His favourite author is somewhat of a disappointment. There was no way to break it to him gently. He said in protest -“You admire authors who shot their wives during drinking binges and blew their own heads off!”. He had a good point. I do and they did. The difference is that they were literary geniuses who were larger than life and William Gibson, is not. To smooth things over I did give a measurable amount of credit to Gibson for getting in on the ground floor. He saw Blade Runner at the movies while writing Neuromancer and continued to write significantly less sophisticated or poignant science fiction for years to come, that takes moxie.
Our original criticism of Gibson was simple – he knew shit about computers. And I say “our” because I was not alone in pointing it out years ago and “our” emerging culture felt strongly about it. Alas, this was an observation made at a time when few people were qualified to appreciate let alone debate the issue. In the absence of qualified critical voices, popular media declared Gibson the father of “cyberpunk” while actual wired punks chowed down on a shit taco. Gibson now spins a good yarn about messing around with an old Apple II but it’s publicity pudding and he knows it. That said, Gibson’s writing isn’t what made him a disappointment. The writing itself has its place in time and its own value. No, the real problem could be found in Gibson’s crypto-colonial opinions.
A few years back, during a measles outbreak in the U.S. the pharmaceutical industry decided they could capitalize on the growing rage the public felt towards anti-vaxxers. With targeted media marketing passing as “news” the industry knowingly exaggerated the impact of these fringe groups. A significant German study at the time found that undervaccination in the wider vaccine-acceptant population posed a far greater risk as it creates asymptomatic carriers, as was the case in these U.S. outbreaks. The media largely ignored it. In the process of stoking fever-pitched social outrage, the pharmaceutical industry earned a much-needed increase in public trust which is today worth billions.
Now in 2020 it’s not only untrendy to criticize pharmaceutical companies or the vaccines they produce, it’s forbidden across various online platforms. What does this have to do with William Gibson? At the peak of this big-pharma media blitz he tweeted that “antivaxxers should be arrested and put on reservations” which he at first defended and later deleted. There are many things an author can do to tarnish themselves but a Canadian author using “reservations” in such a context and effectively selling out to a pharmaceutical industry shark feed is about as disappointing as it gets.
