

William Gibson's 1984 novel "Neuromancer" established him as one of science fiction's great, most prescient voices, and he's never slowed down. He's continued writing fiction, of course. For a long time, he blogged, but he traded that in for Twitter. He's one of the few authors of his generation who really gets it -- he's @GreatDismal, and has more than 70,000 followers.

His latest book, released in January, is something different still. "Distrust That Particular Flavor" is a collection of Gibson's nonfiction essays. He talked to Wired Magazine -- where some of his pieces first appeared -- about the book, aging futurists and more. Gibson says:

Futurists get to a certain age and, as one does, they suddenly recognize their own mortality, and they often decide that what’s going on is that everything is just totally screwed and shabby now, whereas when they were younger everything was better. It’s an ancient, somewhat universal human attitude, and often they give it full voice. But it’s been being given voice for thousands and thousands of years. You can go back and see the ancient Greeks doing it. You know, “All that is good is gone. These young people are incapable of making art, or blue jeans, or whatever.” It’s just an ancient thing, and it’s so ancient that I’m inclined to think it’s never actually true. And I’ve always been deeply, deeply distrustful of anybody’s “golden age” — that one in which we no longer live.

Gibson's interview marks the launch of the new Wired podcast, The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy. That's all I know about it, but I hope they continue speaking to authors.

After the jump, an anecdote from the podcast in which Gibson gets the Hollywood treatment.