Agency

I never thought I would use the phrase "tedious William Gibson novel," but apparently this is the version of the world we now live in. <br /><br />This tedious William Gibson novel is clearly a William Gibson novel: it has the effortless prose, the vivid (if occasionally inaccurate) imagery, the geek-culture namedrops, the characters who are outsiders to power and the mainstream. What it doesn't have much of is a plot, and what the characters don't have much of, by irony that may or may not be unconscious, is agency. They do almost nothing that has any impact on anything. In fact, they do almost nothing, and it's narrated at great length. <br /><br />The author establishes a strict alternation between two viewpoint characters: Verity, in a version of 2017 California where the US election of 2016 and the Brexit vote went the other way, and Netherton, in a post-apocalyptic future descended, quite possibly, from our version of the timeline. This strict alternation regardless of what's going on and who has the most at stake at the time, and this choice of viewpoint characters, soon begin to work against the success of the book. <br /><br />Both viewpoint characters are essentially passive. Verity spends most of the book as a passenger, being moved around to escape from a corrupt corporation who hired her at the start of the novel. It's never really clear to me why anyone involves Netherton in events, rather than just going direct; he's a go-between and a middleman and an observer, and the one effective thing he does (fighting off a random encounter that has no lead-up and no follow-through) is entirely by accident. Many of the chapters, particularly the Netherton ones, consist of someone, usually Netherton, repeating something we have just been shown in the previous chapter to someone else who wasn't observing at the time. (Not very far into the book, the two viewpoints connect, by a technological means of communication that's never explained in any depth, but looks to the users like VR.)<br /><br />The beginning is promising. Verity is hired by that dodgy corporation because of her reputation as an "app whisperer" to do vague things with a new alpha build, an implausibly advanced AI called Eunice. Eunice is templated on a feisty, fiercely intelligent and capable African-American woman, and is by far the most interesting character in the book; after <input type="checkbox" class="spoiler__control" aria-label="The following text has been marked spoiler. Toggle checkbox to reveal or hide." onchange="this.labels[0].setAttribute('aria-hidden', !this.checked);" id="c559558a-0bb9-4942-be31-ed449b9562d6" /><label aria-hidden="true" class="spoiler" for="c559558a-0bb9-4942-be31-ed449b9562d6">she disappears</label> (relatively early on), the novel immediately bogs down in exposition, pipe-laying, long descriptions of logistics (she sat here, she put her bag there, she looked at this), and people explaining things to other people that we've just been shown in the previous chapter. Once <input type="checkbox" class="spoiler__control" aria-label="The following text has been marked spoiler. Toggle checkbox to reveal or hide." onchange="this.labels[0].setAttribute('aria-hidden', !this.checked);" id="27bf535a-182c-4ce7-b7da-c1cebd2333c5" /><label aria-hidden="true" class="spoiler" for="27bf535a-182c-4ce7-b7da-c1cebd2333c5">Eunice unexpectedly returns through no action of the other characters</label>, the book wraps up rapidly, but without much involvement of the carefully-gathered group of people who are supposedly the protagonists; they have spent all their time while the world was threatened with nuclear disaster doing mostly mundane or evil-corporation-avoidance-related things, rather than working on anything to do with the threat, and <input type="checkbox" class="spoiler__control" aria-label="The following text has been marked spoiler. Toggle checkbox to reveal or hide." onchange="this.labels[0].setAttribute('aria-hidden', !this.checked);" id="13fe6066-c16c-401d-bc09-5b11743b2c99" /><label aria-hidden="true" class="spoiler" for="13fe6066-c16c-401d-bc09-5b11743b2c99">the unnamed president, clearly Hillary Clinton, sorts it all out anyway with hardly any help even from Eunice - revealing that the normally pessimistic Gibson has a more optimistic view than I do about at least one thing: HRC's potential to be a great and wonderful president, rather than simply a much more competent and all-around less bad one than Trump</label>. <br /><br />I got the feeling partway through that the excessive number of secondary characters with backstories that didn't seem relevant to the current story were left over from a previous novel, and indeed it seems this is a sequel to <i>The Peripheral</i>. I was surprised to discover, looking at the front of the book where they are listed, that I'd missed three novels by Gibson since the last one I read, so I don't know if the mediocre dullness of this one is a new development or part of a trend. Since I got a pre-release version from Netgalley, I also don't know if the couple of glitches (such as placing jungle-dwelling orangutans on the savanna, or having the very British Netherton repeatedly refer to a bowler hat by the solely American term "derby") will be fixed before publication; they may be. What I don't think can be fixed is the overnarration of mundane logistics that stands where a plot would normally go, or the limp and ineffectual puppets that are the viewpoint characters. <br /><br />Accordingly, I'm awarding this my non-prize for Most Disappointing Novel Read in 2019.

<b>”Where you went, according to him, used to be the future of where he is. They still have a common past, but it forked a few years ago. And they both share a past with us, up until something that happened here, prior to the 2016 election, but he doesn’t know what.”</b><br /><br />I’m shocked, simply shocked, that a writer would possibly think that the world was put on a disastrous course in 2016. Of course, this is William Gibson we are talking about, the very man who coined the term cyberspace, so nothing is as simple as just saying one boneheaded trip by Americans to the ballet box destroyed the world. The destruction is never one event or spawned by one person, but a cascade of poor decisions mixed with a heady brew of things no one can do a G-damn thing about. <br /><br />I’ve been reading Gibson since the late ‘80s when I first picked up a copy of <i>Neuromancer</i> and had my mind blown. I’d never read anything like it before, and I was excited, almost as enthralled as when I first encountered <i>The Jetsons</i>, only this world in <i>Neuromancer</i> was not a cartoon. This was a hip, futuristic noir world that spawned a whole new genre of literature called Cyberpunk. I could only wish I was cool enough to be cyberpunk, but I had to settle for living vicariously through the characters in Gibson’s novels who are savvy, whip smart, underground trendsetters wearing understated, but funky, clothes.<br /><br />Verity, the app whisperer, has been hired by a corporation to beta test a new AI program named Eunice, whose favorite movie is <i>Inception</i>. Verity doesn’t trust corporations, but they control most of the techy stuff, and a girl’s gotta eat. Little does she know she has just been put into a shit storm that is going to explode on her timeline but is also going to ripple into other branches of time as well. <br /><br />Yeah, you know, alternative realities. I’m still looking for the portal that will take me to the timeline where I’m a celebrated literary genius instead of the hack book reviewer that all of us are stuck with on this timeline. I hear that Keeten on the other timeline has a friends-with-benefits agreement with Shakira. My only consolation is that I’m probably going to outlive him since...well...Shakira is probably going to shake and shimmy him into an early exit. <br /><br />So when a guy named Netherton gets in touch with Verity and explains that her timeline is fast approaching what they refer to as Jackpot, this isn’t the surprising part of this contact. What takes her time to assimilate is the fact that Netherton is contacting her from 100 years in the future, from an alternative timeline. They have a powerful, ancient person in their timeline named Ainsley Lowbeer who can nudge timelines in directions that don’t lead to Jackpot. And when I say Jackpot, I’m not referring to that chubby inducing moment when you line up three cherries on a one armed bandit and win a bucket full of quarters. No, Jackpot means boom. The type of boom that wipes out 80% of the human population and most of the remaining animal species on the planet. As long as all the billionaires live, I’m sure we’ll be just fine. #sarcasm<br /><br />I’ll be the first to admit that there were times when Gibson left me by the side of the dirt road while still reaching for the door handle. Good thing my boots are made for walking because I eventually, in tortoise fashion, caught up with Gibson and figured out what the hell was going on. So if you are ever lost in a Gibson novel, relax. Let your brain percolate on the details for a bit. Let him play with your mind for a few more pages, and eventually a thunderbolt will go off in your brain. <br /><br /><b>”’We don’t have that situation, in our past. We can’t know where nuclear conflict would take you, but any prognosis whatever is dire.’<br /><br />‘Why do you care?’ Verity asked. ‘You’re not there.’<br /><br />‘Because you and everyone else in your world are as real as we are,’ Lowbeer said, ‘and because we do care, we need your help.’”</b><br /><br />I can’t say how many times a conservative minded American has said to me...what do I care; I’ll be dead by then? In Gibson’s world, even an alternative future, unaffected by our stupidity, cares more than the majority of people who will actually be affected in our timeline. Of course, they have the benefits of seeing the stark results as reality, not speculation. <br /><br />Take a walk in the near future, and sweat a few buckets as Verity, Netherton, and Eunice try and save the world. <br /><br />If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit <a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="http://www.jeffreykeeten.com">http://www.jeffreykeeten.com</a><br />I also have a Facebook blogger page at:<a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten">https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten</a>

Long time Gibson fan, but not so sure about this one. The beginning is incredibly confusing - too many strangely named characters, time shifting in alternating chapters and bizarrely named new inventions and words. It takes sheer will to plod on until the two timeframes mesh and you start to understand what the story is about. Once there, the second half of the book is an enjoyable romp. However, it ends rather abruptly. The ending chapters unsuccessfully attempt to tidy up loose ends, but are unsatisfying. Gibson never fully realized the plot points relating to our present political environment and the late introduction of a do-gooder persona for Eunice feels tacked on and pointless. The basic premise has been handled more expertly by others. It feels as though Gibson wasn't quite sure what story he wanted to tell and ultimately just threw in the towel. A disappointment.

How many times is Gibson going to write this same book? An overpadded group of characters, primarily distinguished by the clothes they wear, get shuttled like pawns through a series of minutely described tableaus. They do little and affect nothing, but are passively moved at the whim of someone very rich or powerful so that, in a disappointing climax, they may witness something boring. <br /><br />In this case, <input type="checkbox" class="spoiler__control" aria-label="The following text has been marked spoiler. Toggle checkbox to reveal or hide." onchange="this.labels[0].setAttribute('aria-hidden', !this.checked);" id="439df75d-95f6-4d0a-b830-1b035fe8d778" /><label aria-hidden="true" class="spoiler" for="439df75d-95f6-4d0a-b830-1b035fe8d778">an AI shuttles an ostensible protagonist, the impotent Verity Jane, back and forth aimlessly for 400 pages. She rides on a motorcycle and she rides in a van; she sleeps on a couch and she sleeps in a container. She meets the same people again and again, and they give her 1. stuff or 2. rides. Everything is logistics, logistics, and if you’re dying to know how many times Verity folds her messenger bag, you will not be disappointed. Verity does nothing else, though, and if she had died on page four, nothing in the AI’s plan would have been different.<br /><br />The stakes are high: the AI is trying to prevent a nuclear war. “I did it, incidentally,” the AI tosses off at one point. “I took care of that off camera.” Phew! Thanks, AI! After moving Verity Jane back and forth a few more times, the AI spends a lot of bandwidth, money, and ingenuity to make sure the impotent protagonist is present at a coming-out party. If Verity had not been there…well, it wouldn’t have made a difference. But she was there, and was privileged to stand idly by while the AI announced to the world that she was an AI. That's right, the climax of the book is a livestreamed press release</label>.<br /><br />I’m not sure if Gibson simply put no effort into plotting this book—insofar as nothing actually happens—or far too much effort into plotting this book: Maybe he sat down and figured out how much time it would take an AI to harvest money from crooked investments, how long the manufacture of various drones would take, etc., and felt bound to keep Verity in the air like a hot potato long enough to achieve the exact logistical orgasm he desired.<br /><br />All of the above is, of course, thematic. The characters have no agency, right? Get it? Gibson has gone to this well often enough that this is clearly his worldview. “The mass and majesty of this world, all / That carries weight and always weighs the same / Lay in the hands of others.” But somehow Auden, Lovecraft, and Gloucester from King Lear manage to make the same point without being so boring. Also so pointless: Verity isn’t even a pawn, because pawns get compelled to do stuff. Pawns can be sacrificed. Verity is a MacGuffin that everybody Wants to Get/Prevent from Getting, but her only function is to be a POV character (the same is true for Wilf, the deuteragonist, btw) while other people act—and still their actions prove to be less important than off-camera AI planning no one is privy to. <input type="checkbox" class="spoiler__control" aria-label="The following text has been marked spoiler. Toggle checkbox to reveal or hide." onchange="this.labels[0].setAttribute('aria-hidden', !this.checked);" id="f4d6e8da-953f-44e9-9694-90a444ccd4a0" /><label aria-hidden="true" class="spoiler" for="f4d6e8da-953f-44e9-9694-90a444ccd4a0">The AI dies and then comes back from the dead, and literally nothing that any character in the book does has an impact on either “exciting” moment. All they can do is watch as the AI explains: “Yeah, so I rigged it where I am no longer dead. I did it off camera,” and go <i>Wow!</i> </label><br /><br />I think this chronic impotence is supposed to be “realistic,” but while it might be realistic to write a book about how nothing we do matters, it makes less sense to write a book about how nothing we do matters but we’re still the important center of the universe for some reason. I know we’re dealing with time-traveling supergangsters from another dimension, so realism is not really at a premium here; I’d just settle for getting an actual story. Instead, Gibson fooled me yet again.<br /><br />TL/DR: This book is a reprint of <i>Spook Country</i> with an extended digression designed to assure us Gibson voted for Hillary Clinton.

If you're a <a href="https://goodreads.com/author/show/9226.William_Gibson" title="William Gibson" rel="noopener">William Gibson</a> fan, or even the remotest fan of <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/20821159.The_Peripheral" title="The Peripheral by William Gibson" rel="noopener">The Peripheral</a>, ignore the stars on this review and just read it. You will thoroughly dig it, even if this feels more like an expansion pack of a novel, a Peripheral 1.5, than a true sequel to that book. For what it's worth, I think The Peripheral is Gibson's best and most inventive book yet. Fight me, <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/22320.Pattern_Recognition__Blue_Ant___1_" title="Pattern Recognition (Blue Ant, #1) by William Gibson" rel="noopener">Pattern Recognition</a> fans.<br /><br />Gibson's spare, barbed-wire prose is in full effect here, for good and ill. I find the writing at times too trim and concise, the characters all talking in the same ultra-hip staccato, but the effect is unmistakable: I am peering over the shoulders of these characters, barely able to take it all in, glimpsing perhaps half of what their more-expert eyes see before being whisked away to more, more, more. It all leaves me with a profound sense that this brooding, sprawling world I'm seeing stretches for miles. The klept, the jackpot, the by-turns-subtle-and-overwhelming powers and lethality of an agent like Lowbeer ... these all get extended in vast, grim vistas, kneaded with expert efficiency, stretching the world of this novel. And wisely, even in this second bite at the time-travel-ish apple, the author leaves it to the reader to fill in the blanks of all the terribleness of the jackpot. Imagining your own worst fears about climate change, pandemics, organized crime, failed states and the like is so much more effective that telling me exactly how it happened, or how the world has come to have some semblance of order again.<br /><br />Unfortunately, the world of this novel's present--a stub different than, but able to interact with, the characters we met in Gibson's previous novel--has far less going for it. Gibson's ideas around Eunice and AI are interesting, but they don't go far: Eunice is pretty much an unfathomably sophisticated AI from the moment she shows up, and she just keeps proving it to new people throughout the course of the book. The biggest flaw in the book, for me, is the cast of all-too-quotidian West Coast techno-cognoscenti. They are all paper-thin characters and far, far less engaging antipodes to the grim, parodic world of Hefty-Mart, Sushi Barn, Flynne and her cohorts that Netherton, Lowbeer, Ash et al. interacted with in the last book. <br /><br />This presents real problems for the story, because placed in such a recognizably mundane world, these characters just don't do much. For all the talk of agency, Verity has precious little of it. She spends the vast majority of this book being told what to do, being moved to and fro, driven around by people she barely knows for reasons she doesn't know at all. Whereas the Peripheral was telling two good stories on both ends of its timeline, the "past" of this book is far less compelling. The major differences in this stub and our 2019 amount to little more than background chatter and a footnote for the reader. Gibson's view of the world with a different Brexit outcome and a different 2016 U.S. presidential election outcome don't do much to improve the overall shape of the world; things are still on track toward the Jackpot. A grim joke, perhaps, that the stub the reader's living in is perhaps more like Flynne's than Verity's.<br /><br />Gibson rarely throws us more than a single character or two to hang our hat on, and in this book, Eunice the AI is far more interesting ... a problem any time she's not on the page in the "past" (which becomes quite often). Compare Verity's lack of agency to Flynne, who actually did things, made decisions, faced down real violence and stood up for her beliefs. Verity ... has favorite restaurants and rides on the backs of motorcycles. Oh yeah, and she's an "app whisperer," a job half as cool as Cayce Pollard's was and about 10% as well fleshed out as Cayce's gig. <br /><br />Gibson seems to write in trilogies, and I sense a pattern: every decade he disgorges something new, a a sun glowing and alive with wild, brilliant, far-sighted ideas. And then he orbits that star with new stories, tangents, quasi-continuations of ideas or threads ... but nothing that shines half as bright as that original sun. As a huge fan of The Peripheral, I loved every bit of illumination this book brought into that world. But like his other trilogies, this book is a mere rock orbiting the bigger ideas of its predecessor.

I read an article a couple of years back about a show that Steve Martin had done where many in the audience were dissatisfied. Perhaps expecting the wild and crazy guy of the 70s, they had instead been entertained by a mature artist who played the banjo and told stories rather than jokes. The talent and inventiveness were still there, but it was different and not what they expected.<br><br>William Gibson’s 2020 sequel to his 2014 Novel Peripheral, and second in his “Jackpot” series, was easier to follow and understand than the earlier Jackpot novel (I actually understood more about Peripheral having read the second book) but to me at least lacked some of his old verve.<br><br>Gibson, the avant garde declarant of Cyperpunk with a fresh and stylish vision of the world is forty years past those lean garage band years. His post 9/11 Bigend Cycle books were more mature, far more realistic, but still had that swaggering McQueen-esque cool that I identify with his writing.<br><br>Peripheral, and now Agency tell the story of alternate reality time travel communications where people “up the line” (Robert Silverberg homage?) over a hundred years can influence stubs of other related time lines. This also made me think of John Varley’s influence and maybe also Neal Stephenson.<br><br>I like Gibson’s writing, but this one could have used some more banjo playing.<br><br><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1611931604i/30778445.jpg" width="400" height="374" alt="description" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy">

This was an entirely pointless book. <br /><br />Gibson sets up a fascinating premise: what if a few things in our world were tweaked, so that Brexit never happened, Hillary Clinton became POTUS, Notre Dame in Paris didn't burn down, a fully autonomous AI was created, and ... That's it. Because he does absolutely nothing with it for 390 pages. In the last few pages, <input type="checkbox" class="spoiler__control" aria-label="The following text has been marked spoiler. Toggle checkbox to reveal or hide." onchange="this.labels[0].setAttribute('aria-hidden', !this.checked);" id="be59196b-c89b-442e-be79-f4031540fb39" /><label aria-hidden="true" class="spoiler" for="be59196b-c89b-442e-be79-f4031540fb39">the AI - who disappeared back on page 131 - shows up again, globally recompiled (<i>don't even ask</i>) and saves the world by announcing herself and offering to meet with each person on the planet. Ohhkkkay?</label> There was no plot, just a cool idea.<br /><br />Each chapter is just a few pages long, which gives the reader the impression of flying through the book, but there are 110 chapters, so it’s long. I felt like I was running in a dream, running and running but getting nowhere. There is <i>far too much</i> to-ing and fro-ing in this book. A lot of the chapters involve a character moving from point A to point B. Verity goes up, she goes down, she goes out, she goes in. There is <i>a lot</i> of movement, but little Change or plot development. Even more frustrating for me was that Verity didn’t question it or even act annoyed. In a book titled “<i>Agency</i>,” is it intentionally ironic that the main character <i> has no agency of her own??</i> Verity is supposedly a whiz at apps, but does <i>absolutely nothing</i> except get carted around by others. She could have been a ten year old child, or a corpse, or a teddy bear, or an aloe plant.<br /><br /><br />There are dozens of characters in this book, and it's tough to keep track of them all, but luckily it doesn't matter who is who because none of them matter. Wilf, Rainey, Lev, and Ash from The Peripheral? Do nothing. All the people who drive Verity around? Do nothing. Verity, Joe-Eddy, Virgil, Carsyn, Manuela? Do nothing. You see the pattern?<br /><br />Things we read far too much about: Verity's mummy sack, rumpled hoody, Muji bag, tweed jacket, and cups of dirty Chai. McWolven's muffins. Shoe trays. Napping in containers. Joe-Eddy's porn couch. Couches, in general. Blue tarp. Ear muffs. Gloves. The fucking charger. The word “charger” shows up 40 times. For Pete’s sake, Gibson, just let the reader assume they took their fucking charger. It doesn’t need to be mentioned every time. It’s a bit like teeth-brushing, or using the toilet - I can safely assume it is happening and I don’t need to read about it every damned time. <input type="checkbox" class="spoiler__control" aria-label="The following text has been marked spoiler. Toggle checkbox to reveal or hide." onchange="this.labels[0].setAttribute('aria-hidden', !this.checked);" id="14407f48-8c49-4d8a-9db4-08bbf89a018d" /><label aria-hidden="true" class="spoiler" for="14407f48-8c49-4d8a-9db4-08bbf89a018d">The charger NEVER had anything to do with the plot.</label><br /><br />And while I’m talking about it, sentences like this: <br /><blockquote> <i> When she stood, the toilet flushed as expected.</i> </blockquote><br />aren’t necessary. Leave that out, Gibson. We get it! She’s a human, humans pee, toilets flush. <br /><br />Same comment for lines like this: <br /><blockquote> <i> she discovered that her lips were dry. She found ChapStick in her purse, applied it.</i> </blockquote><br /> I mean, why? Knowing about the Chapstick adds exactly nothing to my reading experience.<br /><br />And every goddamned time they get in or out of a car (and it happens A LOT), their order of entering or leaving is described <i>in detail</i> along with all belongings they carry (including the goddamned charger).<br /><blockquote> <i> “All out,” Virgil said, unfastening his seatbelt. ... Dixon getting out now, as Carsyn opened the passenger door for Manuela. Now Dixon opened the opposite one for Verity. Making sure she had both her purse and the Muji bag, she got out.</i> </blockquote><br />My god <i>I do not care</i> if Dixon or Virgil or Verity gets out first. <input type="checkbox" class="spoiler__control" aria-label="The following text has been marked spoiler. Toggle checkbox to reveal or hide." onchange="this.labels[0].setAttribute('aria-hidden', !this.checked);" id="3d1666ec-62d9-477c-a7d4-a3f9884008d2" /><label aria-hidden="true" class="spoiler" for="3d1666ec-62d9-477c-a7d4-a3f9884008d2">This had nothing to do with anything. Nevernotonce did it matter who got out of the vehicle first.</label><br /><br />No wonder this book is so long. I'm angry that I wasted so much time on it. That's a month that I could have spent reading something better.

If you were a fan of The Peripheral when it first came out, I'm certain you will also be a fan of this sequel. Reading the other is NOT required, however. <br /><br />In fact, for a great deal of this novel, it's just a fun ride with an AI and a lot of time spent with drones. The AI is NOT your average superpower, but an uploaded mind/AI hybrid based on ad-hoc technologies designed to be a normal, average APP. :) Of course, when the App gets alpha-tested, it slips its leash and the rest, as they say, is history.<br /><br />Or is it?<br /><br />Because the world of the Peripheral, and this one, is a story of additional time-lines. Of a future that has gone busted but still tries to reach back and solve some of the major problems of ours even though they won't be able to make a change on their own. Yeah. I know. Selfless behavior. WEIRD. But it makes for a very interesting tale.<br /><br />And I admit I got a little lost in places. The cool details and the bits about WHERE we went all wrong in 2016 are both humorous and sometimes a bit odd, but overall it blends quite nicely with our prejudices. <br /><br />The places where the story is full of action and intrigue are my favorites. I was MOSTLY interested in the cool future and current tech. Everything else was pretty much on par with all modern William Gibson, however, and old fans will still enjoy it. :)<br /><br />

<i>"Nondigital surveillance is weaponized boredom."</i><br>- William Gibson<br><br><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1592460039i/29666457._SX540_.jpg" width="400" height="216" alt="description" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"><br><br>USA has PKD (the Father)<br>UK had JGB (the Son)<br>CAN has WG (the Holy Ghost in the machine)<br><br>I was going to go on a huge riff about Gibson's talent for merging tech with an asthetic sensibility, but realize I wrote paragraphs about the very mood of Agency in my review of Gibson's previous novel <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/20821159.The_Peripheral__The_Peripheral__1_" title="The Peripheral (The Peripheral #1) by William Gibson" rel="noopener">The Peripheral</a>. (See my review for Peripheral <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1315050770" rel="nofollow noopener">HERE</a>.)<br><br>Agency, like Peripheral, operates in two stubs (times). But Agency is both a prequel (the earlier stub is earlier) and sequel (the later stub is later). And it works. The book hummed along. Part of that dance comes with jumping back and forth in time every couple pages (the 400 page book has 110 chapters). Gibson's stubs takes a bit from multiverse ideas in physics. It isn't time travel. The stubs aren't just one line in time. They might operate in different branches. In fact, the 2017 in this novel is opperating in a branch (stub) where Hillary Clinton won the election and Brexit never happened. This might have been a bit of what delayed Gibson publishing this novel. He might have needed time (we all did) recovering from November 2016.<br><br>Gibson's predictive abilities are still fairly on point too. For example, in Chapter 12, Gibson writes:<br><br><i>"The drivers for the jackpot are still in place, but with less torque at that particular point... They're still a bit in <b>advance of the pandemics</b>, at least."</i> <br><br>AND a couple lines later...<br><br><i>"Hard to imagine they weren't constantly happy, given all they had. <b>Tigers, for instance.</b></i>" <br><br>Anyway, like most of Gibson's novels, it was enjoyable. Probably the only weakness, and I'm not quite sure this wasn't done on purpose, was the character I felt the most FEELS for was AI. And maybe, that was the whole damn point.

The main idea of "Peripheral Devices" is to prevent a catastrophe in the future by pinpoint touches to the present.<br /><br />I'm not talking about the title novel of the trilogy right now - that a trilogy is supposed to be, one can conclude from the fact that the second book does not exhaust the topics, and in general Gibson tends to this format. So, I'm not talking about the first book, there the theme of correcting the past was not so obvious, it was obscured by the dynamics of the game, the wonders and curiosities of the brave new world, emotional attachment to Flynn.<br />The "agent of influence" is different.<br /><br /><b>Гибсон-попаданчество</b><br /><i>-- Вы колонизируете альтернативные прошлые?<br />— В вашем случае мы пытаемся предотвратить ядерную войну в вашем срезе.</i><br />Отчего тема попаданчества, так буйно расцветшая на отечественной почве, практически не востребована западной фантастикой? Наверно там не актуально болезненное до мучительного ощущение неправильности мироустройства, высоцкое "нет, ребята, все не так, все не так, как надо" - характерное для русской ментальности вообще и новейшей истории в частности.<br /><br />Почему новейшей понятно, поездили соотечественники по свету, посмотрели как оно все у других, своя неустроенность от этого еще горше показалась. Невозможность изменить настоящее погнала на поиски корня проблемы в прошлом, актуализировав образ удальца, который попадет куда надо и все исправит. А западному миру такое не надо. потому что в нем и без того хорошо. В точности такого - нет. Но основная идея "Периферийных устройств" - предотвращение точечными касаниями к настоящему катастрофы в будущем.<br /><br />Я сейчас не о титульном романе трилогии - что предполагается трилогия, можно заключить из того, что вторая книга не исчерпывает темы, и в целом Гибсон тяготеет к этому формату. Так вот, я не о первой книге, там тема исправления прошлого была не так очевидна, заслонялась динамикой игры, чудесами и диковинами дивного нового мира, эмоциональной привязкой к Флинн.<br /><br />"Агент влияния" иной. Читатель предположительно уже сориентирован в обстоятельствах, понимает, что речь о двух временных пластах, в данном случае 2017 в раннем "срезе" и 2136 в мире утопического будущего. Идея временного перемещения человеческого сознания в более или менее антропоморфное устройство уже не поражает. Итак: 2017 реальности, в которой на президентских выборах победила Хилари Клинтон, а Британия не выбрала Брекзит. В целом мир устроен куда лучше данного нам в ощущениях, но "джек-пот" (локальный апокалипсис в терминах серии) в нем должен оказаться наиболее чудовищным и неотвратимым - ядерная война.<br /><br />Умная и красивая Верити Джейн, удалившаяся от мира после романа и расставания с миллиардером Стетсом полгода назад, выпилила себя из сетей и теперь понемногу возвращается к нормальной жизни, без пристального интереса папарацци и всего, что прилагается к отношениям со звездой первой величины. Сейчас она нашла после долгого перерыва работу - тестировать ИИ по имени Юнис, следующее поколение виртуального помощника, соединенного с чат-ботом, в основе разработки новейшие технологии военных. Последнее не то, чтобы здорово, но выбирать Верити особенно не из чего.<br /><br />Искин Юнис начинает знакомство с тестировщицей с предложения открыть дверь курьеру, который доставить той сумку с сотней тысяч долларов наличными. И нет, мы не возьмем эти денежки и не закатимся до конца жизни на Гавайи. Конец нашей - как и всех окружающих - жизни, может случиться много скорее, чем предполагаем. Деньги понадобятся, чтобы не допустить ядерного апокалипсиса.<br /><br />Ну и заодно уж защитить Верити от нанявших ее вояк. Потому что когда они поймут, что за удивительное, способное стратегически мыслить и выполнять множество задач одновременно создание у них получилось, нежелательного свидетеля уберут. Работу по предотвращению Юнис разворачивает в тесном сотрудничестве с людьми из 2136, уже знакомыми нам по первой книге.<br /><br />Верити не так эмоционально притягательна как Флинн первого романа, сюжет проще, чем у "Периферийных устройств", главным образом состоит из драк, погонь и перестрелок, Уилф Недертон порадует нас перемещением в робота, по виду напоминающего раскормленного или перекачанного Губку Боба. И в целом роман производит впечатление более динамичного.<br /><br />А финальное явление Юнис народам трогает до глубины души и вселяет надежду.<br /><i>Я никому не принадлежу. Я плачу́ сама. Я не существую физически, не привязана ни к какому месту, ни к какой стране. Я распределена глобально и считаю это своим гражданством.</i><br />