Hi-freaking-larious.
In the first instance,
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.
and, yes, there's quite a lot more ;-)
I haven't read all of Stephenson, although I read snowcrash (+5) and cryptonomicon (-3) several times. I might eventually read all of Stephenson's work, but I'm in no hurry. Jerry gave up on quicksilver, I think, at some point, with some disparaging comments on pace, continuity and point. Which is why there's no hurry. I don't agree with some things Jerry says. For instance, he says that U.S. nuclear waste should be dropped down into the subduction zone in the Surigao deep, without compensation to the philippine government, or even coordination or permission. That's more of the same thinking which brought about the Iraq tragedy (where U.S. intervention has killed more than half a million people and led to an exodus of the most productive parts of the Iraqi population). I'm aware that he thinks Iraq is a mistake, but that's just because the U.S. can't win in Iraq. In the Philippines he calculates that the U.S. can bully the government without much of a substantive cost, so he's willing to drop the nuclear waste in philippine territory without payment.
Well, Hell no. if the U.S. wants to drop nuclear waste here, LET THEM PAY FOR IT. And ask for the privilege. It may be completely safe, but we don't care. PAY, or keep the poison on your own land.
Crap, this post got away from me and turned into an anti-US screed again. Ah well, never mind. The U.S. certainly deserves it.
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