![]() ![]() ![]() I recently spoke to William Gibson about the book, his ideas about science fiction and genre, and more. The Peripheral is an incredible feat of speculative imagination and one of the best books of the year. (Sound familiar?) The unfolding relationship between these two futures, which is built around a technological vision that is genuinely, strikingly new, acts as a kind of immersion therapy for the reader: she is slowly assimilated into the life-world, language, and political reality of these dueling futures. After an accumulation of mid-level martial, epidemic, and climate-based catastrophes - referred to as The Jackpot - the population has dwindled, and the world’s considerable technological resources are in the hands of a corrupt oligarchy. The second future, set in London more than 100 years from now, is far stranger and more alienating. The Peripheral’s first future, which occurs a few decades from now in the rural American South, features mega-versions of Walmart, 3D-printed meth, and new, pernicious forms of post-traumatic illness that stem from ever more technologically advanced military combat. ![]() It’s a rather extraordinary and rare event, then, that Gibson has set his new novel, The Peripheral, in not one but two futures. His last novel to be set in the future, in fact, was 1999’s All Tomorrow’s Parties. For an author who is arguably our greatest speculist of techno-culture, William Gibson hasn’t been spending much time in the future. ![]()
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