Stephen King, William Gibson and The Quantum Moment

Scintillating stories of science fiction and scientific thinking

The Peripheral

Technoprophet Gibson’s groundbreaking cyberpoetry envisioned the advent of ubiquitous digital dependence in The Sprawl Trilogy, especially Neuromancer and Mona Lisa Overdrive, but was sorely lacking in the Blue Ant Trilogy. That’s why The Peripheral is so astounding - it’s a stunning return to form and the first time in two decades Gibson has written a book set far, and not so far, in the future.

The Peripheral is part whodunnit, part Cli-Fi (Climate Fiction) prophecy and as we plough full tilt towards our own “Jackpot” event without giving away too much (see ebola outbreak and walrus stranding) I am already wishing for a visitor from the future to fab me a medici and an assembler gun.

“Medici doesn’t like the look of your liver.”

Alcoholic publicist Wilf Netherton has dropped the ball and his fuck buddy/performance artist client’s sister has disappeared. And so he reaches into the past for help with the investigation dragging Flynn into the desolate post-Jackpot future. London is a bleak and depopulated playground for the leftover rich and neo-primitives.

Just like Wilf I fell hard for white trash girl gamer Flynne. When most of her contemporaries are working hard building drugs or doing shifts at the Hefty Mart she takes over one of her ex-marine brother’s shifts beta-testing a grisly game.

“They didn’t think Flynne’s brother had PSTD, but that sometimes the haptics glitched him.”

Or at least that’s what she thinks when she witnesses a swarm weapon disintegrate a woman.

Flynn must inhabit a Peripheral described as an anthropomorphic drone or telepresence avatar to jump into this alternate future.

That future changes with each new development in the past that Detective Inspector Ainsley Lowbeer, the head of the future investigation, puts in place to thwart the killer and those hiding him.

“The act of connection produces a fork in causality, the new branch causally unique. A stub as we call them.”

Ambitiously structured across futures Gibson’s cyberpunk prose leaves my head reeling like some extravagant future aperitif. But the exact mechanics of the past/future time-travel are always kept slightly out of reach.

Flynne is an extraordinary character, cynical, compelling and forcefully real, the driving force of this novel. In fact all the characters are convincingly authentic, their lives circling each other in this large hadron collider of a narrative.

The Peripheral sees William Gibson return to science fiction with two unique visions of the future are both detailed and immersive. This piece of work is a treat even though the ending felt too much like a sugar coated cronut.

Ultimately I'd say this book is worth reading for any wannabe cybersmiths with hyper Pattern Recognition. William Gibson’s memes of cyberspace and artificial intelligence are now universal and I’ve been waiting for this book for years. Neal Stephenson take notice: next, we are waiting for another Anathem. Time to download Aphex Twin’s Syro from Dark net and wait for the Jackpot.

“So now, in her day he said, they were headed into androgenic, systemic, multiplex, seriously bad shit…” LO

Author William Gibson
Title The Peripheral
Publisher Viking Adult
Price £18.99 (Hardback), £10 (eBook) on sale 20th November
More info Publication web site