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Meet the Author – Will Gibson

Will, thanks for taking the time to talk with Literary Gents, and congratulations on your debut novel! Tell us a bit about yourself, and your background? Thank you, it’s a pleasure to be here. So, I’m a first time author at the age of 48. “good things come…” as they say! By day I’m an executive in the telecoms industry, and have travelled and lived all over the world, 75 countries visited and on a course for 100. I’ve lived in the UK (where I’m from) and also Moscow, Miami, Singapore and Athens. I grew up in “the biggest pit village in the world” in Ashington, Northumberland, home of the famous footballing brothers, Bobby and Jack Charlton, sadly now both departed this realm.

Tell us a bit about ‘The Unravelling’, what can readers expect? It’s a near future science fiction, with lots of references to existing people, and products and brands, and how I imagine them to be in the year 2038. It’s very multi-faceted, being a thriller at heart and also a romance and reconciliation story with the protagonist. It’s a tongue-in-cheek look at how technology could enhance or harm our near future, and the role governments and corporations have in that. I think it’s a fun world to step inside, and there are themes of human fertility and LGBTQ+ issues that are also explored. It’s very descriptive in style, and with a lot of exposition which was intentional to tell such a detailed world in around 50,000 words, so I hope it makes people stop and think, and enjoy the process at the same time. It’s not a long read, but a fun one.

I’ve read the book, which is a super fun read and an intriguing glimpse into the future. What inspired you to write this book? Honestly? Boredom! Haha no seriously I get a lot of down time in my work in the Telecom Industry, I regularly travel over 200,000 air miles so that’s a lot of time in airports and on planes. There’s only so many movies you can watch! So I started writing this in 2018 on my iPhone, got half of it done, then COVID hit and sent the world in a spin, and that prompted me to pick it back up again in 2022 and really make a dash to get it finished. I’m delighted with the end result and hope to be an inspiration to my two little children.

How much research did you need to do for your book? Quite a bit! I had to research Wall Street and how that worked, and how often it had gone down in the past. Also trying to work out how EMP bombs work was interesting for sure. A lot of the technology comes from my own projections in the telecom industry though, trends I can see coming true in the next twenty years. The change in form factor from a smartphone to a super-powered AI assistant in your glasses being one example. Everyone has a “rig” in 2038, and having just got some of the new Meta glasses by RayBan I can say for sure that is going to happen!

‘The Unravelling’ is a sneak peek into our possible future lives with AI. Have you found AI already becoming a part of your daily life? And did you use AI tools such as chatGPT for inspiration or research? I am subscriber to ChatGPT yes. I use it pretty much every day, but I didn’t as part of the writing process. Where I think it really helps is to create content quickly, and creating summaries is where it excels. For example, I had to use some 80 character “pitches” for use in PPC ads for google and meta and the like, so I fed it a synopsis and it spat out 5 different options which I could tweak and use. Avoiding it or refusing it is like Canute trying to part the sea in my opinion, it’s coming, and so are other form factors to communicate that are NOT the smartphone, so don’t resist, go with it. We do need some governance and regulation in AI though, and quickly!

Have you always been an avid reader yourself, and if so, what’s the first book that got you hooked on reading? I was voracious as a young child. My primary school ran out of books for me to read and they had to bring ones from the Middle School. I read the Hardy Boys series when I was a kid! Then as a teen and an adult I got into science fiction, mainly through movies if I’m honest. I’d still class myself as a movie geek first. The first massive spark I got from a book was “Neuromancer” by my namesake which I read in the 90’s, and then just couldn’t stop reading all the rest! I’ve read everything he’s written and he’s a massive influence on me.

As you know, Literary Gents is all about encouraging others to discover the joy of reading, especially our modern men who think reading is just for bookish types with elbow patches and glasses. What would you say to encourage people to begin their reading journey? I’m often shocked by how many people say they don’t read. If you are not reading, what are you ingesting that helps you form your world view and your growth as a person? The news? Twitter? It’s a massive problem with the world becoming so tribal and in their own echo chambers, and education is the only way out of it. The flip side of that is if education is so dumbed down now as everything is at your fingertips knowledge wise, then we are missing teaching people HOW to think, and how to critically evaluate certain situations. It’s a problem, and one which society must address very quickly – these themes come out in my book for sure!

Thank you Will, we really appreciate your time and wish you the best of luck with the book!