William Gibson, photo courtesy Michael O’Shea.

On the heels of Zero History‘s release earlier this month, D.C. gets a visit from famed cyberpunk author William Gibson this Sunday, the very last stop on his U.S. book tour. Gibson’s latest novel is the third in a loosely-bound set dubbed the Bigend trilogy, Gibson’s first foray into stories set in present time, where his characters live the with explosion of technology in the 21st century and explore its intended and not-so-intended uses. (The Guardian grandly noted, “There’s no question that, taken together, these three books represent one of the first great novels of 21st-century data culture.”)

Gibson took a few minutes to talk with DCist about his new book, writing about imaginary futures and Twitter.

Unlike your past novels, the three books in this last series have been set in the present using tech that mostly exists already. Why did you choose to do that?

Well, all my life I’ve been writing about the 21st century and 21st century technology and I’ve had to make it all up, so here I am in the 21st century and we’re up to our eyeballs in emergent technology that we scarcely understand and can’t take the measure of what the impact of that technology will be on society and it seemed like the perfect opportunity. It’s, here I am in the real future.