Gibson blends technology, politics and espionage in a cyberpunk melange

Spook Country - William Gibson

That William Gibson is about as geeky as the average suburban housewife probably comes as a surprise to most familiar with Gibson. He is, after all, the man who coined “cyberspace” two decades ago in Neuromancer, the first book ever to win all three science fiction awards (Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K Dick). Yet Gibson freely admits that he’s no more in tune with what’s inside his monitor or his keyboard than you or I. That’s pretty much on a par with learning that A-Rod has never heard of Cooperstown or that Norm Abram can’t tell walnut paneling from wood-grain wallpaper.

Twenty years ago, Gibson conceived a networked society not much different from our own, web-based subcultures, and technology that today hovers only slightly beyond our fingertips. His first “Sprawl Trilogy” novels were set early in the twenty-first century. Says Gibson, he just kept on writing about the early twenty-first century until suddenly the flow of time caught up with the flow of his words. Pattern Recognition, released and set in 2002, marked Gibson’s first novel set in “today” time or, as he calls it, the “very recent past.”

Spook Country is also set in something like real time (technically, Spring, 2006). The novel departs from previous works not only in its use of the cultural and historical references that the author has generally avoided, but also for a lack of themes and characters that identify the work "speculative fiction." Instead, Gibson constructed a speculo-politico-techno-thriller-spy-fiction novel, a combination of multiple genres that few writers could pull off. William Gibson is most assuredly one such author.

There’s a cheap little plastic toy that consists of three or four balls trapped within a maze. The object is, of course, to get all the balls into the same compartment at the same time. When you’ve done that, you’re a winner. In the broadest sense, Spook Country is very much like that little toy, for the game cannot end until all of the players have come together in the same place. They’re a mixed bag, the four game pieces:

• Hollis Henry: a former indie musician whose face still seems familiar to many who barely remember The Curfew. A decade of bad financial management later she struggles to reinvent herself as a freelance writer. She’s been hired by a not-quite-there-yet magazine – “Node,” sort of a European version of “Wired” – to do an article on the players at the cutting edge of locative art¹ in LA. 
• Milgrim: a one-time professional Russian translator now addicted to anti-anxiety drugs. He’s been kidnapped by the man he knows only as “Brown,” who, regardless of the name, is definitely not a UPS driver. 
• Tito: a teenaged New Yorker of indeterminate (probably Cuban-Chinese) ethnicity; he’s fluent in English, Spanish, and Russian, and also a practitioner of the Russian systema; a blend of martial art and Santería. 
• Bobby Chombo: geohacker to the locative art community by night; by day he’s a highly sought-after expert at finding missing items that don’t want to be found. 

Bobby Chombo knows where whatever it is is… and where whatever it is will appear next. The realization that this knowledge is finally loose after several years initiates a flurry of frantic activity. Brown, with Milgrim tethered by a supply of Ativan, kicks into high gear. Tito’s family implements whatever complex plan they have up their collective sleeve, and Hollis… well, Hollis discovers, somewhat disturbingly, that her employer is really the obscenely rich (and enigmatic) Belgian Hubertus Bigend, principal of the Blue Ant Agency; and Bigend wants very much for Hollis to interview Bobby. Or perhaps he just wants her to find Bobby, for whatever reasons the superrich may have.

Once all those parts are assembled, a sort of critical mass is reached. A “Mission: Impossible” plan (perhaps two plans) is implemented; a loose cannon fires pretty much at random, and an innocent bystander learns more than anyone should ever know. And William Gibson pulls it all off without a hitch… that’s Spook Country

A good novel is, as the song says of love, a “many-splendored thing.” Spook Country fills the bill nicely, from its many-layered narrative to its quirky, sometimes odd, but always interesting characters. The novel is probably undeserving of a place on the F&SF shelves where Gibson’s usually placed, but where to slot this book? It has elements of a spy thriller, with a description of tradecraft that out-Ludlums Ludlum; more than a few political statements (though most are rather subtle); and a fascinating glimpse into current (and future?) trends in art. As one might expect from Gibson, there's an ever-present sheen of technology on the brink; technology available only to the wealthiest and most ruthless.

Gibson says that Spook Country marks a seminal watershed in his writing. Though he coined the term cyberspace, Spook Country contains his first use of the word within a novel. And it's a rather odd reference, for a character claims that cyberspace is "everting" – what's real is becoming cyber and what's cyber is becoming real. Scary, when you think about it…

Though Gibson's power as a writer arises from a feverish imagination and an ability for visualizing a future technology that borders on clairvoyant; it would be little beyond ordinary were it not for his mastery of language. Where others might weld a modifier to every verb and noun like those menus one finds at breakfast chains, Gibson instead explores the outer limits of simile and metaphor. He excels at finding new and interesting ways to describe the mundane, descriptions that are sometimes reminiscent of Hemingway's linguistic economies; sometimes almost florid:

"She studied the pattern of potato grease on her empty paper plate. If you knew enough Greek, she thought, you could assemble a word that meant divination via the pattern of grease left on a paper plate by broasted potatoes. But it would be a long word…" 

Spook Country marks Gibson’s emergence from the shadow of genre fiction and into what might be called (perhaps laughingly) " mainstream." Whatever the case, however, the scifi fans saw him first and he will always belong to them (at least in their hearts).

¹ Locative Art: an art form that uses GPS and/or WiFi as its medium. In Spook Country; installations are viewable through VR visors. The wearer must know both the URL of the installation and the GPS coordinates at which it’s installed. It’s a sort of logical, though long-distance, extension of “virtual geocaching.”

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