Jamie Zawinski
Were you surprised by the public response?
I wouldn't say I was surprised at how popular it was, since it was the first such thing available for Unix. In the early days I was somewhat surprised, and pleased, at how many other people contributed code to it. Working with other people and integrating their contributions has been fun, and made the package better as a whole. Unfortunately, the rate of outside contributions has decreased a lot of late. I don't have a theory as to why. Maybe it's because they don't teach C any more.
What are some of your favorite screensavers (apart from your own)
ElectroPaint by David Tristram, which I first saw on an SGI in 1991 or 1992 is to this day one of my favorites. It was a big inspiration. The original After Dark Mac savers from the mid 80s were also just so much fun. And of course the Amiga "Boing" demo. I've also long been a fan of Electric Sheep by Scott Draves.
I also tend to enjoy the sort of savers that do fan-service simulations of effects from sci-fi movies and TV, like the savers that reproduce the behaviors of HAL 9000, the Star Trek LCARS displays, the Stargate Dialing Simulator, etc. I enjoy them most when they are clearly generative rather than just slideshows or movies: anybody can hit record, but creating it from whole cloth is the cool part.
(In fact, I find it distressing when people package up a slideshow of photos and call that a "screen saver". That's no screen saver. It cheapens the term. It's just a photo album.)
I was also always impressed by any of the "Demoscene" work I ran across back In the day, though I was never involved in that world directly, not having been a 286/386 hacker.
Do you currently use a screensaver on your computer?
Of course! XScreenSaver, set to select one at random.
Do you see a future for screensavers?
Any time some pedantic jerk says "YOU KNOW, screen savers aren't really NECESSARY with modern monitors" I want to ask them "How awful is it to have been born without a soul?" Screen savers are art. As long as computers have screens, people will make art for them. I also find it amusing when I am in an art museum or gallery and see a "digital installation" where the only difference between that work and a "screen saver" is that they wrote an "artist's statement" about how it explores the dichotomy between whatever -- and/or someone gave them a grant for it."