IO9’s got a great interview up with William Gibson — not the same questions everyone else asks him, either. I like what he has to say about dystopias:
I don’t think a writer can hit the dystopic key without being misanthropic. I’m actually not misanthropic. I think people are capable of wonderful things. I’m quite fond of them and enjoy their company. I can’t do Jonathan Swift. I don’t have it in me to do that. I also don’t have it in me to say to reader, “This is all real.” I’m enough of a postmodernist that I go in and out of believing in my own narrative. The happy endings, such as they, are are actually a function of that. They’re the “that’s all folks” at the end, waving the big three-fingered glove. I want to remind people that they’re reading a novel about an imaginary future. If I had my way, I’d even be reminding people about the whole culture of reminding people.