The Amazon Bookstore's blog has published the first part of an interview with William Gibson:
Across the Border to Spook Country: Q&A, Part 1, with William Gibson
The Spook Country relevant section of the interview:
[...]
Amazon.com: Could you start by telling us a little bit about the scenario of the new book?
Gibson: It's a book in which shadowy and mysterious characters are using New York's smallest crime family, a sort of boutique operation of smugglers and so-called illegal facilitators, to get something into North America. And you have to hang around to the end of the book to find out what they're doing. So I guess it's a caper novel in that regard.
Amazon.com: Yes, everybody's converging on this one object. We were talking earlier--you yourself didn't know what was in that shipping container until pretty far into writing the book?
Gibson: No, I didn't know. At one point, I thought that it was filled with artwork from the museums of Baghdad [laughter], and then I thought it might actually contain the legendary Baghdad batteries that Erich Von Däniken was quite keen on in the '70s.
Amazon.com: But it never contained weapons of mass destruction.
Gibson: Well, I worried about that. I sometimes don't like to confess how little I know about these things when I start them, but I'm starting to admit to myself that the less I know at the beginning probably the better it's going to go.
Amazon.com: We have your original proposal for the book up on our site, and the thing that struck me immediately was that none of the characters you discuss ended up, at least with the specifics that you give them at the time, in the final book, and I'm curious how you progress from one group of characters into another group as you're planning the book or writing it.
Gibson: Well, I think the key thing there is that I never really believe in the proposal.
Amazon.com: Does your publisher believe in it?
Gibson: I don't know--it seems to be a sort of ritual object and I've actually been afraid to find out whether or not I could get a contract without one, but I've been surprised a couple of times when characters from the proposal have actually survived to publication. They usually wind up being tweaked beyond recognition.
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