timothy-leary-chaos-cyber-culture

TL That's a powerful scene! And youimothy Leary. If you could putUke that coming up to me on the street . . . much more daemonic and more human.Neuromancer into one sentence, howwould you describe it?William Gibson: What's most important tome is that it's about the present. It's notdescribe the girls as like hoofed animalswearing high heels.WG: Yeah. The office girls of the Sprawl.TL Yeah, and they're wearing vagmas,really about an unagined future. It's a wayof trying to come to terms with the awe andand Oh, God! That's a powerful scene.terror inspired in me by the world in whichwe live. I'm anxious to know what they'llWG: 1 like the idea of that subway. That'sthe state-of-the-art subway It goes frommake of it in Japan. Oh, God I'm starting Atlanta to Boston, real fast.to feel Uke Edgar Rice Burroughs or something.TL You've created a world.1 mean, how did Edgar RiceBurroughs finallycome to feel aboutWG: What you're getting when you readTarzan in his own heart, you know? He got that book the impression is very complicated,real tired of IL Wound up Uving m Tarzana,California.TL You'll end up living in a space colonycalled Neuromancer.WG: That would be okay 1 don't thinkwe're going to have this kind of future. 1think this book is so much wtcer than whatseems to be happening.1 mean, this wouldbut it's all actually one moleculethick. Some of it is still pretty much of amystery to me. You know, the United Statesis never mentioned in the book. And there'ssome question as to whether the UnitedStates exists as a poUtlcal entity or if, in fact,it's been Balkanized m some weud wayThat's kmd of a favorite idea of mme, thatthe worid should be chopped up mtobe a cool place to visit. 1 wouldn't mindsmaller . . .going there.TL: Where?WG: To the Sprawl, to that future.TL Me too, boy.WG: West-coast separatism and stuff. InCount Zero,1 mention what's happening mCalifornia a httle bit. One of the charactersTL: Going up the well?WG: Yeah. Go up the well and all of that Ahas a gjrlfriend who hves in a pontoon citythat's tethered off Redondo. Kind of like alot of people think that Neuromancer is a hallucinated . . . it's the Sprawl goesbleak book, but 1 think it's optimistic.SausaUto the Sprawl but mellower.At the end of Neuromancer, theTL: I do, too.WG: I think the future is actually gonna bemore boring.I thuik some kind ofFalwellian future would probably be myidea of the worst thing that could happen.entire Mahix is sentient It has, m someways, one will. And, as it tells Case, kind ofit's matter-of-factly, found another of itskmd on Alpha Centuri or somewhere; so it'sgot something to talk to. Count Zero startsseven years later, and Uke Yeats's poemTL Yeah. That was a wonderful sceneabout how the center wouldn't hold, thiswhere you have those Christians whosort of God-consciousness is now fragmented.were gonna mug those girls in theIt hasn't been able to keep it together.subway.WG: It's not clear whether they're going tomug them or just try to force some horriblepamphkt on them or something.Personally, I have a real phobia about guysSo the voodoo cultists m the Sprawl, whobeUeve that they have contacted the voodoopantheon through the Matrix, are in factdeaUng with these fragmented elements ofthis God tiring.And the fragments areTCase could be oneof Burroujhs'swild boys. . .in a I'm way.deeply influencedby Burroughs. . . .he found 'fiftiesscience fictionand used it like arusty can openeron society'sju5[ular.SECTION II. I (VIEKNETICStONVEISATION WITH WIlllAM CJISON 23