Vulture says:
Those works are often held as seminal works of modern dystopian literature
People have long wanted to use this label, its great for headlines in that its simplistic and attention grabbing.
Gibson is a good interview subject though, here as in the past he refuses to be pinned down to simplistic views. When he was interviewed in The Paris Review, Issue 211 unfortunately no longer online for free, the interviewer asked him about his fiction being viewed as dystopian. Gibson’s response:
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 filled with much nastier places than my inventions, places that the denizens of the Sprawl would find it punishment to be relocated to, and a lot of those places seem to be steadily getting worse.
As for those who think writers arent writing about far futures, I’ll say you arent keeping up with SF and just want to dwell in the past.
