Peripheral, by William Gibson

This was a little hard to get into, but I'm glad I got there. Gibson tends to write sparingly, not bothering to explain what things are, or what (made up sci-fi) words mean (e.g. assemblers, cosplay, well, read the review I've linked below, that guy did a better job than I will of explaining this problem) and while frugality is generally a good policy when spraying words upon the page, sometimes I could use just a little bit of guidance, like, what the fuck was that?

All in all, this is a terrific book. Once I got past the abovementioned initiation phase, it was a page-turner, and I was sorry when I got to the end.

There is time travel, of a sort, and some thoughts about the paradoxes that come from that. When Gibson's future characters meddle with the events of the past (the future people are in London, the past people in America, maybe East Kentucky?), it creates a "stub" of time-continuum. That is, a new branch grows away from the future inhabited by the meddlers. A nod to the alternative universe concept.

A review in The Guardian

Zero History, by William Gibson

(audio book)

Newest in series involving Hubertus Bigend, Hollis Henry, etc.

Hollis Henry searches for the footage, and eventually encounters Cayce Pollard.

Absolutely marvelous, absorbing, totally enjoyable.

Spook Country, by William Gibson

I had thought this was first in the series, but apparently Pattern Recognition comes first, and it is the first one I "read" (as an audio book -- this one is an audio book too). Hollis Henry is the central character in this one. In this book Hollis travels to Vancouver, BC, on a quest to locate the mysterious hacker Bobby Chombo (not sure of the spelling, this is an audio book) (Chombo appears in Zero History) and a shipping container that turns out to hold laundered money. Some amazing Cuban-Americans in an ancient sleeper cell are featured, as well as the former members of "Curfew," Hollis' band.


First class.

Neuromancer, by William Gibson

Read maybe 1/3, couldn't finish it. It's too vague, the opposite of the book by Greg Egan that I recently tried to read, which had too much exposition. This one doesn't have enough, there's too much assumption that the reader will just figure out what's going on, and I fail to live up to this assumption. I was disappointed,  having recently very much enjoyed 3 other novels by Gibson.

Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson

I listened to the audio book version of this, on 9 CDs, read by Shelly Frasier.

Set in the present, even recent past. Cayce Pollard lost her father Win when he disappeared near the World Trade Center on 11 September, 2001. Win was loosely connected to the CIA.

Why did I like this book so much. I was drawn into its world and did not want to leave.

Mirror World (England). What an attractive idea, it describes the feeling of being in a foreign land so well. Those little things I used to notice about Canada when I went there as a child.

Contemporary Russia. Oligarchs.

Pilates. Starbucks

Cayce has a sort of allergic reaction, to certain brand names / logos. One that is mentioned, and used against her in the plot is The Michelin Man, Bibendum.

"The footage" is a film that's being revealed one little segment at a time via anonymous Internet postings. YouTube is not mentioned, and indeed may not have existed at the time this was written, or if it did it was such a minor whistle stop on the Info Railroad that no one would have known what it was.  I was attracted by the retro-Internet world of people on a forum, Hotmail, Ethernet connections in hotels. Saying "hello" when answering a cell phone, being surprised at discovering who is calling -- pre caller ID?

I really loved this book, was sorry when I played the last CD. I'm thinking about getting the print version to read and see if it makes a similar impression.

 http://www.bearcave.com/bookrev/pattern_recognition.html

http://www.sfreviews.net/patternrec.html