Books by author: William Gibson

It is a little hard to believe that it has been almost ten years since I read most of Gibson's work ( Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Burning Chrome and Virtual Light). When reading Idoru a couple of years back, I wondered if I was misremembering how good Gibson's work was. I remember being pretty blown away by Neuromancer, but Idoru really wasn't in the same class.

Good news, then. In All Tomorrow's Parties, Gibson returns to form. The novel maintains a handful of very loosely related plot lines, all of which come together in the final third. The convenience of the ending would be a problem in many books, but the concept of "nodal points" is central to the novel, and it wouldn't be right to end it any other way. Gibson's prose is razor-sharp in many places, and although it took some time for me to get into the storyline, I was hooked after fifty pages.

I like William Gibson's writing, but this is one of his weakest novels. Makes me yearn a bit for Neuromancer. Still enjoyable, however, for the occasional inventiveness.

I first read Neuromancer almost 20 years ago (before the worldwide web), and it blew me away then. I'm less blown away now, probably because so much of Gibson's universe has been adopted by mainstream culture. The Matrix borrowed freely from Neuromancer, as did Strange Days and just about every other scifi movie of the past two decades. The entire premise of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse is laid out in a throwaway paragraph where Molly tells Case about her past:

"You know how I got the money, when I was starting out? Here. Not here, but a place like it, in the Sprawl. Joke, to start with, 'cause once they plant the cut-out chip, it seems like free money. Wake up sore, sometimes, but that's it. Renting the goods, is all. You aren't in, when it's all happening. House has software for whatever a customer wants to pay for. . ." She cracked her knuckles. "Fine. I was getting my money. Trouble was, the cut-out and the circuitry the Chiba clinics put in weren't compatible. So the worktime started bleeding in, and I could remember it. . . "

This time around, I loved the noir atmosphere of the opening chapters, but the second half of the novel fell flat. It wasn't because I had read it before — I really didn't remember the plot at all. I think it was the way the layers of deception were revealed. It seemed like Gibson didn't figure out the ending until he got there, so some of the bits of resolution felt forced.

I think Gibson has become a much better writer over the years, and I'm looking forward to the release of Zero History.

Gibson's protagonist, Cayce Pollard, uses detachment from one's soul as a metaphor for the physical and mental effects of jet-lag (she supposes that the soul can't travel as fast as a jet, so it takes some time to catch up with you when you travel). Getting the hang of reading Gibson's prose is not unlike this feeling of disorientation. His descriptions of ordinary things are ornate, colorful, and always a little bit twisted, so that you feel a bit out of place until you get used to his style.

Up until now, Gibson's novels have been set in the future, but Pattern Recognition takes place in present day. The novel follows Cayce as she tracks down the elusive maker of "the footage", a set of disjoint film segments that has garnered a global following in various internet chat rooms and the attention of a wealthy entrepeneur. The mystery itself isn't all that compelling, but the characters are interesting, and there are a few interesting plot elements. This is the first novel I've read that's explicitly set in a post-9/11 world (one of the themes is Cayce's coming-to-terms with the disappearance of her father in Manhattan on that day), and Gibson treats it well. Although I was a little bit disappointed by the conclusion, I was quite satisfied by the journey.

William Gibson may not be getting any more inventive, but with each of his recent novels, his writing has become more consistently excellent. Spook Country is set in the present day (according to Gibson, we're living in the future now—it's just not "evenly distributed"), and it follows three intertwined story lines that eventually converge. There are spy antics, a "virtual reality" that makes sense, and a terrorism plot that I read as a condemnation of George W. Bush. Fun stuff.

Zero History picks up a few years after the events of Spook Country and re-entangles Hollis Henry and Milgrim with Hubertus Bigend — this time in England. The events of the earlier novel aren't important here, but the characters are, and I don't think I'd have enjoyed Zero History if I hadn't read Spook Country first. There are connections to Pattern Recognition too, but they aren't as essential.

I had a bit of a hard time following the plot, but I liked a lot of Gibson's microscopic detail. As a result, the ending was unsatisfying to me, but I enjoyed reading it overall.