The Footage Shall Reveal...

Pattern Recognition - William Gibson

The generation born in the 1970s and '80s has benefited from a revolution in the way our world functions; a sea change of the magnitude of steam power, Ford's assembly line, or the refutation of the heliocentric universe. Never before has information spread at such velocity. Consider "dancing baby" and "all your base are belong to us," phenomena that circumnavigated the globe at the speed of thought. To our grandparents, fashion and commerce were local: the corner bakery, the town tailor and milliner, a grocer served by local farms and gardens. Today, however, children the world over identify the icons of our age regardless of their native alphabet; they recognize the swoosh and the golden arches and the red and white soda can at a distance of a thousand paces.

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.

William Gibson Plumbs the Near Future: The Peripheral

The Peripheral - William Gibson

It never crossed Flynne Fisher’s mind that doing a favor for her brother would lead to such upheaval. After all, she was just doing security for some online game – or so she thought. This game was different, though: for one thing, the setting was… disturbingly familiar… and it was more realistic than any game she’d played before – especially the gruesome murder she witnessed. Flash forward a couple of days: word on the street is that there’s a contract out on her brother because someone thinks he saw something he shouldn’t have. What’s weird, though, is that the company who’d originally hired him is coming to his (and Flynne’s) defense with some pretty advanced tech. Turns out that her virtual reality trip hadn’t been into a game, it had been to the future. Or more accurately, to a future – you know: time-travel paradoxes and all that.