Review of The Peripheral (2014)
William Gibson (writer).
Read in 2024.
A murder mystery connects a future woman in the rural US to a further-future, postapocalyptic kleptocracy.
The major speculative premises are good. Although the bare bones of the plot are weak, it’s enchanting to see Gibson engaging with the future(s) again, and the characters are stronger than usual. Flynne is the best: A “raised right” archetype in the meth-lab South whose unusual force of will is well explained by her family and by a formative experience playing a computer game for someone else. Her curatorese bullshit generator implant is such a charming joke on the literati who used to gush over Gibson himself. The explicit conclusion on morality is good, but the melodrama and the wholesomeness don’t sit quite right under the premises.
References here: Archangel (2016), Leave No Trace (2018).