life, in conjunction with the act of writing. At one point, Gibson goes zen. In our unexplainable world, our constantly changing world, our technologically transforming world, figuring things out is not an option. All you can do is live in the moment.
"Being in the moment, not being in anticipation, not being in recollection," says Gibson, "but being in the moment sounds very simple. But the actual practice can be very complicated and I don't think anyone really achieves it with any constancy."
As a writer, Gibson says his goal is to make that moment accessible. He's not really writing science fiction, he likes to point out; instead, he's reflecting current reality back at his readers disguised as science fiction.
As its title indicates, "No Maps For These Territories" intends, also, to exist in that unknowable present. Stylistically, the constant movement without any explicit direction illustrates Gibson's gist without getting in the way. If you are a Gibson fan, or acolyte, much of what Gibson has to say will be familiar at some level. But it's never quite been put together so fluidly or completely. Paradoxically, if Gibson himself could be considered a territory, then "No Maps" has caught him with a rigorous surveyor's eye.
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