Neuromancer by William Gibson

I can't say enough good things about Gibson's writing. While it forces you to play close attention in an environment ever both familiar and outlandish, we get a nearly unmatched level of immersion. While eventually explaining to us what the Nueromancer is, the book follows the stories of Case and Molly on a dangerous hacking mission.

How did they get mixed up into all of it? In Gibson's cyberpunk future, it could happen to anyone. Nobody is safe from this ever shifting, augmented reality we inhabit.

All Tomorrow's Parties by William Gibson

You might have been wondering, When's PJ going to update his blog? The answer is now, well, this post is being written on March 10th. I have in fact already read a lot of books this year, and I had a habit of getting my reports written on the first Thursday of every month. Then I decided to mix it up and kind of fell off. I don't know if you can relate. If I don't pursue an activity religiously, I tend forget about it.

But with this Bridge trilogy, I chugged through it and finished this third book in a single day. It was that good. In this resolving story, we return to the autonomous civilization of San Francisco. Everything comes together with the most severe and exhilirating consequences. It makes you wonder. Are we all heroes, or are we all not heroes, merely hanging around while technology drags us through all our deepest terrors?

Idoru by William Gibson

I started reading this one before Virtual Light, because I'd found it on paperback and didn't know it was the 2nd in a trilogy. And as it turns out, I didn't need to start with the first book, as this one follows its own set of characters in its own setting, Tokyo, as rebuilt by nanobots.

Much of this story follows the dangrous misadventures of Laney, a man who works in celebrity technology, predicting fortunes with his unique ability to find nodes and patterns in data. He has this special gift because as an orphan in Gainesville Florida, he was injected with an experimental medication for adhd. While this gift is more dangerous than valuable.

Idoru is Japanese for Idol, a name used to define an era of japanese popular music. Idoru fandoms have always been a huge part of the economy and general consciousness over there, so it's only natural for this paradigm to take an occasional turn for the dangerous.

But what if the most powerful celebrity was generated by a computer, and lived in all places at once? If you're wondering, I strongly recommend this book. For a few days, it consumed me in such a fantastic, exciting way.

Virtual Light by William Gibson

Like many, I've been regaled with praises of Gibson's Neuromancer masterpiece, flagshipping the genre of cyberpunk, as influencial in the literary world as Bladerunner is to everything else. But I thought it'd be a good idea to save his biggest hit for later, and I don't regret my decision. Virtual Light is amazing, rapidly immersive and exciting, with mood shifts that champion the pulp-noir typists of yester year.

Taking place primarily in the San Francisco bay area in the the future year of 2005, Virtual Light tells the story of an ex-cop and ex-rent-a-cop named Berry Rydell. At no real fault to himself, he finds himself at the bottom, taking a freelance job with some associates of the security company he'd been fired from, to do their dirty work. This job coincides him with a once-homeless bike messenger, Chevette Washington, who lives in a makeshift hut, piled at the top of the golden gate bridge.

In fact, the bridge has turned into an autonomous zone for the lower class. And when the lower class collides with the powers in place, crimes and frames for crimes are inevitable. This is how Chevette finds herself with a pair of Virtual Light glasses, containing a coorporation's top secret plans to rebuild San Francisco with endlessly working nanobots, as they were doing in Tokyo.

I love the setting of a dystopian future because everything is familiar but different, parodied with a shifting nature. Every scene is dangerous a dangerous feast for the imagination. Every character with the privilege for double agency takes what they can get. If you are not big shot, then the best you can hope for is a job in the business of reality tv.

While I wouldn't say the story here is perfect, I had a wonderful time with it and rapidly consumed the rest of this Bridge trilogy. So be ready for reports on Gibson's Idoru, and All Tomorrow's Parties.