DISTRUST THAT PARTICULAR FLAVOR

From the New York Times bestselling author, his first ever collection of nonfiction writings - providing a new and distinctive look into the mind of one of our most forward thinkers.



William Gibson is known primarily as a novelist, from his ground-breaking first novel, Neuromancer, which was published in 1984 and was credited with having described the internet and cyberspace before any such things existed, to his more recent contemporary bestsellers: Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History.

During those nearly thirty years, though, Gibson has been sought out by wildly varying publications for his insights into contemporary culture. Wired Magazine sent him to Singapore to report on the trial of a drug trafficker in one of the world's most buttoned-up states. The New York Times Magazine asked him to describe what was wrong with the internet. Rolling Stone published his essay on the ways our lives are all "soundtracked" by the music and the culture around us. In a breakfast speech at the 2010 Book Expo in New York, heard only by booksellers and publishing people, he memorably described the interactive relationship between writer and reader.

These essays and articles have never been collected, until now. Some of them (like the Book Expo speech) have never appeared in print at all. In addition, Distrust That Particular Flavor contains journalism from tiny publishers, online sources, and magazines that no longer exist. This is a volume whose contents will be essential reading for any lover of William Gibson's novels, in the same way that essay collections by David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen are essential to lovers of Infinite Jest and Freedom.

Distrust That Particular Flavor grants readers a privileged view into the mind of a writer whose thinking has shaped not only a generation of writers, but our entire culture.