] In a fight between you and William Gibson, who would win?
]
] Neal:
]
] You don't have to settle for mere idle speculation. Let
] me tell you how it came out on the three occasions when
] we did fight.
]
]
] The first time was a year or two after SNOW CRASH came
] out. I was doing a reading/signing at White Dwarf Books
] in Vancouver. Gibson stopped by to say hello and extended
] his hand as if to shake. But I remembered something Bruce
] Sterling had told me. For, at the time, Sterling and I
] had formed a pact to fight Gibson. Gibson had been
] regrown in a vat from scraps of DNA after Sterling had
] crashed an LNG tanker into Gibson's Stealth pleasure
] barge in the Straits of Juan de Fuca. During the
] regeneration process, telescoping Carbonite stilettos had
] been incorporated into Gibson's arms. Remembering this in
] the nick of time, I grabbed the signing table and flipped
] it up between us. Of course the Carbonite stilettos
] pierced it as if it were cork board, but this spoiled his
] aim long enough for me to whip my wakizashi out from
] between my shoulder blades and swing at his head. He
] deflected the blow with a force blast that sprained my
] wrist. The falling table knocked over a space heater and
] set fire to the store. Everyone else fled. Gibson and I
] dueled among blazing stacks of books for a while. Slowly
] I gained the upper hand, for, on defense, his Praying
] Mantis style was no match for my Flying Cloud technique.
] But I lost him behind a cloud of smoke. Then I had to get
] out of the place. The streets were crowded with his
] black-suited minions and I had to turn into a swarm of
] locusts and fly back to Seattle.

[ While slashdot "interviews" tend to be dubious at best, Neal Stephenson is always a pleasure to read, regardless of the format or topic. And there are quite a few topics covered here... very entertaining and sometimes enlightening. -k]

The section about fighting with Gibson is funny, but the comments about accountability in the writing profession is the part you shouldn't miss.