Series
Publication
Penguin (2015), 496 p.
Original publication date
2014-10-28
Collections
Awards
Locus Award (Finalist — Science Fiction Novel — 2015)
John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (Finalist — 2015)
CBC Bookie Awards (Nominee — 2015)
The Kitschies (Finalist — 2014)
Prix Aurora Award (Finalist — Novel — 2015)
NPR: Books We Love (2014)
Chicago Public Library Best of the Best: Adults (Selection — Fiction — 2014)
Description
Fiction. Science Fiction. Thriller. HTML:William Gibson returns with his first novel since 2010�??s New York Times�??bestselling Zero History. Where Flynne and her brother, Burton, live, jobs outside the drug business are rare. Fortunately, Burton has his veteran�??s benefits, for neural damage he suffered from implants during his time in the USMC�??s elite Haptic Recon force. Then one night Burton has to go out, but there�??s a job he�??s supposed to do�??a job Flynne didn�??t know he had. Beta-testing part of a new game, he tells her. The job seems to be simple: work a perimeter around the image of a tower building. Little buglike things turn up. He�??s supposed to get in their way, edge them back. That�??s all there is to it. He�??s offering Flynne a good price to take over for him. What she sees, though, isn�??t what Burton told her to expect. It might be… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member dukedom_enough
William Gibson has always been concerned with the ultra-rich. The events of Neuromancer are driven by the power and wealth of the decaying Tessier-Ashpool family. Billionaire Hubertus Bigend has his fingers in every pie in the Pattern Recognition trilogy. And from 1986’s Count Zero: “And, for
His latest takes on this question in a fast-paced thriller, peopled by characters who must live as best they can under threat of dispossession and murder by the ultrawealthy. About 15 years from today, in a small town in Georgia, the decidedly nonwealthy Flynne Fisher is coping resourcefully with persistent economic downturn. Her brother and his friends are back from the wars, all more or less damaged. One night, Flynne takes over her brother’s shift on a sort of virtual security-guard job - and witnesses a murder. Extremely powerful and dangerous people will now find her inconvenient, and she must rely upon an ally, Netherington, whom she finds via the same online channel that provided the guard job.
The Peripheral's short chapters, from Flynne’s and Netherington’s viewpoints, alternate in a smooth, steady tick-tock, while immense forces maneuver around them both. Gibson’s view of the future of the 1% has a grim verisimilitude, and his speculative technology convinces. Gibson grew up in South Carolina and Virginia, so it’s no surprise he perfectly captures Flynne’s US Southern speech patterns, but he also gets Netherington’s English ones. Witty dialog, clever observations, interesting characters: the book is everything we’ve come to expect from the Gibson of recent years. The book appears to be setting up a trilogy, but stands alone perfectly well
What disappoints here, somewhat, is that this novel is not terribly different, in its take on the future, from those of many other authors published in recent years. Thirty years ago, in 1984, the future seemed to glow through Neuromancer - a future that was really a present, one then understood by relatively few people. I suppose one revolution is enough for a writer’s career; we must be contented here with an excellent story, and another take on whatever the plutocrats have in store for the rest of us.
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an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.” Plutocracy’s future is one of today’s most important questions, and Gibson is on the case.His latest takes on this question in a fast-paced thriller, peopled by characters who must live as best they can under threat of dispossession and murder by the ultrawealthy. About 15 years from today, in a small town in Georgia, the decidedly nonwealthy Flynne Fisher is coping resourcefully with persistent economic downturn. Her brother and his friends are back from the wars, all more or less damaged. One night, Flynne takes over her brother’s shift on a sort of virtual security-guard job - and witnesses a murder. Extremely powerful and dangerous people will now find her inconvenient, and she must rely upon an ally, Netherington, whom she finds via the same online channel that provided the guard job.
The Peripheral's short chapters, from Flynne’s and Netherington’s viewpoints, alternate in a smooth, steady tick-tock, while immense forces maneuver around them both. Gibson’s view of the future of the 1% has a grim verisimilitude, and his speculative technology convinces. Gibson grew up in South Carolina and Virginia, so it’s no surprise he perfectly captures Flynne’s US Southern speech patterns, but he also gets Netherington’s English ones. Witty dialog, clever observations, interesting characters: the book is everything we’ve come to expect from the Gibson of recent years. The book appears to be setting up a trilogy, but stands alone perfectly well
What disappoints here, somewhat, is that this novel is not terribly different, in its take on the future, from those of many other authors published in recent years. Thirty years ago, in 1984, the future seemed to glow through Neuromancer - a future that was really a present, one then understood by relatively few people. I suppose one revolution is enough for a writer’s career; we must be contented here with an excellent story, and another take on whatever the plutocrats have in store for the rest of us.
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LibraryThing member RobertDay
In the 1980s, William Gibson invented the future, and coined the word 'cyberspace'. In the 1990s, he gave us the Bridge trilogy, exploring new media forms and anticipating many of the changes to urban life that we now take for granted. In the new century came the Blue Ant trilogy, which expanded
After a gap of some four years, William Gibson has come back with 'The Peripheral'. Gibson has re-set his timeframes, so we are looking at a story set in two milieus: one about 15 years from now, the other some 75 years beyond that. But in each, we are looking at the consequences of some cutting-edge technologies that are on our current horizon, such as virtual presence, 3-D printing and nanotechnology. Indeed, the 3-D printing is part of the near future world so much that it has become commodified and a part of the general background.
Slightly unusually, there is a real science-fictional device in 'The Peripheral' - time travel - or more properly, temporal viewing. The nuts and bolts of this are not explained in even the most basic hand-wavy way; but it does have a typical Gibson stamp, in that, having found out that there are ways to communicate with the past, certain parties in the future have worked out ways of monetizing it, via the most extreme form of off-shoring jobs you can imagine.
All the usual Gibson tropes are there - dysfunctional societies, political establishments that are indifferent to the plight of the individual (though the Establishment in the future London is happy to intervene when it suits - a telling observation of Britain from outside), high-tech taken for granted: but there are also things that we saw in the later Blue Ant novels - a sense of humour and even a happy ending. Though looking at the cybernetic Arts BS generator that one character uses and comparing its output to the sort of thing that passes for serious thought in some present-day artistic communities, I couldn't help wondering if again, Gibson is only just ahead of real life...
The climax to the plot is a little muted, but no less terminal for all that. The happy ending is a natural consequence of what has gone before, and it is set a year on from the main action of the novel, which is quite acceptable. Gibson has a visitor's love of London, and although future London is heavily changed from our present-day reality, it is recognisable and rings true. All in all, then, a typical William Gibson novel, with recognisable characters from real life, all the gadgets you could ask for and a worrying feeling that this is, indeed, what the future will look like.
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those themes and looked at issues relating to surveillance, new corporatism and stuff so zeitgeisty that his novels had difficulty in keeping ahead of real life. By the time he wrote 'Zero History' (2010), the books had ceased to be science fiction, because real life had finally caught up with Gibson's imagination.After a gap of some four years, William Gibson has come back with 'The Peripheral'. Gibson has re-set his timeframes, so we are looking at a story set in two milieus: one about 15 years from now, the other some 75 years beyond that. But in each, we are looking at the consequences of some cutting-edge technologies that are on our current horizon, such as virtual presence, 3-D printing and nanotechnology. Indeed, the 3-D printing is part of the near future world so much that it has become commodified and a part of the general background.
Slightly unusually, there is a real science-fictional device in 'The Peripheral' - time travel - or more properly, temporal viewing. The nuts and bolts of this are not explained in even the most basic hand-wavy way; but it does have a typical Gibson stamp, in that, having found out that there are ways to communicate with the past, certain parties in the future have worked out ways of monetizing it, via the most extreme form of off-shoring jobs you can imagine.
All the usual Gibson tropes are there - dysfunctional societies, political establishments that are indifferent to the plight of the individual (though the Establishment in the future London is happy to intervene when it suits - a telling observation of Britain from outside), high-tech taken for granted: but there are also things that we saw in the later Blue Ant novels - a sense of humour and even a happy ending. Though looking at the cybernetic Arts BS generator that one character uses and comparing its output to the sort of thing that passes for serious thought in some present-day artistic communities, I couldn't help wondering if again, Gibson is only just ahead of real life...
The climax to the plot is a little muted, but no less terminal for all that. The happy ending is a natural consequence of what has gone before, and it is set a year on from the main action of the novel, which is quite acceptable. Gibson has a visitor's love of London, and although future London is heavily changed from our present-day reality, it is recognisable and rings true. All in all, then, a typical William Gibson novel, with recognisable characters from real life, all the gadgets you could ask for and a worrying feeling that this is, indeed, what the future will look like.
Show Less
LibraryThing member jnwelch
William Gibson has been a big deal in science fiction for a long time, ever since Neuromancer came out in 1984 and won every sci-fi award in sight. More recently he started writing books situated in the present, starting with Pattern Recognition, set in 2002, which involved our obsession with
As he did with his Bridge trilogy (starting with Virtual Light, a favorite of mine), he creates a cohesive, believable environment the reader wants to spend time in, even with its lumps and flaws. Or maybe it's really two such environments. In one, our hero Flynne Fisher is scraping by in rural America with her brother ex-Marine Burton and his veteran friends, when a surveillance job in (what she thinks is) an interactive video game becomes much more. Someone from a different future London has made contact, Flynne sees something she shouldn't, and a time-travel real life game of spies and subterfuge begins.
Wilf Netherton is a PR guy (although not PR as we're used to thinking of it) in the future London. That city and the rest of the world have a fraction of today's population due to something called "the jackpot", but they also have lots of great tech. This includes "peripherals", well-made bodies you can rent and inhabit via projectional headgear. In our world, where Flynne and Burton live, money is hard to come by unless you're "building" illegal drugs, but Flynne's accidental contact with Wilf's world creates a cash infusion that drastically alters the local balance. Those with Wilf in that different future want something only Flynne can give them, and are willing to help her and her cohorts to get it.
If you're like me, you'll be disoriented at the start of the book, as it all comes at you fast and without explanation. But then it starts to sink in, and you start to see and smell and feel it, and then you're hooked. It's another entertaining adventure supplied by someone adept at imagining a future you'd travel to visit, if only you could find the airline. It's great to have Gibson back in top form. The post-ending ending (for me there seemed to be two endings, kind of like that last Lord of the Rings movie) isn't quite as good as the first ending, so I give the book a little less than four stars for that reason.
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brands and a mysterious artistic film clip circulating on the internet. That book still managed to have a sci-fi feel to it, as the main character tries to outwit the Russian Mafia concerning the film clip and also pursues answers to her own family's mystery, and so did the present day-situated ones following it. Now he's written a corker that is set in both the near future and a not-so-near future.As he did with his Bridge trilogy (starting with Virtual Light, a favorite of mine), he creates a cohesive, believable environment the reader wants to spend time in, even with its lumps and flaws. Or maybe it's really two such environments. In one, our hero Flynne Fisher is scraping by in rural America with her brother ex-Marine Burton and his veteran friends, when a surveillance job in (what she thinks is) an interactive video game becomes much more. Someone from a different future London has made contact, Flynne sees something she shouldn't, and a time-travel real life game of spies and subterfuge begins.
Wilf Netherton is a PR guy (although not PR as we're used to thinking of it) in the future London. That city and the rest of the world have a fraction of today's population due to something called "the jackpot", but they also have lots of great tech. This includes "peripherals", well-made bodies you can rent and inhabit via projectional headgear. In our world, where Flynne and Burton live, money is hard to come by unless you're "building" illegal drugs, but Flynne's accidental contact with Wilf's world creates a cash infusion that drastically alters the local balance. Those with Wilf in that different future want something only Flynne can give them, and are willing to help her and her cohorts to get it.
If you're like me, you'll be disoriented at the start of the book, as it all comes at you fast and without explanation. But then it starts to sink in, and you start to see and smell and feel it, and then you're hooked. It's another entertaining adventure supplied by someone adept at imagining a future you'd travel to visit, if only you could find the airline. It's great to have Gibson back in top form. The post-ending ending (for me there seemed to be two endings, kind of like that last Lord of the Rings movie) isn't quite as good as the first ending, so I give the book a little less than four stars for that reason.
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LibraryThing member Keith.G.Richie
I liked this book. It went down easy and fast, like a real chocolate milkshake.
Gibson's two futures (three?) are well-described, if a little thin for my taste. With a lot of pages here, I would have enjoyed a bit more depth into the later future of Netherton and Lev. I'd especially have been
But I really enjoyed the entire idea, and the characters were fairly interesting, if again a little thinner than I'd have preferred. I like time-travel stories more than I should, and this take on the genre was somewhat novel.
From early on in the book, it unfolded like a blockbuster movie, to the point where I was casting in my head as I was reading. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the ending truly went over the top in a "happy movie ending" sort of way. I'll admit there is a sappy part of me that liked how all these emotionally broken characters get to have wonderful love and partners in the end... but it really yanked me out of the book, and at that point I was trying to decide which crappy song by which crappy bubblegum pop star would be playing over the ending and the credits.
3.5 stars, not 4.
Gibson's two futures (three?) are well-described, if a little thin for my taste. With a lot of pages here, I would have enjoyed a bit more depth into the later future of Netherton and Lev. I'd especially have been
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interested in learning more about the kleptocracy, and what Lowbeer's role truly is there. And what the hell was The Remembrancer, anyway? That one went over my head.But I really enjoyed the entire idea, and the characters were fairly interesting, if again a little thinner than I'd have preferred. I like time-travel stories more than I should, and this take on the genre was somewhat novel.
From early on in the book, it unfolded like a blockbuster movie, to the point where I was casting in my head as I was reading. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the ending truly went over the top in a "happy movie ending" sort of way. I'll admit there is a sappy part of me that liked how all these emotionally broken characters get to have wonderful love and partners in the end... but it really yanked me out of the book, and at that point I was trying to decide which crappy song by which crappy bubblegum pop star would be playing over the ending and the credits.
3.5 stars, not 4.
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LibraryThing member iansales
The last Gibson novel I read before tackling this one was Virtual Light back in 1994, although I’d read the Sprawl trilogy and Burning Chrome prior to that. I then sort of lost interest in what he was writing, and it’s only in recent years that I decided to give his novels another go… So when
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I spotted The Peripheral in a charity shop, I bought it and it sat on my bookshelves for about six months before I picked it up and started reading it… I believe The Peripheral is more science-fictional than the novels Gibson has been writing since the late 1990s, given he’s no longer published as genre – not, of course, that The Peripheral was published as category science fiction anyway – but this novel’s story is, I believe, more overtly sfnal than the rest of Gibson’s output of the last decade or so. There’s a really cool idea at its core, although the mechanics of it are left unexplained: a mysterious server on the Internet (there’s a running joke it’s located in China) in the early twenty-second century allows people to communicate with the past. But only just less than a century into their past. And any intereference in that past causes it to branch off, and form a “stub”. Meanwhile, in near-future small-town USA, a young woman substitutes for her brother in what she thinks is an online game… but she’s actually flying a drone in twenty-second century London, working security for the sister of a famous performance artist. And she witnesses that sister being murdered by nanobots. Which kicks off a police investigation in London, a symptom of a struggle for power between two immensely wealthy factions, and which then leads to heavy interference in the near-future USA in order to protect the witness (like making her and her family the richest people in the country). (The title, incidentally, refers to the android avatar the young woman uses when visiting the future (to her) London.) About halfway through the novel, it’s revealed – although there are some pretty heavy hints – that eighty percent of the world’s population had died during the latter half of the twenty-first century, thanks to climate crash, economy crashes, epidemics, etc. You’d think with all this going on, I’d have been more impressed with The Peripheral. But… Everyone in the novel is near-superhuman – in the US, they’re ex-special forces or something; in London, nanotechnology gives everyone something like superpowers. No one in the book comes across as a human character. And then there’s callousness with which people are treated – this a book with a high bodycount. There’s even mention that in the twenty-third century, interfering in “stubs” is a hobby. In other words, those people enjoy fucking up the lives, often fatally, of more than six billion people. Which, I guess, makes them little different to the immensely rich today. But I don’t want to read novels in which stuff like that is treated casually, novels which set their stories in worlds which operate with all the morality of a computer game. Science fiction has always been a genre which seems happy to dehumanise every one except the protagonist and his, or her, band of hardy chums. That’s one way in which science fiction seriously needs to grow up. But it’s disappointing to see a writer of Gibson’s stature seemingly subscribing to that view. Show Less
LibraryThing member JimElkins
A Misunderstanding of Fiction
Gibson occupies an unusual place between literary fiction and the kinds of fantasy and sci-fi that use language as a minimal, transparent vehicle for fantasy. He has been read by any number of critics, including Fred Jameson, as a sign of postmodernism and the digital
I am not interested in fiction as litmus test or predictor of culture, and that's one reason I don't read much science fiction, fantasy, or genre fiction. But I think there's another, more interesting issue here: it occurs to me there's a sense in which projects like "The Peripheral" are made possible by a certain reading of literary fiction that could be described as a misunderstanding.
1. Writing
Gibson is a very good writer, by literary-fiction standards. Most every sentence is crafted. There are only a few passages that can be read at speed, just in order to get a sense of the story: most of the book needs to be read slowly because of what he's doing to language. His observations, dialogue, descriptions, and metaphors are often thoughtful and persuasive. He describes Tasmanian tigers as "carnivorous kangaroos, in wolf outfits with Cubist stripes" (p. 392). There's plenty of sharp-edged writing.
At the same time, however, he seems to feel as if the "sense of the new" that remains a criterion of serious writing can often best be achieved by neologisms. Inventive language -- I am thinking of anyone from Flaubert to Eimear McBride -- defamiliarizes. Gibson's does too, but mainly by inventing things that don't exist. "The Peripheral" is full of imagined sorts of fashions and fabrics, tattoos that move, walls that are transformed by nanobots, teleportation of all sorts, out-of-body states, future weapons, future gardening with biogenic trees, several different kinds of remotely operated surgical devices, new kinds of encryption involving invented languages... it's a long list. Those are the things that make the language new, more than choices of trope or syntax. "Her hair white as the crown Macon had printed in Fabbit" is a good enough example (p. 222). It refers to a teleportation "crown" that had been 3-D printed by a company named Fabbit; the sentence is typical of the way Gibson avoids ordinary description, but leans on imagined things and neologisms.
2. Affect
If I try to imagine this book without the specifics of its plot -- which means subtracting all the hundreds of references to peripherals, sigils, imagined technologies, and time travel -- and ask myself what feelings, what desires or anxieties, drive the plot, then I come to two things in particular:
(a) A fear of the present. No character in this book wants to live in the present (with the telling exception of some romantic moments in moonlight, which are after all about wishing for an impossible ideal). The writing itself doesn't want to be in the present, and there's an ongoing effort to open a space between the writing and every experience we know. Here is an example. A "sigil," in the book, is a kind of logo or icon that appears in a person's visual field and can be expanded into a "video feed" or even into an immersive virtual reality. Gibson often describes sigils the way a person might describe a logo. "An unfamiliar sigil appeared," he writes, "a sort of impacted spiral, tribal blackwork" (p. 236).
Here he's working hard, like an author of literary fiction, to defamiliarize. An "impacted spiral" is an interesting thing to try to picture, and a reader may have to look up "blackwork" to understand what he's conjuring. Imagining both the "impacted spiral" and the blackwork as an icon adds a layer of imaginative work.
The cumulative effect of sentences like this (which amount to maybe half the sentences in the book) is to make it seem that the author feels it's hard to make things new: that it's necessary to work continuously to produce even an incremental distance from the present. At the same time the work is fragile, because it's superficial (here he's only adjusting our notions of what an icon might look like). It's as if he feels he needs to pry open a space between the present and the place he wishes to be, as if it constantly needs to be renewed, because the fragile invented future is in danger of collapsing back onto the unbearable present.
(b) A desire to disappear. Characters in "The Peripheral" nearly always prefer dream states, projections, out-of-body experiences, time travel, medication, and dissociative experiences to living where they are. The book must have hundreds of examples of things that help people disappear: robots they can inhabit, toys they can wheel around by remote control, game worlds they can enter, Matrix-style teleportation comas they can enter, walls they can walk through, stand-ins they can program, cars and clothing that can be cloaked, cosplay zones populated with avatars and cyborgs, invisible tables in restaurants (eg, pp. 227-8).
The characters are ostensibly driven by the fairly complex plot, but affectively, in terms of their desires, they all want to vanish. As I read, I often thought of the author, as opposed to his narrative: to write a book like this, I thought, a person needs to want to disappear. The language of "The Peripheral" is a concerted attempt to "cloak" ordinary writing in a veneer of micro-metaphors, translucent to ordinary meaning but safe from it. The technology described in the book is an equally forceful attempt to picture ways that machines might help us dissolve some of our bodily mass and material into a foam of biogenic digital projections. The plot, too, can be understood this way, because it turns on time travel, and there are people in both the "present" (our near future) and "future" (seventy years farther on) who want to disappear, both within their own times, and within the "present"; and the plot is arranged in such a way that there are uncountable "presents," which diverge even as we read. What could be more comforting to someone who wants not to be present?
In a sense this is what's meant by "escapism" in popular fiction and film, except that here it is not only a matter of an invented world, transparently described, but of the act of writing, in a literary sense, put to the same purpose.
In the end, I don't mind the anxious ongoing invention of endless neologisms, technologies, and time-travel plots. They can, after all, be ways to "make it new." But it is a misunderstanding of Pound's injunction to think that language itself can't be made new unless it is injected with nanobots of unfamiliarity. That's one reason I won't be reading any more Gibson -- or, I think, any more genre fiction. The other tunnels under that first one: it's that the desire to escape, to vanish into time or the cyberworld is itself uninteresting because it is relentless and uninterrogated. It's the lack of reflection on the desire itself that puts this book outside the conversations of modernism and postmodernism.
Gibson occupies an unusual place between literary fiction and the kinds of fantasy and sci-fi that use language as a minimal, transparent vehicle for fantasy. He has been read by any number of critics, including Fred Jameson, as a sign of postmodernism and the digital
Show More
age; and he has been taken as a kind of cyberworld version of Nostradamus, full of predictions about our future. The implied author of "The Peripheral" is clearly engaged in both activities; the book is full of thought experiments about plausible or perfected technologies, and there are some extended meditations on the possible future courses of the world, climate, economics, and culture. I am not interested in fiction as litmus test or predictor of culture, and that's one reason I don't read much science fiction, fantasy, or genre fiction. But I think there's another, more interesting issue here: it occurs to me there's a sense in which projects like "The Peripheral" are made possible by a certain reading of literary fiction that could be described as a misunderstanding.
1. Writing
Gibson is a very good writer, by literary-fiction standards. Most every sentence is crafted. There are only a few passages that can be read at speed, just in order to get a sense of the story: most of the book needs to be read slowly because of what he's doing to language. His observations, dialogue, descriptions, and metaphors are often thoughtful and persuasive. He describes Tasmanian tigers as "carnivorous kangaroos, in wolf outfits with Cubist stripes" (p. 392). There's plenty of sharp-edged writing.
At the same time, however, he seems to feel as if the "sense of the new" that remains a criterion of serious writing can often best be achieved by neologisms. Inventive language -- I am thinking of anyone from Flaubert to Eimear McBride -- defamiliarizes. Gibson's does too, but mainly by inventing things that don't exist. "The Peripheral" is full of imagined sorts of fashions and fabrics, tattoos that move, walls that are transformed by nanobots, teleportation of all sorts, out-of-body states, future weapons, future gardening with biogenic trees, several different kinds of remotely operated surgical devices, new kinds of encryption involving invented languages... it's a long list. Those are the things that make the language new, more than choices of trope or syntax. "Her hair white as the crown Macon had printed in Fabbit" is a good enough example (p. 222). It refers to a teleportation "crown" that had been 3-D printed by a company named Fabbit; the sentence is typical of the way Gibson avoids ordinary description, but leans on imagined things and neologisms.
2. Affect
If I try to imagine this book without the specifics of its plot -- which means subtracting all the hundreds of references to peripherals, sigils, imagined technologies, and time travel -- and ask myself what feelings, what desires or anxieties, drive the plot, then I come to two things in particular:
(a) A fear of the present. No character in this book wants to live in the present (with the telling exception of some romantic moments in moonlight, which are after all about wishing for an impossible ideal). The writing itself doesn't want to be in the present, and there's an ongoing effort to open a space between the writing and every experience we know. Here is an example. A "sigil," in the book, is a kind of logo or icon that appears in a person's visual field and can be expanded into a "video feed" or even into an immersive virtual reality. Gibson often describes sigils the way a person might describe a logo. "An unfamiliar sigil appeared," he writes, "a sort of impacted spiral, tribal blackwork" (p. 236).
Here he's working hard, like an author of literary fiction, to defamiliarize. An "impacted spiral" is an interesting thing to try to picture, and a reader may have to look up "blackwork" to understand what he's conjuring. Imagining both the "impacted spiral" and the blackwork as an icon adds a layer of imaginative work.
The cumulative effect of sentences like this (which amount to maybe half the sentences in the book) is to make it seem that the author feels it's hard to make things new: that it's necessary to work continuously to produce even an incremental distance from the present. At the same time the work is fragile, because it's superficial (here he's only adjusting our notions of what an icon might look like). It's as if he feels he needs to pry open a space between the present and the place he wishes to be, as if it constantly needs to be renewed, because the fragile invented future is in danger of collapsing back onto the unbearable present.
(b) A desire to disappear. Characters in "The Peripheral" nearly always prefer dream states, projections, out-of-body experiences, time travel, medication, and dissociative experiences to living where they are. The book must have hundreds of examples of things that help people disappear: robots they can inhabit, toys they can wheel around by remote control, game worlds they can enter, Matrix-style teleportation comas they can enter, walls they can walk through, stand-ins they can program, cars and clothing that can be cloaked, cosplay zones populated with avatars and cyborgs, invisible tables in restaurants (eg, pp. 227-8).
The characters are ostensibly driven by the fairly complex plot, but affectively, in terms of their desires, they all want to vanish. As I read, I often thought of the author, as opposed to his narrative: to write a book like this, I thought, a person needs to want to disappear. The language of "The Peripheral" is a concerted attempt to "cloak" ordinary writing in a veneer of micro-metaphors, translucent to ordinary meaning but safe from it. The technology described in the book is an equally forceful attempt to picture ways that machines might help us dissolve some of our bodily mass and material into a foam of biogenic digital projections. The plot, too, can be understood this way, because it turns on time travel, and there are people in both the "present" (our near future) and "future" (seventy years farther on) who want to disappear, both within their own times, and within the "present"; and the plot is arranged in such a way that there are uncountable "presents," which diverge even as we read. What could be more comforting to someone who wants not to be present?
In a sense this is what's meant by "escapism" in popular fiction and film, except that here it is not only a matter of an invented world, transparently described, but of the act of writing, in a literary sense, put to the same purpose.
In the end, I don't mind the anxious ongoing invention of endless neologisms, technologies, and time-travel plots. They can, after all, be ways to "make it new." But it is a misunderstanding of Pound's injunction to think that language itself can't be made new unless it is injected with nanobots of unfamiliarity. That's one reason I won't be reading any more Gibson -- or, I think, any more genre fiction. The other tunnels under that first one: it's that the desire to escape, to vanish into time or the cyberworld is itself uninteresting because it is relentless and uninterrogated. It's the lack of reflection on the desire itself that puts this book outside the conversations of modernism and postmodernism.
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LibraryThing member grizzly.anderson
The Peripheral is set in the not-too-distant future, and in the further future and told from two view points in alternating chapters. The device of the alternating view points is more than a little confusing at first, and I eventually went back and re-read the first 10 of so chapters of one of the
The Peripheral borrows some of the political machinations and mystery aspects of Gibson's recent Blue Ant series, while also going back to some of the more Science Fiction, slightly dystopian futures of his cyber punk stories. At some point in the future The Jackpot, a combination of social, economic, political, and environmental collapse, has drastically reduced the world population and brought about the rise of Kleptocracy (yes, it means exactly what it sounds like - a political system of thieves) as the dominant world order. In that future, the most powerful of the Kleptocrats can create versions of the past world, "stubs" created/powered/sustained by "the server" in some never-explained process. These stubs start out with the same history as the "real" world right up to the date the point where the future starts to interact with the past. From then on the stub diverges and follows a different path. It is never clear if the stubs really exist, or if they are just incredibly elaborate simulations of some kind. In any case, communication is possible between the two, and from the time initial contact is made their timelines proceed perfectly in sync; an hour in one is an hour in the other.
The near future view, from the stub, is provided by a young woman in a small southern town named Flynne Fisher. While getting paid to sit in as her brother and play a video game, she witnesses a rather gruesome death. The future view is provided by Wilf Netherton, a drunk, cynical PR man to the rich and powerful. It quickly becomes apparent that what Flynne saw was actually a murder in that future world, and that she is existing in a stub. In the post-jackpot world people are just as likely to inhabit a remote-presence body called a peripheral (cue credits) as they are to go places or do things in person. By connecting Flynne's consciousness to a peripheral she is able to visit the post-jackpot world and try to identify the killer. Back in the stub two different factions from the future are fighting a proxy war of economics and corrupt politic to either protect or kill Flynne before she can identify the bad guys.
The post-Jackpot future is mostly urban, dark, mostly depressing, and mostly empty, while the near-future stub is rural, brighter and a bit more hopeful, if still dried out, corrupt and depressed.
Ultimately the story follows Flynne and Wilf is just there to provide the alternate viewpoint of the bits of action that happen in the future timeline when Flynne isn't present. The Peripheral of the title is just as easily the stub world that Flynne exists in as it is the body she inhabits in the future. But it isn't even about Flynne, it is about mystery and politics and power. Very rarely does Gibson write just one book on a subject, but I have a hard time seeing where he would take a series of books in this universe.
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viewpoints just to fit those pieces of the story back together in my head. Once you get past that gimick to the point where the story line of the two viewpoints starts to converge the novel becomes much more readable and engaging.The Peripheral borrows some of the political machinations and mystery aspects of Gibson's recent Blue Ant series, while also going back to some of the more Science Fiction, slightly dystopian futures of his cyber punk stories. At some point in the future The Jackpot, a combination of social, economic, political, and environmental collapse, has drastically reduced the world population and brought about the rise of Kleptocracy (yes, it means exactly what it sounds like - a political system of thieves) as the dominant world order. In that future, the most powerful of the Kleptocrats can create versions of the past world, "stubs" created/powered/sustained by "the server" in some never-explained process. These stubs start out with the same history as the "real" world right up to the date the point where the future starts to interact with the past. From then on the stub diverges and follows a different path. It is never clear if the stubs really exist, or if they are just incredibly elaborate simulations of some kind. In any case, communication is possible between the two, and from the time initial contact is made their timelines proceed perfectly in sync; an hour in one is an hour in the other.
The near future view, from the stub, is provided by a young woman in a small southern town named Flynne Fisher. While getting paid to sit in as her brother and play a video game, she witnesses a rather gruesome death. The future view is provided by Wilf Netherton, a drunk, cynical PR man to the rich and powerful. It quickly becomes apparent that what Flynne saw was actually a murder in that future world, and that she is existing in a stub. In the post-jackpot world people are just as likely to inhabit a remote-presence body called a peripheral (cue credits) as they are to go places or do things in person. By connecting Flynne's consciousness to a peripheral she is able to visit the post-jackpot world and try to identify the killer. Back in the stub two different factions from the future are fighting a proxy war of economics and corrupt politic to either protect or kill Flynne before she can identify the bad guys.
The post-Jackpot future is mostly urban, dark, mostly depressing, and mostly empty, while the near-future stub is rural, brighter and a bit more hopeful, if still dried out, corrupt and depressed.
Ultimately the story follows Flynne and Wilf is just there to provide the alternate viewpoint of the bits of action that happen in the future timeline when Flynne isn't present. The Peripheral of the title is just as easily the stub world that Flynne exists in as it is the body she inhabits in the future. But it isn't even about Flynne, it is about mystery and politics and power. Very rarely does Gibson write just one book on a subject, but I have a hard time seeing where he would take a series of books in this universe.
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LibraryThing member Kellswitch
Peripheral is a return to writing “future” science fiction for the author and it is a very welcome one. As much as I loved the Blue Ant series of books there just seems to be a different feel to his books set in the more distant future.
Peripheral is set in a future slightly further out from
Another thing that adds to the sense of disorientation is that very few of the concepts and terms that are unique to each one are almost never explained, forcing the reader to either just except or struggle to make sense of them. I also found this very effective, once I got used to it.
The main plot, the mystery, that in many books would have been the main point of the story, felt rather secondary here. The worlds and characters were far more important, with the plot showing up just enough to keep things driving forward. For me this works and is pretty consistent with William Gibson’s previous writings.
The only let down for me was the very ending, it felt too rushed and too pat, too perfect, too much like wish fulfillment. But even with that the book as a whole was well worth the read.
Peripheral is set in a future slightly further out from
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our own and also in one even further out then that and each chapter is from the perspective of the protagonist in each time line, alternating back and forth with each chapter. This was a bit disorientating at first, which I suspect was the plan but also really, really works at making each timeline feel distinct from each other. Another thing that adds to the sense of disorientation is that very few of the concepts and terms that are unique to each one are almost never explained, forcing the reader to either just except or struggle to make sense of them. I also found this very effective, once I got used to it.
The main plot, the mystery, that in many books would have been the main point of the story, felt rather secondary here. The worlds and characters were far more important, with the plot showing up just enough to keep things driving forward. For me this works and is pretty consistent with William Gibson’s previous writings.
The only let down for me was the very ending, it felt too rushed and too pat, too perfect, too much like wish fulfillment. But even with that the book as a whole was well worth the read.
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LibraryThing member elenchus
Gibson's novelty in The Peripheral is that alternate worlds (and timelines) are accessible via a mysterious server, allegedly Chinese. The characters have no evidence that matter travels between timelines: what's clear is that information does. Gibson's focus on the cybernetic aspects renders the
The plot borrows from soap opera and spy thriller, with secrets and subterfuge, agendas and cons linking characters and generating action. The difference between this story and those genre dramas is the resulting ripples from conflicts have larger amplitude, reach farther shores, than they otherwise would. Technology in effect amplifies the human imprint, and Gibson suggests we are all too willing to wade in without much consideration for this beyond our immediate concerns. It's a surprising yet satisfying return to Golden Age / pulp notions of receiving radio waves from a past or future: message come through clearly enough, and are indistinguishable from regular radio, so what happens if we begin to treat them, in principle, as another newscast or business opportunity? (And then, my dawning realisation that cyberspace itself, in the original Sprawl stories, was just another radio.)
Is this the first in another trilogy, or a standalone? It's possible the stubs, the apparent time travel are merely simulations.
//
Gibson effectively revisits his Sprawl universe. He returns to a single storyline, as presented in his short stories and Neuromancer, though as in later novels the story is assembled from shards and multiple characters, and superficially is anything but a straightforward narrative. Then too, the setting is a cousin of his fictional Boston-Atlanta Metro Area, now featuring rural Georgia (USA) and a lockdown London. Again, characters quickly find themselves shifted from familiar (to them) contexts to a wider stage, more entangled happenings, with broader implications for their world than their customary. Finally, Gibson uncovers another facet of one of his key themes, usually glossed the street finds its own uses for things, that being the hidden consequences of that tendency. So, not a Sprawl sequel, rather a reboot given what's transpired since those novels, applying similar logic and following up similar concerns. It's a return to form, recognisable yet not a simple rehash.
GIbson somehow levers an outsize payload into his spare prose. Though events come thick and fast, and often occur offstage, and descriptions are limited to what his characters see or think, the resulting mosaic is layered and richly observed. Frequently comments arrive on the page as seemingly tangential remarks in conversation or trivial background settings; in fact, these are the substance of the book. In one scene, Netherton distractedly watches articulate Lego bricks while speaking with Leon of alcoholism laminates & cognitive therapy modules, even as Leon takes a call on his phone and discusses surveillance and personal assistant AI. Overall, a blend of recognisable, slightly improved, and completely foreign technologies in one scene. The eggs and broiled tomato included.
Here "peripheral" is a term for a second body, used when traveling virtually to another timeline: the host body is artificial, though conceived as sophisticated and agile as a real body. A wink at the term used in early PC generations for a second input or output device, and perhaps also the notion of the internet everting and the resulting irrelevance of any distinction between virtual and real. (A headline in February 2015 suggested full-body transplants were "2 years away".)
//
synopsis | Flynne does a favour for Burton, and quickly find the job is not beta testing a new game environment, or: not only that. Netherton's latest event marketing campaign is hijacked and decides the best damage control is to walk away, perhaps for good. Lowbeer, relying on AI augmentation and her own extensive personal history, figures the global cataclysm known as The Jackpot connects Flynne and Netherton, and seems willing to bend their needs to her own will.
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specifics of time travel (or space travel) irrelevant to his story, for all that matters is what confronts the characters, none of whom are the technology's inventors or owners. In this way Gibson deftly leaves aside the nature of technology, looking instead at its influence. The plot borrows from soap opera and spy thriller, with secrets and subterfuge, agendas and cons linking characters and generating action. The difference between this story and those genre dramas is the resulting ripples from conflicts have larger amplitude, reach farther shores, than they otherwise would. Technology in effect amplifies the human imprint, and Gibson suggests we are all too willing to wade in without much consideration for this beyond our immediate concerns. It's a surprising yet satisfying return to Golden Age / pulp notions of receiving radio waves from a past or future: message come through clearly enough, and are indistinguishable from regular radio, so what happens if we begin to treat them, in principle, as another newscast or business opportunity? (And then, my dawning realisation that cyberspace itself, in the original Sprawl stories, was just another radio.)
Is this the first in another trilogy, or a standalone? It's possible the stubs, the apparent time travel are merely simulations.
//
Gibson effectively revisits his Sprawl universe. He returns to a single storyline, as presented in his short stories and Neuromancer, though as in later novels the story is assembled from shards and multiple characters, and superficially is anything but a straightforward narrative. Then too, the setting is a cousin of his fictional Boston-Atlanta Metro Area, now featuring rural Georgia (USA) and a lockdown London. Again, characters quickly find themselves shifted from familiar (to them) contexts to a wider stage, more entangled happenings, with broader implications for their world than their customary. Finally, Gibson uncovers another facet of one of his key themes, usually glossed the street finds its own uses for things, that being the hidden consequences of that tendency. So, not a Sprawl sequel, rather a reboot given what's transpired since those novels, applying similar logic and following up similar concerns. It's a return to form, recognisable yet not a simple rehash.
GIbson somehow levers an outsize payload into his spare prose. Though events come thick and fast, and often occur offstage, and descriptions are limited to what his characters see or think, the resulting mosaic is layered and richly observed. Frequently comments arrive on the page as seemingly tangential remarks in conversation or trivial background settings; in fact, these are the substance of the book. In one scene, Netherton distractedly watches articulate Lego bricks while speaking with Leon of alcoholism laminates & cognitive therapy modules, even as Leon takes a call on his phone and discusses surveillance and personal assistant AI. Overall, a blend of recognisable, slightly improved, and completely foreign technologies in one scene. The eggs and broiled tomato included.
Here "peripheral" is a term for a second body, used when traveling virtually to another timeline: the host body is artificial, though conceived as sophisticated and agile as a real body. A wink at the term used in early PC generations for a second input or output device, and perhaps also the notion of the internet everting and the resulting irrelevance of any distinction between virtual and real. (A headline in February 2015 suggested full-body transplants were "2 years away".)
//
synopsis | Flynne does a favour for Burton, and quickly find the job is not beta testing a new game environment, or: not only that. Netherton's latest event marketing campaign is hijacked and decides the best damage control is to walk away, perhaps for good. Lowbeer, relying on AI augmentation and her own extensive personal history, figures the global cataclysm known as The Jackpot connects Flynne and Netherton, and seems willing to bend their needs to her own will.
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LibraryThing member Gwendydd
There were many interesting concepts here, but the book was really confusing and I never did understand a lot of what happened, so I didn't enjoy this very much.
In the not-too-distant future, the Chinese have somehow figured out a way to interact with the past (even the main characters don't know
Even the plot summary is confusing. I'm not one to shy away from dense or confusing sci-fi, and I can usually piece it together and make sense of it all, but many elements of this book never made sense to me. Everything seemed very contrived. I never understood why two factions from the future were fighting over what happened in the stub. I never understood almost everything about Lowbeer and her motivations. It seems like the whole book could have ended about 40 pages in if they had just asked Flynne to describe the murderer. And if Flynne needed to ID the murderer, why did that require so many days of visits to the future?
On top of that, I didn't find the characters to be at all interesting. Most of them were downright unlikeable, but even the best of them were flat and under-developed.
All in all, despite some interesting concepts, this was a major disappointment.
In the not-too-distant future, the Chinese have somehow figured out a way to interact with the past (even the main characters don't know
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how this is possible). Interacting with the past creates a different timeline, known as a stub. The Peripheral follows two interacting timelines. One is a very near-future timeline, set in poor rural America, where a damaged war vet and his sister think they are playing a video game, when in reality, they are operating drones in a more distant future. In the distant future timeline, a woman has been murdered, and the people who created the stub are trying to figure out who murdered her.Even the plot summary is confusing. I'm not one to shy away from dense or confusing sci-fi, and I can usually piece it together and make sense of it all, but many elements of this book never made sense to me. Everything seemed very contrived. I never understood why two factions from the future were fighting over what happened in the stub. I never understood almost everything about Lowbeer and her motivations. It seems like the whole book could have ended about 40 pages in if they had just asked Flynne to describe the murderer. And if Flynne needed to ID the murderer, why did that require so many days of visits to the future?
On top of that, I didn't find the characters to be at all interesting. Most of them were downright unlikeable, but even the best of them were flat and under-developed.
All in all, despite some interesting concepts, this was a major disappointment.
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LibraryThing member AltheaAnn
"Eras are conveniences, particularly for those who never experienced them. We carve history from totalities beyond our grasp. Bolt labels on the result. Handles. Then speak of the handles as though they were things in themselves."
Yes... but I just have to say, speaking of eras... WOO-HOO - William
It also has a purely science-fictional premise: a method of contacting alternate realities has been discovered. The exact mechanics of this are hazy, but once an alternate timeline has been contacted, the two remain locked in parallel. It's not possible to physically travel between the two - but information can get through. This means that communication is possible - and, with the creation of 'robot' bodies, a 'virtual' presence can be maintained.
Human nature being what it is, any technology with a potential for abuse probably will be abused.
In a world very much like what our own near-future will probably be like, a group of young adults is caught in a dead-end small-town. The local economy is dependent on illegal drugs. Actual medicines are nearly completely unaffordable for the average person. Veterans of foreign wars are physically and emotionally damaged - and pretty much on their own, with only minimal government benefits. Our protagonist, Flynne (known online as Easy Ice) and her brother occasionally pick up some cash by playing online games for wealthy players' campaigns. They both assume their latest offer is like previous ones... but it turns out to be something weirder. What they're told is a 'game' is no virtual sci-fi world, but an actual future.
And when Flynne witnesses something while online that some people wish she hadn't seen, she and her friends find themselves in danger from people whose existence they can't even have imagined, and up past their necks in bizarre power games in which the fate of their world could be at stake.
"People who couldn't imagine themselves capable of evil were at a major disadvantage in dealing with people who didn't need to imagine, because they already were. ... It was always a mistake, to believe those people were different, special, infected with something that was inhuman, subhuman, fundamentally other."
Excellent, excellent book. (As always, from Gibson.) Highly recommended.
Yes... but I just have to say, speaking of eras... WOO-HOO - William
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Gibson is back in the era of the definitely-pretty-far-in-the-future! Not that I didn't wholly love his recent books that were in the right-around-the-corner-future, but I felt like we were catching up... 'The Peripheral' leaps ahead, again, with speculation and extrapolation based on today's technological and social concerns, making the book feel every bit as fresh and timely as 'Neuromancer' did in the 80's.It also has a purely science-fictional premise: a method of contacting alternate realities has been discovered. The exact mechanics of this are hazy, but once an alternate timeline has been contacted, the two remain locked in parallel. It's not possible to physically travel between the two - but information can get through. This means that communication is possible - and, with the creation of 'robot' bodies, a 'virtual' presence can be maintained.
Human nature being what it is, any technology with a potential for abuse probably will be abused.
In a world very much like what our own near-future will probably be like, a group of young adults is caught in a dead-end small-town. The local economy is dependent on illegal drugs. Actual medicines are nearly completely unaffordable for the average person. Veterans of foreign wars are physically and emotionally damaged - and pretty much on their own, with only minimal government benefits. Our protagonist, Flynne (known online as Easy Ice) and her brother occasionally pick up some cash by playing online games for wealthy players' campaigns. They both assume their latest offer is like previous ones... but it turns out to be something weirder. What they're told is a 'game' is no virtual sci-fi world, but an actual future.
And when Flynne witnesses something while online that some people wish she hadn't seen, she and her friends find themselves in danger from people whose existence they can't even have imagined, and up past their necks in bizarre power games in which the fate of their world could be at stake.
"People who couldn't imagine themselves capable of evil were at a major disadvantage in dealing with people who didn't need to imagine, because they already were. ... It was always a mistake, to believe those people were different, special, infected with something that was inhuman, subhuman, fundamentally other."
Excellent, excellent book. (As always, from Gibson.) Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member jeroenvandorp
"Fuck hell." "Is it?" "'Fraid so." "Why does she?" "Guess good as mine."
Do people talk this way? Yes they do. They do talk like this in every William Gibson novel. It's a pity, because the result is they all look alike. They all seem to have the same mind set. They all understand each other's lingo
Another problem. Have you ever heard a '60s hippie talk? Have you ever heard an '80s yup spout its jargon? Familiar with today's language fads? These differences are all gone, whether we're in the 21st or 22nd century. Even 70 years apart it's all the same.
After some time you start to suspect who the characters in this book are. And in some way, that's classical Gibson as well. William Gibson lets you discover what is going on without telling or explaining. That typical disorienting perspective has its charms. But it can be a risk if you want the reader to bond with your book. Maybe it doesn't bother Gibson that it could mean only aficionados will read them.
So much for the negatives. The characters might be a bit one dimensional, the story is clever. An ex-soldier gets paid to play in what seems to be a game. When he needs to leave town he asks his sister Flynne to be a stand-in. During her shift she witnesses something that might not be a game. And soon she is in physical danger. Here the clever part comes around the corner. Her opponents are from the future. Not the Terminator kind, but the quantum computer kind. Seventy years in the future sophisticated hardware can contact the past. And so Flynne and her band of brothers and sisters get a glimpse from the future. No, *a* future. When future people use this computer, history splits off in a different direction.
Flynne gets a ride in the future through the computer, packed into a biomechanical robot. It's called a peripheral, hence the title. And the future gets a ride in the past via a Segway with an iPad on it. I think.
The story is all about the future manipulating Flynne's present. In the end things get alright and they live happy ever after. I got the impression that Gibson didn't know how to end the story after he led Flynne's world to its conclusion. That is not a problem, but when the action is over, the story ends too abrupt to my liking. Like nothing happened and with the future restored. The future contacting the past is quintessential for one large development and everything related. But for the small things of day to day life it seems inessential. Especially for the interactions between the people of Flynne-land.
Flynne's social surroundings can best be described as trailer-trashy. But these people care about each other, which is a pleasant surprise. They all stand with another in the face of adversity and they keep their warm relations.
Flynne is no Cayce from Pattern Recognition. At the end of the book she's in essence in the same position as in the beginning. Her role might have been pivotal, but she's only an actor directed by others. It would have been good if you could see some catharsis, or at least some change in her personality. After all she experiences something extraordinary: living in two times at the same time.
As usual the story is fast paced with short chapters. The titles consist of hip quotes from the chapters themselves. And as usual Gibson is best in developing ideas that baffle you. If only his characters would do the same.
Do people talk this way? Yes they do. They do talk like this in every William Gibson novel. It's a pity, because the result is they all look alike. They all seem to have the same mind set. They all understand each other's lingo
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immediately. And it makes it hard to bond or to (dis)like characters. Not to mention that it takes long to know who's who. Another problem. Have you ever heard a '60s hippie talk? Have you ever heard an '80s yup spout its jargon? Familiar with today's language fads? These differences are all gone, whether we're in the 21st or 22nd century. Even 70 years apart it's all the same.
After some time you start to suspect who the characters in this book are. And in some way, that's classical Gibson as well. William Gibson lets you discover what is going on without telling or explaining. That typical disorienting perspective has its charms. But it can be a risk if you want the reader to bond with your book. Maybe it doesn't bother Gibson that it could mean only aficionados will read them.
So much for the negatives. The characters might be a bit one dimensional, the story is clever. An ex-soldier gets paid to play in what seems to be a game. When he needs to leave town he asks his sister Flynne to be a stand-in. During her shift she witnesses something that might not be a game. And soon she is in physical danger. Here the clever part comes around the corner. Her opponents are from the future. Not the Terminator kind, but the quantum computer kind. Seventy years in the future sophisticated hardware can contact the past. And so Flynne and her band of brothers and sisters get a glimpse from the future. No, *a* future. When future people use this computer, history splits off in a different direction.
Flynne gets a ride in the future through the computer, packed into a biomechanical robot. It's called a peripheral, hence the title. And the future gets a ride in the past via a Segway with an iPad on it. I think.
The story is all about the future manipulating Flynne's present. In the end things get alright and they live happy ever after. I got the impression that Gibson didn't know how to end the story after he led Flynne's world to its conclusion. That is not a problem, but when the action is over, the story ends too abrupt to my liking. Like nothing happened and with the future restored. The future contacting the past is quintessential for one large development and everything related. But for the small things of day to day life it seems inessential. Especially for the interactions between the people of Flynne-land.
Flynne's social surroundings can best be described as trailer-trashy. But these people care about each other, which is a pleasant surprise. They all stand with another in the face of adversity and they keep their warm relations.
Flynne is no Cayce from Pattern Recognition. At the end of the book she's in essence in the same position as in the beginning. Her role might have been pivotal, but she's only an actor directed by others. It would have been good if you could see some catharsis, or at least some change in her personality. After all she experiences something extraordinary: living in two times at the same time.
As usual the story is fast paced with short chapters. The titles consist of hip quotes from the chapters themselves. And as usual Gibson is best in developing ideas that baffle you. If only his characters would do the same.
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LibraryThing member gypsysmom
Although William Gibson is a favourite science fiction author I somehow missed hearing about this book when it came out in 2014. Then Gibson published the book Agency in 2020 which is set in the same future as The Peripheral and I did hear about it. When I realized it was the second book in a
So here goes. The future as Gibson imagines it is not that different from today or at least one can see how we could get to that future quite easily. Gibson actually takes us to two future times: one is probably about 10 to 15 years away and the other is 70 years beyond that. In between those two times is a societal meltdown that the people in the far future refer to as the Jackpot. The people in the far future have a server that allows them to contact people in the near future although in this book no-one who uses the server is sure who developed it or where it is located. Burton Fisher, a veteran from a special force of the USMC, is contacted by a company called Milagros Coldiron to play what he thinks is a computer game as a tester. It is actually Wilf Netherton and Lev Zubov, residents of London in the far future, who gets Burton to virtually operate a quadcopter observing a woman in a highrise and protecting her from paparazzi. When Burton has to go away for a few days he enlists his sister, Flynne, to "play the game" for him. The pay is pretty good for a couple of young people living in the American South where almost everyone else works for illegal drug manufacturers. While in the game Flynne witnesses the woman being killed by a weapon that dissolves her body as she falls from the balcony of her apartment. When the people who killed her realize that someone observed the murder they hire assassins to take out Flynne. The people who hired Burton and Flynne are determined to protect them. A police official, Ms. Lowbeer, wants Flynne to come to the future to identify the man who was with the woman just prior to her death. Of course, Flynne can't actually come to the future but she can be connected to an artificial body which she animates from her time. Wilf Netherton is in charge of establishing rapport with Flynne because he is a publicist just recently fired from a job. Soon Wilf and Lev and Lowbeer are in contact with Flynne and Burton and others to try to protect them and also to try to change the course of history so that the Jackpot doesn't occur.
I found the concepts used by Gibson in his imagined futures easy to accept because they seem rooted in technology in use now. But even more than the technology I found the characters believable and I started to care about what happened to them. I don't know if any of the same people will show up in the next book but I hope so.
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series I knew I had to read the first one before I even thought about reading the second one. Now that I have read that first book I have placed a hold on Agency at my library so I can read it before I forget too much about the plot. Actually one of the reasons I do book reviews is so that I can refer to them for details in the future.So here goes. The future as Gibson imagines it is not that different from today or at least one can see how we could get to that future quite easily. Gibson actually takes us to two future times: one is probably about 10 to 15 years away and the other is 70 years beyond that. In between those two times is a societal meltdown that the people in the far future refer to as the Jackpot. The people in the far future have a server that allows them to contact people in the near future although in this book no-one who uses the server is sure who developed it or where it is located. Burton Fisher, a veteran from a special force of the USMC, is contacted by a company called Milagros Coldiron to play what he thinks is a computer game as a tester. It is actually Wilf Netherton and Lev Zubov, residents of London in the far future, who gets Burton to virtually operate a quadcopter observing a woman in a highrise and protecting her from paparazzi. When Burton has to go away for a few days he enlists his sister, Flynne, to "play the game" for him. The pay is pretty good for a couple of young people living in the American South where almost everyone else works for illegal drug manufacturers. While in the game Flynne witnesses the woman being killed by a weapon that dissolves her body as she falls from the balcony of her apartment. When the people who killed her realize that someone observed the murder they hire assassins to take out Flynne. The people who hired Burton and Flynne are determined to protect them. A police official, Ms. Lowbeer, wants Flynne to come to the future to identify the man who was with the woman just prior to her death. Of course, Flynne can't actually come to the future but she can be connected to an artificial body which she animates from her time. Wilf Netherton is in charge of establishing rapport with Flynne because he is a publicist just recently fired from a job. Soon Wilf and Lev and Lowbeer are in contact with Flynne and Burton and others to try to protect them and also to try to change the course of history so that the Jackpot doesn't occur.
I found the concepts used by Gibson in his imagined futures easy to accept because they seem rooted in technology in use now. But even more than the technology I found the characters believable and I started to care about what happened to them. I don't know if any of the same people will show up in the next book but I hope so.
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LibraryThing member viking2917
Gold Farming meets Quantum Tunneling meets banjo electronica. Gibson writes about the future and makes you feel like it's the present.
LibraryThing member Vermilious
The Peripheral was something of a challenging novel, at first. Told in split perspectives, both removed from the present context, not a whole lot made sense. The first few chapters absolutely fell into the trap of science fiction – there were too many words there, too little to recognize and hold
Like some of Gibson’s most recent work, this novel is ostensibly about the weird, and how it is brought into the world. It is also about the extremely uneven distribution of the future, literally intruding into the present. It has shades of military complexes, milspec fetishism brought to one kind of conclusion, intruding back into home life in very serious ways, warping communities with its weight. It is also a murder mystery, perhaps a little light on the mystery. It is the story of people near people with huge personalities, the shadow of Bigend looming larger and larger over the last decade of Gibson’s work. While the main characters, Flynne Fisher and Wilf Netherton, are absolutely essential to the plot, they are bit players in the story, necessary for none of their personality or talent, only happening to be in the wrong places at the right times, and thus acquiring specialized, and damning knowledge.
In between the first 75% of the book and the end, I listened to a podcast, called Exponent. It’s two MBAs, or possibly business PhDs, talking about tech and business. In this particular episode, titled The Internet Rainforest, they outline a very particular kind of ecosystem that they believe we as a species are moving towards, like a rainforest canopy. There will be brands which loom massive above everything, the giant canopy of the world. Below that will be no middle, and then a great deal of underbrush, individuals who are very good at what they do, the best, in fact, living in this world where they can distribute their labor, being the best and surviving on the fact that people will pay for specialization. And, in a moment of utter despair, one of them asked ‘but what about the people who aren’t the best at something, but instead are 5th or 6th, or never find the thing?’ And the other replied, more or less, that we needed to get off our asses and built a better social safety net because there wouldn’t be jobs for everyone in this grim amazing technological future.
The Peripheral is that idea, made manifest. We spend most of the novel with Flynne Fisher, who is not the best at any one thing, in a small backwater town, dominated by a Hefty Mart and Pharma Jon, the towering trees of the corporation. At one point, we learn that her hair is cut via telepresence by a woman in the Philippines, one of the resilient undergrowth. The shit that is Flynne’s life is that of the people who don’t get to be part of the canopy or thrive in the underbrush.
By Netherton’s time, some 70 years removed from Fisher, it’s only gotten worse. Everyone’s canopy. Or maybe underbrush, but it’s hard to tell. The world is an impossible place, filled with impossible people, who retain their petty humanity. They have foibles the way that the greek gods do, and mostly do just seem like they play at things to give them a stage for their own, human drama. Nobody needs to be good at anything, anymore – they are in a post-scarcity society, but getting there took pain and suffering the likes of which humanity has never seen.
So, in that way, the novel is horribly depressing. It is about how we will never really be good enough, except by luck, and when we do get lucky, it cannot erase our human flaws. It is a book about finding your place in a world ready to move past you, mining knowledge for every possible scrap. It’s a story about paranoia, about logical extrapolation, and about resolution, digital, physical, and metaphysical. If your can stomach it. Otherwise, it might just make you depressed and fearful.
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on to. As a result, I was left with a vague sense of the world, but lacking a great deal of resolution, staring at the future through a first generation webcam. But, as others have mentioned, there is something that clicks in around page 50. There is a moment, somewhere, with one of the characters, that just calls for an information dump, and that information becomes important. It’s obvious when you see it, but it is also absolutely necessary. After that moment, I was hooked.Like some of Gibson’s most recent work, this novel is ostensibly about the weird, and how it is brought into the world. It is also about the extremely uneven distribution of the future, literally intruding into the present. It has shades of military complexes, milspec fetishism brought to one kind of conclusion, intruding back into home life in very serious ways, warping communities with its weight. It is also a murder mystery, perhaps a little light on the mystery. It is the story of people near people with huge personalities, the shadow of Bigend looming larger and larger over the last decade of Gibson’s work. While the main characters, Flynne Fisher and Wilf Netherton, are absolutely essential to the plot, they are bit players in the story, necessary for none of their personality or talent, only happening to be in the wrong places at the right times, and thus acquiring specialized, and damning knowledge.
In between the first 75% of the book and the end, I listened to a podcast, called Exponent. It’s two MBAs, or possibly business PhDs, talking about tech and business. In this particular episode, titled The Internet Rainforest, they outline a very particular kind of ecosystem that they believe we as a species are moving towards, like a rainforest canopy. There will be brands which loom massive above everything, the giant canopy of the world. Below that will be no middle, and then a great deal of underbrush, individuals who are very good at what they do, the best, in fact, living in this world where they can distribute their labor, being the best and surviving on the fact that people will pay for specialization. And, in a moment of utter despair, one of them asked ‘but what about the people who aren’t the best at something, but instead are 5th or 6th, or never find the thing?’ And the other replied, more or less, that we needed to get off our asses and built a better social safety net because there wouldn’t be jobs for everyone in this grim amazing technological future.
The Peripheral is that idea, made manifest. We spend most of the novel with Flynne Fisher, who is not the best at any one thing, in a small backwater town, dominated by a Hefty Mart and Pharma Jon, the towering trees of the corporation. At one point, we learn that her hair is cut via telepresence by a woman in the Philippines, one of the resilient undergrowth. The shit that is Flynne’s life is that of the people who don’t get to be part of the canopy or thrive in the underbrush.
By Netherton’s time, some 70 years removed from Fisher, it’s only gotten worse. Everyone’s canopy. Or maybe underbrush, but it’s hard to tell. The world is an impossible place, filled with impossible people, who retain their petty humanity. They have foibles the way that the greek gods do, and mostly do just seem like they play at things to give them a stage for their own, human drama. Nobody needs to be good at anything, anymore – they are in a post-scarcity society, but getting there took pain and suffering the likes of which humanity has never seen.
So, in that way, the novel is horribly depressing. It is about how we will never really be good enough, except by luck, and when we do get lucky, it cannot erase our human flaws. It is a book about finding your place in a world ready to move past you, mining knowledge for every possible scrap. It’s a story about paranoia, about logical extrapolation, and about resolution, digital, physical, and metaphysical. If your can stomach it. Otherwise, it might just make you depressed and fearful.
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LibraryThing member Algybama
The opening drone security scenario is spectacular and amazing and really one of the greatest Gibson things ever, but unfortunately the author decided to build a generally mediocre novel around it. Cheesy dialogue and flat characters (aside from Flynne) ruin what could have been a pretty good
Not one of his best by a long stretch.
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story. Forget about the concept of "plot" of course. Don't get it confused: This novel, like other Gibson novels, is basically a a series of scenes that are mostly cliches with many unsympathetic characters that all basically sound the same. Don't get me wrong, though. I liked it a lot until 2/3s the way through.Not one of his best by a long stretch.
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LibraryThing member DRFP
I've skipped Gibson's more recent books and can't judge his output since 1999's All Tomorrow's Parties and the end of the Bridge trilogy. Having confessed that gap in my knowledge, he's either developed greatly since ATP or this is simply one of the best books he's written overall. Honestly, this
It's just a tight, driven novel, in a way that Gibson's older stuff most often wasn't. It hooks from the get-go and keeps going pretty much all the way through. Admittedly the ending feels slightly anti-climatic, like there should have been something more dramatic to occur, but everything else was decent. Time travel is dealt with in a reasonable way and though the future presented is not as visionary as Gibson's early cyberpunk stories, it still convinces.
I assume there will be further stories set in this universe and look forward to them. In the mean time, I should probably check out those Gibson novels I've skipped.
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is my favourite novel from him outside his earliest SF, meaning the genre-defining Burning Chrome and Neuromancer.It's just a tight, driven novel, in a way that Gibson's older stuff most often wasn't. It hooks from the get-go and keeps going pretty much all the way through. Admittedly the ending feels slightly anti-climatic, like there should have been something more dramatic to occur, but everything else was decent. Time travel is dealt with in a reasonable way and though the future presented is not as visionary as Gibson's early cyberpunk stories, it still convinces.
I assume there will be further stories set in this universe and look forward to them. In the mean time, I should probably check out those Gibson novels I've skipped.
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LibraryThing member PghDragonMan
I miss William Gibson.
I mean I miss the bleeding edge author who gave us such classics as Neuromancer and collaborated with Bruce Sterling to bring us The Difference Engine. Elsewhere, it has been remarked that Gibson seems to be writing the future in reverse: his earlier works are in a future much
I also had problems with the time travel aspects of the book. OK, I know this is a work of fiction and time travel is not real, but while Asimov never codified the rules of time travel he explored in The End of Eternity, he at least left us with a plausible framework of how changes in a time-stream have a ripple effect. This goes totally out the window in The Peripheral where full, real time communication between two different time-streams is a part of the plot and life for the characters in the book. It is somewhat rationalized in that these time-streams are viewed as “possible alternatives”. This rationalization opened more problems for me, so I simply stopped thinking about it and just went with the flow.
The characters were very real and fully fleshed out . . . with one exception and that involved another time travel / alternative time-stream conflict. That conflict only comes in towards the end of the novel, so it is easy to forgive as it plays out in the background. The characters elevated the story to the point where I could forgive the bad background science. If I had not read Gibson’s other works I might even have a higher regard for this one.
It is difficult to arrive at an overall rating for The Peripheral. Even going with the flow of the plot, the weak ending detracted too much from my overall impression and killed any buzz I was getting from the characters. I want to like this book more than I do, but the best I feel I can offer is three and a half stars. Some parts are excellent, but the overall impression is above average, but the science problems keep me from even going to four stars for this.
I mean I miss the bleeding edge author who gave us such classics as Neuromancer and collaborated with Bruce Sterling to bring us The Difference Engine. Elsewhere, it has been remarked that Gibson seems to be writing the future in reverse: his earlier works are in a future much
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further away than his new books depict. With The Peripheral, Gibson is once again writing future histories, two of them in fact, but, for me, his are not the first footsteps into this time. If I had not already ready Tom Sweterlitsch’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow, I might be more impressed with some of the visual technologies Gibson uses in this latest work.I also had problems with the time travel aspects of the book. OK, I know this is a work of fiction and time travel is not real, but while Asimov never codified the rules of time travel he explored in The End of Eternity, he at least left us with a plausible framework of how changes in a time-stream have a ripple effect. This goes totally out the window in The Peripheral where full, real time communication between two different time-streams is a part of the plot and life for the characters in the book. It is somewhat rationalized in that these time-streams are viewed as “possible alternatives”. This rationalization opened more problems for me, so I simply stopped thinking about it and just went with the flow.
The characters were very real and fully fleshed out . . . with one exception and that involved another time travel / alternative time-stream conflict. That conflict only comes in towards the end of the novel, so it is easy to forgive as it plays out in the background. The characters elevated the story to the point where I could forgive the bad background science. If I had not read Gibson’s other works I might even have a higher regard for this one.
It is difficult to arrive at an overall rating for The Peripheral. Even going with the flow of the plot, the weak ending detracted too much from my overall impression and killed any buzz I was getting from the characters. I want to like this book more than I do, but the best I feel I can offer is three and a half stars. Some parts are excellent, but the overall impression is above average, but the science problems keep me from even going to four stars for this.
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LibraryThing member MikeRhode
Gibson's Neuromancer reformed SF when it was published, and I can still remember the feeling I had reading it. This won't do the same, but is still a very good story.
LibraryThing member Eyejaybee
I was very disappointed with this book.
Gibson's Pattern Recognition' is one of my favourite books, ever, and I also enjoyed 'The Bridge' trilogy and his earlier cyberpunk classics 'Neuromancer' and 'Mona Lisa Overdrive'. I confess, however, that I found this latest offering utterly impenetrable,
Gibson's Pattern Recognition' is one of my favourite books, ever, and I also enjoyed 'The Bridge' trilogy and his earlier cyberpunk classics 'Neuromancer' and 'Mona Lisa Overdrive'. I confess, however, that I found this latest offering utterly impenetrable,
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and had to make three attempts at starting it before I was able to build up sufficient momentum to get through it. Quite frankly, I think my persistence was rather misplaced - an expense of spirit in a waste of tedium, or something like that. Show Less
LibraryThing member gregandlarry
Two stories are intertwined amazingly well.
LibraryThing member g33kgrrl
I tried to start reading this during a very busy time period in my life, and I couldn't figure out what in the world was going on. Then I tried to pick it up again when the semester ended and still couldn't figure it out. I thought perhaps grad school had broken my brain, but I persevered and
Upon reading this, I also reflected on the fact that Gibson is a master at writing ineffectual and incompetent characters that I feel like wouldn't normally be sympathetic but who I end up really liking. I don't know how he does it.
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realized it was only like 15% grad school and 85% the book. So that was ok. Because Gibson is an incredibly gifted writer and you just have to trust him to guide you through. And he does, and the places you get are delightful. Don't worry about the plot, it'll make sense, just keep reading.Upon reading this, I also reflected on the fact that Gibson is a master at writing ineffectual and incompetent characters that I feel like wouldn't normally be sympathetic but who I end up really liking. I don't know how he does it.
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LibraryThing member jeroenvandorp
"Fuck hell." "Is it?" "'Fraid so." "Why does she?" "Guess good as mine."
Do people talk this way? Yes they do. They do talk like this in every William Gibson novel. It's a pity, because the result is they all look alike. They all seem to have the same mind set. They all understand each other's lingo
Another problem. Have you ever heard a '60s hippie talk? Have you ever heard an '80s yup spout its jargon? Familiar with today's language fads? These differences are all gone, whether we're in the 21st or 22nd century. Even 70 years apart it's all the same.
After some time you start to suspect who the characters in this book are. And in some way, that's classical Gibson as well. William Gibson lets you discover what is going on without telling or explaining. That typical disorienting perspective has its charms. But it can be a risk if you want the reader to bond with your book. Maybe it doesn't bother Gibson that it could mean only aficionados will read them.
So much for the negatives. The characters might be a bit one dimensional, the story is clever. An ex-soldier gets paid to play in what seems to be a game. When he needs to leave town he asks his sister Flynne to be a stand-in. During her shift she witnesses something that might not be a game. And soon she is in physical danger. Here the clever part comes around the corner. Her opponents are from the future. Not the Terminator kind, but the quantum computer kind. Seventy years in the future sophisticated hardware can contact the past. And so Flynne and her band of brothers and sisters get a glimpse from the future. No, *a* future. When future people use this computer, history splits off in a different direction.
Flynne gets a ride in the future through the computer, packed into a biomechanical robot. It's called a peripheral, hence the title. And the future gets a ride in the past via a Segway with an iPad on it. I think.
The story is all about the future manipulating Flynne's present. In the end things get alright and they live happy ever after. I got the impression that Gibson didn't know how to end the story after he led Flynne's world to its conclusion. That is not a problem, but when the action is over, the story ends too abrupt to my liking. Like nothing happened and with the future restored. The future contacting the past is quintessential for one large development and everything related. But for the small things of day to day life it seems inessential. Especially for the interactions between the people of Flynne-land.
Flynne's social surroundings can best be described as trailer-trashy. But these people care about each other, which is a pleasant surprise. They all stand with another in the face of adversity and they keep their warm relations.
Flynne is no Cayce from Pattern Recognition. At the end of the book she's in essence in the same position as in the beginning. Her role might have been pivotal, but she's only an actor directed by others. It would have been good if you could see some catharsis, or at least some change in her personality. After all she experiences something extraordinary: living in two times at the same time.
As usual the story is fast paced with short chapters. The titles consist of hip quotes from the chapters themselves. And as usual Gibson is best in developing ideas that baffle you. If only his characters would do the same.
Do people talk this way? Yes they do. They do talk like this in every William Gibson novel. It's a pity, because the result is they all look alike. They all seem to have the same mind set. They all understand each other's lingo
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immediately. And it makes it hard to bond or to (dis)like characters. Not to mention that it takes long to know who's who. Another problem. Have you ever heard a '60s hippie talk? Have you ever heard an '80s yup spout its jargon? Familiar with today's language fads? These differences are all gone, whether we're in the 21st or 22nd century. Even 70 years apart it's all the same.
After some time you start to suspect who the characters in this book are. And in some way, that's classical Gibson as well. William Gibson lets you discover what is going on without telling or explaining. That typical disorienting perspective has its charms. But it can be a risk if you want the reader to bond with your book. Maybe it doesn't bother Gibson that it could mean only aficionados will read them.
So much for the negatives. The characters might be a bit one dimensional, the story is clever. An ex-soldier gets paid to play in what seems to be a game. When he needs to leave town he asks his sister Flynne to be a stand-in. During her shift she witnesses something that might not be a game. And soon she is in physical danger. Here the clever part comes around the corner. Her opponents are from the future. Not the Terminator kind, but the quantum computer kind. Seventy years in the future sophisticated hardware can contact the past. And so Flynne and her band of brothers and sisters get a glimpse from the future. No, *a* future. When future people use this computer, history splits off in a different direction.
Flynne gets a ride in the future through the computer, packed into a biomechanical robot. It's called a peripheral, hence the title. And the future gets a ride in the past via a Segway with an iPad on it. I think.
The story is all about the future manipulating Flynne's present. In the end things get alright and they live happy ever after. I got the impression that Gibson didn't know how to end the story after he led Flynne's world to its conclusion. That is not a problem, but when the action is over, the story ends too abrupt to my liking. Like nothing happened and with the future restored. The future contacting the past is quintessential for one large development and everything related. But for the small things of day to day life it seems inessential. Especially for the interactions between the people of Flynne-land.
Flynne's social surroundings can best be described as trailer-trashy. But these people care about each other, which is a pleasant surprise. They all stand with another in the face of adversity and they keep their warm relations.
Flynne is no Cayce from Pattern Recognition. At the end of the book she's in essence in the same position as in the beginning. Her role might have been pivotal, but she's only an actor directed by others. It would have been good if you could see some catharsis, or at least some change in her personality. After all she experiences something extraordinary: living in two times at the same time.
As usual the story is fast paced with short chapters. The titles consist of hip quotes from the chapters themselves. And as usual Gibson is best in developing ideas that baffle you. If only his characters would do the same.
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LibraryThing member chriszodrow
Another great read from Gibson. Back to sci-fi after his three-volume "Cayce Pollard" series. Paints a vivid possible world based on what we know now (dilating the current world as all great sci-fi writers tend to do). I assume the title is in reference to the protagonists that populate the story:
The Haptic Recon stuff is brilliant. I mean, I know guys like this; broken but unbending vets who are more scarred by boredom than war. Spot on. It felt like today with some new tech that changes the world.
Good stuff.
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the lower-class, ex-military and mall-stall workers that eventually survive the unspoken apocalypse that makes the eventual future. The Haptic Recon stuff is brilliant. I mean, I know guys like this; broken but unbending vets who are more scarred by boredom than war. Spot on. It felt like today with some new tech that changes the world.
Good stuff.
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LibraryThing member andrewlorien
I love William Gibson. I love all of his work in every medium i have known about it. This was a great version.
Media reviews
"The Gibson of The Peripheral is interested in ideas but he’s also very much interested in big-screen, popcorn-chewing thrills. Unlike more po-faced SF writers, he takes glee in kick-assery of an adolescent sort."
"The Peripheral" is engaged with serious ideas — the moral pressure of life in late capitalist society, the state of identity in a world of mingled gamer-selves, online-selves, physical-selves — and through them it achieves the strange effect of making our own accelerated days feel quaint, at
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least partially analog for a bit longer, "oddly optimistic," still yet to endure anything truly apocalyptic. Show Less
"What sets each book apart is the worldbuilding that surrounds that plot kernel. This time around, it’s particularly intriguing."
"All of Gibson’s characters are intensely real, and Flynne is a clever, compelling, stereotype-defying, unhesitating protagonist who makes this novel a standout."
Language
ISBN
9780241961001
Physical description
496 p.; 7.8 inches
Pages
496