Unpublished William Gibson Short Story

I mentioned this a while back -- once upon a time, long ago, Bill Gibson and I used to hang out a little. We went a few times to Damon & Katie's mini-Milford's in Eugene, with John Shirley and Jay Rothbell, and for a couple years, Bill and I exchanged letters, cartoons, critiqued each other's stuff, like that. He turned down my suggestion to call "Johnny Mneumonic" "Mneumonic Johnny," 'cause he didn't like the way it scanned. He did take my suggestion that Neuromancer needed some sex. He was a very funny guy, droll, and a pretty good cartoonist, too.

In 1980, we wrote a story together. The piece, entitled "Killer," was pretty good, but it got bounced a couple times and the reasons now seem incredibly funny: One was, the main character was an assassin, and thus nobody would feel any connection or sympathy for him ... ?

My, have times have changed.

Bill, not used to such rejections as I was -- my stuff bounced around like a trainload of super balls gone off a trestle -- his usually got bought first place he sent it -- decided he didn't want to keep it circulating. He had three or four other stories he was working on, plus a novel, it wasn't a priority.

So my copy went into a drawer and that was that. Eventually, we drifted into our own currents and I haven't talked to Bill in years. I poked around a while back trying to find him, to open up a bottle of home-brewed nostalgia, but he keeps a low profile, and it wasn't worth the effort it would take to track him down. Probably doesn't talk to guys like me these days anyhow ...

Gibson, one of the fathers of cyberpunk SF, went on to literary acclaim, while I became a moderately-successful space opera writer.

Because the story "Killer," belongs to us both equally, I can't sell the publication rights without Bill's okay. I'm not sure either of us would want that -- we've both gotten a little better since we wrote it -- but as an historical curio, I can sell my paper copy, which is a faded Xerox. I'm still trying to decide whether I should put it up on eBay.

Someday, maybe our mail back-and-forth in the early days of his career long before the internet -- we both wrote on typewriters, you younger folks can look that word up -- might be of some use to a Gibson biographer, because somebody will probably want to write that sooner or later. Still have those letters out in boxes in the storeroom somewhere ...