It’s like something out of a cyberpunk wet dream. Long the subject of speculative science fiction, it seems that we now have a working prototype for a set of goggles that can handle our wireless and networking needs. Merging the concepts of Augmented Reality with a Head-Mounted Display (HMD), Google has created what are now known as the “Google Glasses”.
Also known as “Project Glass”, this device is the first working model for what is often referred to as mobile computing. While still being tested, the project has been unveiled and Google Inc announced that they will now be conducting public trials to test their portability and ergonomics.
But of course, some of the terminology needs a little explanation. For example, augmented reality. By definition, this is the live direct, or indirect, view of the real world with computer generated imagery laid over top. One can be walking down the street or otherwise interacting with their world, but will also be able to view a desktop browser, a web page, or streaming video laid just overtop.
According to Google, the glasses will function much like an iPhone with the Siri application, in that wearers will be able to get onto the internet using voice commands. If this goes through, Apple Inc. will have its work cut out for it if they want to remain top dog in the technology race. I wonder what Steve Jobs would have made of this, may he rest in peace!
The project is just one of several being worked on by Google X Lab’s team of crack engineers, which includes Babak Parviz, an electrical engineer who has also worked on putting displays into contact lenses; Steve Lee, a project manager and “geolocation specialist”; and Sebastian Thrun, who developed Udacity education program as well as working on their self-driving car project.
Naturally, this news is causing a great deal of excitement, but I can’t help but wonder if certain people – not the least of which is William Gibson – aren’t getting just a tinge of self-satisfaction as well? You see, it was this Vancouver-based, American born purveyor of cyberpunk that predicted both the use of “cyberspace goggles” and augmented reality many years ago. The former were featured extensively in his Sprawl Trilogy and a similar device, known as Virtual Light glasses, made several appearances in his subsequent Bridge Trilogy.
What’s more, his latest books (known as the Bigend Trilogy) also made extensive mention of Augmented Reality before most people had heard of it. Beginning with Spook Country (2007), the second book in the series, he described an artist who used wireless signals and VR goggles to simulate the appearance of dead celebrities all over LA. This new type of touristic art, known as “locative art” was the first time AR was mentioned in a pop culture context. In his third book of the series, Zero History (2010), he mentions the technology yet again but says how it has been renamed “Augmented Reality” now that its more popular. As always, Gibson was on the cutting edge, or just ahead of the curve.
Click on the links below for a little “light reading” on the announcement:
“On receiving an interrupt, decrement the counter to zero.” -Programming The Z80 by Rodnay Zaks (1982).
The other night, I finally finished book II in the Sprawl series by William Gibson. Kindle for iPad, not paperback, which in itself was kind of a bummer. Somehow, I still haven’t made the transition for hard copies to ebooks. Probably never will. In any case, it was a rewarding experience which reminded me why I like Gibson in the first place. After getting through the Bigend Trilogy and the Bridge Trilogy and having somewhat mixed feelings, I got back to the trilogy that started it all, and was interested by what I found…
Count Zero is number two in the series that picks up after Neuromancer, the book which started it all for Gibson and which I read first. Set in the Sprawl – a.k.a. the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis (or BAMA) – this cyberpunk story deals with themes familiar to classic Gibson fans. Cyberpsace jockeys, freelance mercenaries, corporate monopolies, the street, and people so wealthy that they are able to cheat death and transcend humanity. In between, there’s all the familiar lexicon which Gibson invented himself: microsofts, biosofts, decks, trodes, jacking, jockying, ice, black ice, icebreaker, the matrix, Turing Police, cores, and all that good stuff.
However, there were also a few elements which put me in mind of his later work. Really, I could dedicate an entire post to the parallels between this book and his Bigend Trilogy. Again, there was the notion of the transformative power of wealth, how it means so much more than just having money and the freedom to use it. Given how much importance is placed on this in the book, how it serves as a sort of motivation in itself, one would get the impression that this is a serious preoccupation of Gibson’s. But then again, it was serious preoccupations of Fitzgerald’s, and for good reason! As he and Hemingway are rumored to have said to each other:
F: “The rich are different than you and me.” H: “Yes, they have more money.”
Plot Synopsis:
The story takes place seven years after the events of Neuromancer and centers on the lives of three people: First, a mercenary named Turner who has just recovered from a near-death experience and is beginning to question what he does. However, while attempting to flee his life, he is picked up and told he must do one final job. A scientist named Mitchell, working the company of Maas, wants to defect from his job and join the rival company of Hosaka. It’s up to Turner to pick him up and transport him back to Japan where, presumably, he will be safe to pursue his work in biosofts – a revolutionary biological form of technology. However, the run goes terribly awry when they find that the evacuee is in fact his daughter, and the company destroys its own fortress and kills Mitchell rather than let him fall into their rivals hands.
Second, we have a disgraced Parisian art dealer named Marly Krushkova who has been hired by a fabulously wealthy man named Virek to track down the maker of some mysterious art boxes. One of these boxes, which are based on Joseph Cornell’s artwork, apparently contain indication of biosoft construction. Virek, who is currently alive in a vat somewhere in Scandinavia, wants the technology so he can ressurrect his body and live forever. Using his dime and his contacts, Marly begins to follow the clues which will lead her to the abandoned station of Freeside, the once proud holding of the Tessier-Ashpool clan, where she will learn the shocking truth of the boxes.
Third, a young New Jersey boy named Bobby Newmark, hacker alias “Count Zero”, who is new to the jockeying game and comes across some “black ice” that nearly kills him. He discovers that the friend who gave it to him, “Two-A-Day”, received it from a questionable source and pawned it off on him to test it. When looking into this, he finds that Two-A-Day’s backers are a group of Haitain hackers who are interested in investigating a bunch of apparitions in cyberspace that appear as Voodoo gods. One of these “gods”, it seems, was responsible for saving Bobby’s life when he jacked and encountered the black ice, which was apparently of Maas construction. Their group must now move quickly, because it becomes clear that anyone who knows about the ice is being murdered.
Sound familiar? Well it should. This is classic Sprawl Gibson at his best! In time, all three threads, supposedly unrelated, weave together to the point where it becomes clear that Josef Virek, the wealthy mogul is pulling all their strings. For starters, we learn that Mitchell is not the genius he was rumored to be. Apparently, he was being fed all the information he needed to produce the biosoft technology. The person feeding him this info was apparently working from Freeside, and turns out to be one of the “apparitions” that is haunting cyberspace.
In addition, this same apparition instructed Mitchell to place biosoft technology in his daughter (Angie’s) head. Turner learns of these enhancements shortly after rescuing Angie and performing a routine scan on her. As a result, she is able to access the matrix anytime she wants without the need for a deck. Often, when she’s asleep, she is heard muttering things in Creole and having odd dreams which appear to coincide with events in cyberspace. For one, she remembers helping a boy named Bobby when he was being attacked by a malicious program. In short, she is the one who saved Bobby when he got into the black ice.
Last, Marly’s adventure to discover the box maker is related to the whole Maas/apparitions thing because Virek’s true agenda is to find the maker of the biosoft technology so he can use it to repair his dying body. As is made clear early on, he is alive only in the strictest sense, his remains being vet in a vat that keeps his vitals steady, and his brain wired to a Sim-Stim link that allows him to communicate with the outside world. It is also revealed that he intervened in Mitchell’s defection by paying off some of the mercenaries. However, his plans were upset somewhat when Mitchell chose to free his daughter instead of himself. So for the remainder of the novel, it becomes a race to capture her.
In time, she asks to be brought to the Sprawl where Bobby and his Voodoo friends are holding up inside a club. When they see Angie, Bobby recognizes her as the girl who saved his life. The Voodoo hackers also recognize her as one of the chief deities they have been observing in cyberspace. With some outside help, they make a stand against Virek and the mercenary Captain that was helping him and take them down. This they do by locating them both in cyberspace and arranging for their hiding places to be destroyed.
In the course of all this, it is revealed that these “apparitions” or Voodoo deities are in fact the splintered personality of the AI’s from book I that went by the names of Wintermute and Neuromancer. After coming together at the end of the story to form the first, fully-functional AI, the combined personality split itself up into several smaller constructs so that it would not be alone in the matrix. They adopted the form of Voodoo deities because they felt these suited them best, which is what attracted the interest of the Haitain hackers in the first place.
In addition, it was they who sent the Maas icebreak down from Freeside, as part of their wider plan to smoke out Virek. Knowing that he was trying to cheat death, they decided to intervene so that he wouldn’t be able to achieve the immortality and godlike power he had been seeking. A sort of “Tower of Babel” or Icarus-type scenario there, where a god or gods punish mortals for overreaching and trying to taste divinity.
Strength/Weaknesses:
As I said before, this book reminded me of why I turned to Gibson in the first place. His abilities at world-building, at submerging the reader in a world of megacities, megacorporations and cool and potentially frightening technologies is what established him as a master of cyberpunk in the first place. I was also happy to return to his world of familiar gadgets and tools, a la simstims, microsofts, decks, jockeys and mercenaries; not to mentions shadowy agendas and double-crosses. After having read through the Bigend Trilogy where the agendas were pretty benign and unclear, and the Bridge Trilogy where the settings were kind of inconsistent and really not that dark, it was a real treat to get back to the dirty, dystopian world of the Sprawl!
However, there were some bumps along the way as well. For one, Gibson’s penchant for portraying wealthy moguls as people who have ridiculous amounts of control and influence was something I was overly-familiar with at this point. In fact, substitute a desire to cheat death with immense curiosity and Virek easily becomes Bigend. However, I could see how this was the result of reading his later works first. Had I read the Sprawl Trilogy in its entirety before tackling the more recent Bigends, I might have seen this a bit less critically.
Ah, but there was another signature Gibson trait in this book. The anti-climactic ending! After quite a bit of action in getting Turner, Angie, Bobby and the Voodoo priests all in the same place, after all the growing tension as we are told that the club is surrounded by goons, not much happens. Bobby contacts another jockier who lost her boyfriend in the raid on Maas, because of the Mercenary Captain’s betrayal, she kills both him and Virek, and the goons dissipate as they realize the people they are working for are gone. The word “abortive” seems appropriate here, for that’s what you call an ending that is building towards and explosive climax, then fizzles out!
Still, I loved the setting, the themes, and the feel of the story. It reminds me of why I love cyberpunk and was the perfect addition to a month that has been characterized by dark, dystopian and technologically-driven literature! Much of what I had to say about Gibson’s Sprawl in my Dystopian Literature post was taken from this very book. After Neuromancer, it helped to complete the picture of what Gibson was all about in his early writing career. In building the world of tomorrow, where corporate monopolies rule, people live in dirty, overcrowded environments, where the rich are barely human and the poor struggle just to live and retain some essence of their humanity, Gibson epitomized the cyberpunk ideal of “high tech and low life”!
The second installment in William Gibson’s “The Bridge” Trilogy. Looking back, I don’t feel like I did the first book justice with the rather short review I gave it. Not to say that my overall opinion of the book has changed, but I feel like there were elements and angles that I should have delved into a little more. But since this book took place within the same general framework as the first, I shall rectify that here! So much better than re-editing old posts, don’t you think?
Idoru:
What can I say about Gibson’s second “Bridge” novel? Well, for starters, I liked it! It was much more developed and intriguing than the first, to be honest. While Virtual Light was concerned with the sense of post-millennial shock, the disintegration of California and the US and the massive privatization thereof – calling to mind other books by Gibson and Stephenson’s Snow Crash – Idoru dealt mainly with the concept of celebrity and the nature of modern media. Although it is set just a few years after the events in the first novel, far less attention is given this time around to either the Pacific west coast or Japan’s experience of the big earthquake. It’s still there, just operating in the background and popping up on occasion to set the scene.
In addition, Kowloon’s Walled City makes an even bigger appearance this time around. In the first book, it is listed as the inspiration for The Bridge – aka. the Golden Gate Bridge that has become a community unto itself. This time though, it has matured into a cyberspace VR construct where people port in and live out their lives in a virtual environment. Like the original Walled City, it is a place for hackers, Otaku, and cyberpunks, people who live on the fringes of society in this day in age. In keeping with all of Gibson’s pre-Bigend novels, this is indicative of the disappearance of the middle class and the emergence of cyber communities as a form of resistance. This tribalistic behavior, taken into the digital realm, is not so much political as it is cultural.
This is best exemplified by the character Chia Pet McKenzie, a teenager who also happens to be a member of the Lo/Rez fan club. Lo/Rez is a Japanese band, a clever pun on Low-res (i.e. low resolution), and the fan site is an international community that communicates via cyberspace. The concept of “nodal points” is also introduced via the character of Laney, a man who is apparently adept at finding these nodes in information patterns. After leaving a company named SlitScan, a media giant renowned for ruining celebrities by exposing their secrets, he is hired because his unique abilities make him useful to anyone looking to find these patterns. These two characters and the plot strands that involve them come together when Rez, half of Lo/Rez, announces he wants to marry Rei Toei, the Idoru (Japanese for Idol). The Idoru is a virtual creation, a holographic person, who is apparently achieved a measure of sentience. Laney is hired to find out, via Lo/Rez’s info, why he could be doing this and/or if anyone is manipulating him (like the Idoru’s people). Chia is similarly flown to Japan to determine the cause of this as well, but on behalf of the fan club. In any case, the two finally find a way to consummate their union by obtaining nanotechnology, apparently so they can fashion her a physical body. This, however, is left open, we never see if they pulled it off or not.
All of this calls to mind several familiar Gibson themes. For starters, the concept of data mining, which makes an appearance in many of his novels. According to Gibson, the character of Laney is a fictitious rendering of himself, his ability being a metaphor for what Gibson dose on a regular basis in order to predict the future. This seems clear enough given that the theme has come up again and again in Gibson’s works (Cayce Pollard, another main character, did much the same thing in Pattern Recognition). Also, there is the concept of AI’s, digital sentience, and the increasingly blurred line between artificial and authentic. In addition, the influence of the mass media, the culture of celebrity, and the massive influence these two things plays on our society is featured throughout this book. In short, it asks the question of why people are obsessed with celebrities, want to be them, what it takes to be one, and why we want to ruin them so badly! It is also quite Warholian in how it addresses how fame has changed over time and how it is the industry that seems to determine who is famous, why, and for how long.
Selling Points:
Overall, I could see why this book was hailed as the book that cemented Gibson’s reputation. There’s a lot going on in this book! One can see many layers of technological, cultural and social commentary, punctuated as always by Gibson’s love of sub-culture, street life, and cutting edge things. In fact, this book was quite influential in the way it predicted virtual personalities, which is something that became quite big in Japan on or around the time of the book’s publication. It was also rather prescient in the way it delved into the kinds of tribalism that have become incredibly common with the internet. On top of all that, his delving into the world of media, celebrity and the dividing line between what is real and fake (exemplified by the marriage of Rei Toei) was executed with his usual subtle genius. That was one of the things I liked best about this novel. At no point was someone saying “You can’t marry a program! It’s immoral, unnatural!” Nor was anyone arguing in favor of it by saying “Look at the world today! There IS no line between real and fake anymore!” Everyone was concerned, most people thought he’d either lost his mind or was being manipulated, but no one came right out and ANNOUNCED it. This is something that people like the makers of S1mOne, who were clearly imitating Gibson, did do (just look at that title! What an obvious binary reference!).
Weak Points:
For one, the open ending. That applied to more than just whether or not Rez and Rei Toei ever achieved a physical union. That much I could understand given that it was the idea of it that was important, the exploration of whether or not it would ever be possible for a human and digital person to cross that boundary. But it also applied to other aspects of the story as well. For one, Laney’s ex-boss shows up deep into the story to blackmail him, and she is apparently disappeared by Lo/Rez’s head of security. We never find out if he really did anything to her or if he just scared her off. The plot thread involving her just disappears like it had become inconvenient and Gibson wanted to get rid of it. Perhaps it comes up in book three, but here, it was like a final act cut-off. This is something this book has in common with Stephenson too, ironically enough; the quick, choppy endings!
And of course, some familiar old patterns also emerge in this book and have become apparent in this trilogy as well. The first pattern is one I’ve seen in every Gibson book I’ve read yet: having one man and one woman as main characters and either hooking them up, or pairing them off with secondary characters. Some examples include Chase and Molly in Neuromancer (who hooked up with each other), Hollis and Milgrim in Zero History (who had separate hook-ups), Chevette and Rydel in Virtual Light (together), and now Laney and Chia (separate). Mind you, I’m not calling this a weakness. In fact, most people would call it a convention; interesting stories need some degree of romance to keep them from being totally dry! But it does seem just the slightest bit repetitive this time around. He also switches main characters in the second book in this trilogy, which he did with the Bigend Trilogy too, but not the Sprawl one for some reason.
Overall, a good book and a fun, fascinating read. I definitely recommend it for anyone interested in classic sci-fi or who, like me, is interesting in charting the course of cyber/post-cyberpunk literature. You see? This is the kind of treatment Virtual Light should have gotten! I’ll be sure to be this thorough from now on!
Not only is he a famous author, he’s also a fellow BCite and the man who literally wrote the book on cyberpunk. Beyond that, his books have been renowned for capturing the zeitgeist of our times, an age characterized by revolutions in information technology and mass media. And I can honestly say that I’ve tried to emulate him in recent years. His Neuromancer was required reading seeing as how I wanted to get into hard sci-fi and he’s a major name. And his latest works also gave me a push in the direction of modern day fiction, dealing with the cutting edge rather than the future.
But… gotta be honest here, these books have been a bit of a disappointment for me. Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History are all mainstream bestsellers that did an awful lot to capture the spirit of our age once more, but they all shared elements which I thought were kind of… well, weak. For example, consider the plot set-ups to all three books. All things in this trilogy by Gibson revolve around the enigmatic (and absurdly named) Hubertus Bigend. He’s an advertising magnate who’s always looking for the angles, the hidden agendas, the thing that’s beyond cutting edge, just five minutes away from becoming real. And to investigate these things, he hires freelance contractors, strange people with strange gifts. And that’s what sets the plots in motion every time.
In Pattern Recognition, he recruits Cayce Pollard (pronounced Cay-See), a freelance “coolhunter” who uses her odd intuition to evaluate logos and brand names for companies. Her father was lost in 9/11 (something that Gibson had to include because it occurred while writing it) and this haunts her. In addition to her weird skills (hypersensitivity to iconography) she follows footage on the internet produced by some cinematic genius. Bigend wants the creator found because… he’s curious, he wants their talent, or something like that. So Cayce sets out to find them relying on Bigend’s network, his dime, and her own personal contacts. Her journey takes her from New York, to London, to Tokyo, and finally to Moscow, all the while she’s pursued by a rival and some shadowy agents who’s agenda is not quite clear. In the end, she finds the geniuses in Moscow, the genius is a brain-damaged girl who’s sister takes care of her and puts out the footage as a way of expressing herself. The dark agents pursuing her turn out to be their protectors who just stalked her because they weren’t sure of her, and Bigend’s slightly richer for having uncovered the truth… I guess. Cool idea, weak climax, weird overall point.
Then there was Spook Country. The name alone was telling, alluding to its focus on the paranoia and intrigue of post-9/11 America. In this one, Bigend is back, employing yet another freelance contractor named Hollis Henry (why they couldn’t just bring Cayce back is beyond me, but whatever). This one has no weird intuition, she’s just a former teen singer who’s gone on to become a writer about the industry. He hires her ostensibly to research locative art for some new magazine, a cutting edge technology that is now referred to as “augmented reality”. In the course of this, she discovers that her real mission is to find out who the artist is working for. You see, he’s been using the GPS technology that powers locative art to track a crate that’s been moving around the world for years, passing that info onto some shadowy figure.
So once again, Bigend is curious… When Hollis looks into it, she finds out that the crate is filled with millions that were embezzled from Iraq’s reconstruction fund and the old man tracking it is a former intelligence operative who has a score to settle. He and his crack team are also being tracked by a current intelligence man who uses an addict named Milgrim to track the old man’s operatives by translating their Russian texts (rendered in a language called Volapuk). By the end, the old man and his crew follow the crate to Vancouver and fill it full of hollow point bullets containing radioactive dust. The money is now useless, Hollis is given an exclusive first hand look at it, and returns to Bigend to report on it. Once again, he’s richer for knowing, but has gained nothing else… And all that spy stuff and paranoia? Didn’t really amount to much. Sure there was spy work going on but it was pretty damn subtle, the marginal stuff that goes on at the fringes of the war on terror, not anything central to it. Not what I would expect at all from a book that was trying to make a point about post-9/11 America, in all its paranoid, angry, confused glory.
In the finale, Zero History, which apparently takes it name from the character Milgrim, a man who has no record of his existence for the last ten years (hence, zero history), things are a bit more clear in terms of Bigend’s motivation. However, the overall story was a bit weak, with a name like Zero History and the fact that its the third installment in the series, I was expecting a big send-off, something that went over and above what the first two did. It didn’t seem too much to expect; after all, the first book was a fitting commentary on cyberspace and the sort of tribalism its engendered. The second book upped the ante with a look at espionage and paranoia in post-9/11 America. So who wouldn’t expect that this one would deal with something incrementally bigger and more important? Alas… not so much. But I digress!
In the final installment of the trilogy, Bigend hires Hollis again, paired up with Milgrim, to investigate the origin of some elusive fashion line known as Gabriel Hounds. The reason he wants to do this is because he wants to break into the military-fashion crossover market. Not as silly as it sounds; according to the book, this has been a huge market trend since the Vietnam War and has received new life thanks to the war in Iraq. The culture of war provides life to the fashion industry, swaths of men who buy outfits to look like soldiers, and fashion designers get accustomed to making army gear and end up contracting to the military itself. In the course of their investigation, they learn that one sample they are looking at is the illusive brand named Hounds. These denim products are sold using direct marketing: the dealers show up at prearranged drop points, sell off their merchandise, and then disappear. However, the other sample they come across is being produced by an arms dealer who has a big racket involving former contacts in the military and consulting worlds, and he now sees Bigend as competition. Since he’s a former military man and is into some shady stuff, things begin to get dangerous!
However, the climax is once again the same, with a build-up and then a letdown. Sure the bad guys get beat, but no one dies and no one even gets hurt beyond a simple tasering. Some arrests are made, people hook up, and the world keeps on spinning! There’s also the point of how Bigend’s company appears to be coming apart towards the climax, but in another abortive twist, nothing happens. Bigend is simply declared as being “too big to fail” by the end, and his machinations about being able to see a few minutes into the future appear to have come true thanks to the work of his people. Cool, as a concept, the idea of limited prescience, but like with the other books, it feels like something taped over the plot itself to give it some credibility. Bigend’s main motivation was his curiosity, a contrivance to get the story moving; everything else just feels like justification. Somehow, Bigend has to benefit from all his maneuvering, and developing some kind of system whereby he can predict trends sounds like a good answer. No explanation is forthcoming as to how this works, its just thrown in at the end. Too bad too, as a premise, it’s pretty cool and even kind of worked with the title. Zero History: there is no future, just a constantly evolving present. He who can see just a few minutes ahead and glimpse it in formation will have unimaginable power!
As a third act twist, Gibson does throw one curve ball. Turns out the elusive Hounds designer, whom Hollis finds, is Cayce Pollard herself! Cool, but again, not much comes of it. Hollis says she won’t reveal her, Pollard says she’s not worried, she knows how to deal with Bigend so she’ll be okay when he finds her, and the thread dies! The story then shifts over to the military man and the threat he poses and no word is given to the Hounds for the rest of the story. Odd seeing as how that was central to the plot, but this kind of truncation is common by this installment in the story so I wasn’t surprised. In the plus column, the story does provide some interesting thoughts on resistance to commodification and how the culture of the armed forces trickles down to the street. But seriously, all the fashion stuff gets really suffocating! After a certain point in my reading of it, I couldn’t help but notice the constant mention of clothing, apparel, jackets, etc. Intrinsic to the themes of the novel yes, but I mean, c’mon! Felt like I was reading Sex and the City fan fiction after awhile! Then there was the rather odd attempts to give Bigend character traits beyond his wealth and eccentricities. Aside from an odd fashion sense he has a lust for the Full English breakfast that is mentioned too often in the story, and serves no real purpose that I can see.
Second, there’s the usual Bigend motivation factor. His interest in the marketability of military apparel is one thing, but why would be pay through the nose to get Milgrim clean in this book? Apparently, Bigend likes him because he “notices things” while at the same time is good at going completely unnoticed. For these reasons, he’s decided to pay for rehab in a Swiss clinic and put him on his payroll. Really? All that money just to hire someone who’s only marketable skill is being inconspicuous and observant? Seems more like he just wanted to bring the character back and came up with a small contrivance to fill the point. And of course, there’s Bigend himself. Unlike the previous books, where he just a shadowy figure in the background, by this book he’s grown to the point where he’s kind of like a Bond villain. Gibson even goes as far to say it by the ending, how his purchase of a Russian low-flying craft, the way he had it decked out, and has all the staff dressed like odd caricatures, is Bondian. Doesn’t make it any less weird. Oh, and the fact that he has acquired half of Iceland through a series of business deals and is flying all his staff there on that Russian craft at the end? Bondian!
Overall, what stands out about these books is their similarity to his earlier works, particularly Neuromancer. In this and other works, the story revolves around contractors who are picked up by mysterious men who work behind the scenes or have hidden agendas. But whereas in Neuromancer and other titles belonging to the “Sprawl” and “Bridge” trilogies where you have corporate magnates or mass media forces with clear (and often morally ambiguous) intentions, this time around the agenda of the shadowy person (i.e. Bigend) seems pretty benign and… well, pointless. I mean, why for example is Bigend so obsessed with uncovering all of these mysteries, what’s his motivation? Where’s the profit incentive, the threat to his bottom line? Surely a filthy-rich advertising magnate would have better things to do than spend all kinds of time and money on pet projects that have no purpose other than satisfying his curiosity. In some cases, marginal attention is given to how these things could be of use to him, but curiosity is always the main driving force. Again and again, Bigend’s actions are justified by saying that this is just the kind of guy he is, an eccentric, controlling man who wants to know whats going on around every corner and just happens to be rich enough to make that happen.
To be fair, I get it. I mean how else are you going to set up plots like this, which delve into the mysteries of the everyday world, not sci-fi worlds where anything’s possible because its total fiction and the limits of your imagination are the only constraints you have to deal with? But I would expect that a story would build to a climax, not truncate itself or end up being a letdown for the heroes, not to mention the audience. But then again, Gibson’s work is in details, the story come through more in the subtext than in the goings on of the text itself. And I still love Gibson’s work and owe a rather large debt to him for the inspiration and example he’s provided over the years. So I won’t be avoiding his books in the future; in fact, I’m anxious to see what he’ll do next. Whatever else can be said about this man, he’s good at what he does and manages to always have a keen eye for the things that are just beyond the fringes of the now, the things that are likely to be the cutting edge stuff of tomorrow. One has to wonder how much influence he himself exercises in this regard… Oh well, something for his next book maybe!
It’s like something out of a cyberpunk wet dream. Long the subject of speculative science fiction, it seems that we now have a working prototype for a set of goggles that can handle our wireless and networking needs. Merging the concepts of Augmented Reality with a Head-Mounted Display (HMD), Google has created what are now known as the “Google Glasses”.
Stories by Williams 