The New York Times bestselling author of Neuromancer and Agency presents a fast-paced sci-fi thriller that takes a terrifying look into the future…Flynne Fisher lives down a country road, in a rural America where jobs are scarce, unless you count illegal drug manufacture, which she’s trying to avoid. Her brother Burton lives on money from the Veterans Administration, for neurological damage … Administration, for neurological damage suffered in the Marines’ elite Haptic Recon unit. Flynne earns what she can by assembling product at the local 3D printshop. She made more as a combat scout in an online game, playing for a rich man, but she’s had to let the shooter games go.
Wilf Netherton lives in London, seventy-some years later, on the far side of decades of slow-motion apocalypse. Things are pretty good now, for the haves, and there aren’t many have-nots left. Wilf, a high-powered publicist and celebrity-minder, fancies himself a romantic misfit, in a society where reaching into the past is just another hobby.
Burton’s been moonlighting online, secretly working security in some game prototype, a virtual world that looks vaguely like London, but a lot weirder. He’s got Flynne taking over shifts, promised her the game’s not a shooter. Still, the crime she witnesses there is plenty bad.
Flynne and Wilf are about to meet one another. Her world will be altered utterly, irrevocably, and Wilf’s, for all its decadence and power, will learn that some of these third-world types from the past can be badass.
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A fantastic approach to time travel.
I loved Gibson’s early Neuromancer, but this fell short. It’s sci-fi premise was great, I’d never seen it before, really a clever gag. But I found his prose self-consciously hip and obscure, making the read often confusing, and I found the end kind of anticlimactic after an overly long build-up.
In The Peripheral, William Gibson returns to his science fiction roots. The novel is set in two different futures, one not long from now (I’d guess around 2040), and one 70 years later. Flynne Fisher, a professional gamer and employee at a 3D printing shop, lives in a small town in rural America in the near future. Jobs are scarce, and the economy is controlled by mega-monopolies and drug dealers. Politicans are for sale to the highest bidder. Flynne’s brother Burton sustained brain trauma in the Marines, and his best friend Conner rendered an invalid. Flynne fills in for her brother doing security in what she thinks is a cyberspace simulation. There, she witnesses a brutal murder.
It isn’t a cyberspace simulation, though. In London, 70 years in Flynne’s future, people have learned how to communicate with the past, although in doing so, they change the timelines. It is primarily a hobby pursued by the ultra-rich. Earth has been decimated by climate change, pandemics, famines, and political collapse, and 80% of the population has died off. But scientists have created nanobots (“Assemblers”) that rebuild the cities and do all the manual labor. Half the story is told from Flynne’s point of view, and half from Wilf Netherton, a publicist in 22nd century London who is also caught up in events.
Inspector Ainsley Lowbeer wants Flynne to identify the killer by entering 22nd century London via a “peripheral,” a robot controlled via neural headgear. The killer, and the people he works with, reach into the past to eliminate Flynne. Burton’s network of well-armed vet friends do their best to stop these assassins.
The Peripheral is certainly imaginative, and there is enough danger and mystery to keep the plot moving. Flynne and Netherton were compelling characters–ordinary people way over their head, trying to do the best they can. I thought the book could have used better editing, though–there are some unnecessary slow spots, some rushing through scenes, and information tends to be either non-existent or dumped all at once. The prose can also be irritating, as Gibson often omits the subject of his sentences (random example: “Starting to miss the bugs.”) (That’s purely my subjective opinion).
While I thought The Peripheral could have been better, maybe with another round or two of edits, it was nevertheless an enjoyable, engaging read.
I was disappointed (in myself?) that I couldn’t finish this book. Maybe I’ll return to it, later. “Pattern Recognition” remains my favorite of Gibson’s catalog, along with the Idoru trilogy. I always wait for those paragraph long descriptions of just what’s going in. I got lost reading this new book, and I found my mind wandering away from it. But, like I said, I probably give it another lash, in the future, which is where he lives, anyway. Still, one of my favorite authors.
I picked this up not knowing quite what to expect. I won’t spoil that for you. If you liked Richard Morgan’s “Altered Carbon”…. this will get your attention. Gibson at his best.
Given the use of futuristic slang and references, I found it almost impossible to follow the story.
William Gibson is my favourite author, and this, his most recent book (as of April 2019), is a great addition to his body of work. I’ve listened to it twice, and loved it both times. His skill in world building fascinates me, as does his take on the near future.
One of Gibson’s best.