William Gibson has often been described as prescient in his ability to imagine the future. His special power, according to the staff writer Joshua Rothman, is actually his attunement to the present. In “Agency,” Gibson’s new novel, people in the future refer to our time as “the jackpot”—an alignment of climate effects and other events that produce a global catastrophe. The apocalyptic mind-set has already suffused our culture, Gibson believes. “How often do you hear the phrase ‘the twenty-second century’? [You] don’t hear it,” he points out. “Currently we don’t have a future in that sense.” Plus: Briana Younger interviews Thundercat, a bassist, producer, and songwriter who was a key collaborator of Kendrick Lamar on the album “To Pimp a Butterfly,” and who makes quirky, slightly absurdist music of his own.
