"I've always been taken aback by the assumption that my vision is fundamentally dystopian. I suspect that the people who say I'm dystopian must be living completely sheltered and fortunate lives. The world is full of much nastier places than my inventions..."
-William Gibson
"You have to remember the book was written before '68, the moment when innuendo ceased to be a legally necessary literary technique. ...the age of innuendo and the coyly placed line of white space, as the hero envelops the heroine in his arms, ended. Fifteen years later, AIDS rendered them permanently obsolete."
-Samuel R. Delany
Both from the Summer 2011 issue of the Paris Review. I felt kind of stupid plunking down $12 for a fat literary magazine with two short interviews of SF writers and not much else that looked interesting. (In this issue. I do read TPR when it has interesting stuff, like Graham Joyce or Kay Ryan.) But it had some amazing photos of both Delany and Gibson, from bygone eras, and what the hey, support SF writers in lit mags.
It turned out that I have gotten a lot of mileage out of the issue, poring over these interviews. It's not that the contents are particularly earth-shattering, but lots of ideas to chew on that seem timely. Good light rail reading, too, because of the format. I would have preferred to buy an e-issue, but they were only selling subscriptions in e- formats. Annoying.
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