Gibson's debut novel. From there, I moved on to the storybook Burning Chrome, and then teleported 30 years into the future, skipping about 11 books. It wasn't a conscious choice, it just happened laid out the cards. And certainly it was interesting trip accompanied by an attempt to understand how the author's style has changed over time. Another thing is whether the "trip" was worth it, but everything has its time. The impatient can look at the end of the article.
The plot of "Peripherals" revolves around a bridge in time. There is a "type" of the present - a society that has survived a nuclear-free, slow apocalypse through the pollution of the world and the extinction of people through disease and not only. And the conditional past is the 2030s, where everything is moving towards this apocalypse, but it is not close to it yet. The main characters of the story are Wilf Nederton, a PR man from the "real" who gets into trouble as a result of his carelessness. And Flynn Fisher, a girl from a large family. She takes any job that can be found in the American outback where she lives. This is where it all starts - with a side job.
I hope you didn't feel like I was describing the plot in the spirit of Lake House. It's never a romance in the sense of " romantic story". It's more like a techno-thriller. Flynn, through a peripheral device that allows you to transfer information to the future and back, becomes a witness to the murder, which turns out to be seriously involved in the politics of the "modern" world. when it is possible to identify the killer.
And this really threw me off the rails. The story goes so slowly that the movement of the poppy, turning after the sun, is more interesting to follow. This is not to say that absolutely nothing is happening. Someone is talking to someone, we, the readers, will learn some details of this probable future. But with all this, the plot is marking time. There is a plot where the murder takes place and a couple of plot-forming events. And then the waiting for Godot begins. True, unlike the play, here the climax and denouement are still in place.
What do you need 440 pages of a book for, you ask? Well, character development. There are actually a lot of them here. And they are really well written, they look like real people. Everyone shows their own character. True, at some points the question still arises - what kind of character is this? And this makes me uncomfortable. Because in the end, as it turns out, it's all relatively unimportant. From the point of view of the plot, there really are literally two events in the book - the appearance of a mystery with a murder and exposure in the finale.
Of course, there are many side stories here. For example, Wilf's struggle with alcoholism. Or the storyline about Flynn and her seriously ill mother. Plus, they are still trying to show us two worlds of the future at once - the nearest one, where everything is done using 3d printers, and the more distant one, where nanobots are used with might and main. But considering how these storylines just get knotted at the end of the climax, it's almost outrageous. What the hell was all this for?
Probably for the sake of political, and not so, allusions that will constantly arise during reading. However, I will note that Russians are introduced into the plot. And there were no stereotypes.
Like last time, I have to pay attention to the heaviness of Gibson's tongue. He is good at dialogue, but as soon as the characters shut up, the narrative begins, viscous and sucking. It took me 3 weeks to read the book, which is quite a long time for me. Reading Neuromancer and Burning Chrome took 2 weeks in total. And again, very little action.
Ah yes, the nature of the story. The whole book is divided into alternate narration. 1 microchapter from Wilf's perspective, the other from Flynn's perspective. Again to Wilf, and again to Flynn. The chapters are really micro - two or three pages each. And this is not a plus or a minus, just a feature. I think in this way Gibson was trying to show how different the perception of events from two different points of view from different time points.
Finally, I would like to add about the world of the future. He's kind of ... one-sided, or what? Gibson shows the life of very large recluses. At the same time, he additionally cuts off the possibilities of socialization for the characters. In fact, there are few people in the "present", for the apocalypse, all things. In the "past", the action takes place in some backwater. And a lot remains behind the scenes, somehow - politics, touched in the end just a little; television and mass media in general, mentioned once or twice; youth and old people are absent. And what's funny - on the cover of the book, Gibson complains that there are no old people and children in Neuromancer, and he simply could not describe Flynn caring for her mother in those days. But there are also no children and old people in "Peripheral Devices". All characters are middle-aged between 25 and 40 years old, with the exception of individual characters, who are subjectively perceived as the same age anyway.
And one more thing that does not leave my head. The temporary bridge between the "present" and the "past" is not explained in any way from the technical side, which turns "Peripherals" into a fantasy, in fact. But to be honest, there was the same strange techno-magic in Neuromancer. And this is another point that disappoints in the work of Gibson. From the father of cyberpunk, I expected more ... manufacturability, or something.
Outcome: 4 out of 6. Still, to say that I didn't enjoy it is an understatement. It's just that no matter what element of the book I poke, there is something to complain about. Something bothers me, here and there. Especially here is this slow narrative, which suddenly collapses in the finale. Although there were hints almost of "War and Peace" in terms of intertemporal relations. Hence the disappointment.
P.S. In summary, the Gibson stories are my favorite so far. I didn't like some of them, but they were much better with overall composition and storytelling. Somehow smoother. Have you read this last book by Gibson?
P.P.S.: In general, I have the feeling that I've been snickering lately. And got bold. I mean, I don't like almost anything. Just enter the hashtag "Keith hates everything." Well, it's time to take a break somehow from all this. I don't know how, however. It's not a break from work, it's something to do with critical thinking.
Peripherals William Gibson
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Name: Peripherals
Author: William Gibson
Year: 2014
Genre: Cyberpunk, Science Fiction, Action Fiction, Detective Fiction, Foreign Fiction
About Peripherals by William Gibson
William Gibson is a very extravagant writer. His name is associated with the creation of such a subgenre of science fiction as cyberpunk. All his works make the brain work intensively and endlessly rearrange thoughts in order to get a more or less understandable and logical picture of what is happening.
His book Peripherals is a prime example of speculative fiction. This work does not just show multidimensional space - it plays with all colors and invites the reader to join the frenzied game of the mind. Starting to read the novel, you catch yourself thinking that you don’t understand much. However, judging by the abrupt manner of presentation, this was the intention of the author. All pieces of the puzzle are combined into a single plot pattern only in the second part of the work. But it is all the more interesting to delve into this unusual story, where the intrigue is created not storyline, but with the specific style of the writer.
William Gibson invites the reader into a two-tiered future. The action of the book takes place in the near future for us, representatives of today's society, and in the future for people of the future. According to the plot sketch, at the end of the 21st century, the world is covered by a giant cataclysm and only a few survive. The survivors begin to develop technology at a rapid pace. One of greatest discoveries of that time - the emergence of so-called slices - access to options for events from the past with the ability to influence their possible alternatives in the future. Thus, influential people begin to use these slices for their own personal purposes. In a similar job testing a new computer game turned out to be main character works - ex-military Burton. His task was to patrol the building and protect it from annoying paparazzi. As soon as he was away for one day, a strange murder occurred at the testing session. His sister Flynn, who replaced him, decided to find out what was the matter. But where to start? After all, she did not even understand what reality she was in ...
The specificity of the book "Peripherals" is that it is written in the language of virtual reality slang and neologisms, and William Gibson does not explain most of the new terms. Everything must be guessed by the reader. The same is assigned to him in terms of understanding the structure of the fantasy world. If you delve into all the fragmentary threads, listen carefully to the phrases uttered by the characters and turn on your imagination, you get a stunningly atmospheric saga about our future, the echoes of which are already visible in the present. Undoubtedly, this novel will be interesting to read for people of a certain intellectual level who enjoy building in their imagination pictures of the technological future almost on their own.
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Quotes from the book Peripherals by William Gibson
“Man is weak, my dear,” said Ainsley, looking at the Thames with blue old eyes, “and the moment we forget it, we perish.”
I am disturbed by an excess of information, abundant to the point of complete meaninglessness. The flaws of the system are explained by the fact that we take this whole ocean of data and the decision points offered by the algorithms as an acceptable analogue of complete certainty. Personally, I get the best results when I pretend to know relatively little and act accordingly. Although this is much easier said than done.
People who cannot imagine that they will behave badly usually lose miserably to those who do not need to imagine anything, because they already behave badly. She said, big mistake to think that these people are different, special, infected with something inhuman, subhuman, fundamentally different.
The rest simply considered the cunning ones to be completely sick assholes, and they saw in such an attitude towards themselves a sign of their godliness.
Careful not to cut her fingers, Flynn zipped up the case and put it back in place.
She swiped her phone across the display and called up Home's map of the county. Shailene's badge was in the Foreva Fab, one of the segments of the emo ring was lilac with anxiety. As usual, no one did anything special. Madison and Janice played in the Su-27, an old-school flight simulator that Madison was the main source of income. Both rings were brown, which meant "shitty mood", however, they did not bother to change it. It turned out that four of her acquaintances were working today, including Flynn herself.
Growing up, it leads to more terrible consequences, but remains only the sum of ordinary human meanness.
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William Gibson ( full name William Ford Gibson was born March 17, 1948 in Conway, South Carolina. Life went on as usual and did not promise anything unusual, despite a very turbulent youth - Gibson studied at college with difficulty, often wandered and hipped, but in August 1964, in the distant Gulf of Tonkin, there was a well-known incident with the American destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy", which became the formal reason for the start of the Vietnam War by the States. A few years later, it became clear that a quick victory would not work. These historical events directly influenced the fate of the future writer: the twenty-year-old Gibson had every chance of falling under the appropriate call. The prospect of participating in the fight against "world evil" with the help of M16 and napalm did not at all appeal to the young man. A way out was found - in 1968 he left for Canada. After living for some time in Toronto, William finally settled in Vancouver, where he lives to this day.
By education, Gibson is a specialist in the field of English-language literature. The idea to become a writer came to him in student years. As the science fiction writer himself admitted, “I leafed through the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and thought that I could write one of these stories. I sat down and tried to write something like this, but I never succeeded. Finally, out of frustration and bitterness, I began to write in my own way, just to get rid of it.
William Gibson's writing career began in 1977 with the publication of the short story "Fragments of a Hologram Rose" in Unearth magazine. This is a little story about the new kind entertainment - simstim, a kind of virtual reality. Moreover, the action takes place in the scenery of devastation and martial law after the new civil war in the USA. Over the following years, several more stories were written, including the cycle "The Gernsback Continuum" (1981), which some time later came out as a separate collection.
Already from the first attempts at writing, it became clear that Gibson was not at all going to write the mainstream, but rather inclined to experiment with then new topics. by the most famous works Gibson in the early 1980s were Johnny Mnemonic (1981) and Burning Chrome (1982). They became, in fact, the preface to several subsequent novels.
These stories have almost all the elements of cyberpunk: dynamic plot, omnipotent corporations, high technology and hackers, or, as he called them, "console cowboys". And, finally, the most important thing is the Infomatrix, a global computer network, an indispensable attribute and condition for the existence of a society in the near future, in which the heroes of his works live. Gibson's innovation manifested itself in a complete revision of the formula of the future, which was followed by science fiction of the time. Instead of the classic "space - robots - atomic energy" scheme, he used "computer networks - biotechnology - virtual reality".
This vision of science fiction found understanding and support among like-minded people. Perhaps the most important was the personal acquaintance of William Gibson with Bruce Sterling in August 1981 at a small science fiction conference in Austin. Gibson presented his short story "Burning Chrome" there, to which Sterling was enthusiastic. Subsequently, this meeting resulted in a long and fruitful cooperation. Sterling highly valued the work of his colleague, so it is not surprising that the anthology of cyberpunk collected by Sterling - the collection "Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology" - contained two Gibson stories at once. This is simply a reflection of the real role of this writer in the development of the genre.
William Gibson's very first novel, Neuromancer (1984), simultaneously became his most famous and arguably most successful work. A story about a hacker who seeks to return to cyberspace and is embroiled in a fight between two artificial intelligences, with a good drive and a meaningful ending, has become a revolution in the science fiction genre. Cyberspace in general became one of Gibson's main findings in this novel. "Neuromancer" has received numerous awards, including such prestigious ones as Hugo, Phillip Dick Award, Nebula, Seiun and Ditmar.
We can talk about Neuromancer long and hard, but I will note only a few interesting points related to the most cyberpunk novel in history. William Gibson has repeatedly said that he never thought his book would become so popular. After all, he broke every canon of writing successful fiction that you could think of. “I thought that maybe someday my book would be understood somewhere in France. Perhaps there will even be a cult like that of Jerry Lewis. But no one else will read this, ”these are the words of the author himself, spoken two years after the publication of the novel.
Despite the fact that Gibson then had a very superficial understanding of the technical aspects computer technology, his vision of the prospects for their development turned out to be thoughtful enough to interest many people, including those associated with their development. In fact, Gibson took the set of ideas of that time about computers, decomposed it into elements and built his own system from them. He created a kind of "anticipation of technology", which could well have some impact on the development of consumer computer technology. In addition, Bruce Sterling provided tangible assistance to Gibson, sometimes advising him on many issues. Of course, many technical errors were later found in Neuromancer, but after all, this is science fiction literature, and not a scientific treatise, so an approach in the spirit of “Not true! That's not how it works!" it is not always appropriate here, especially since one can cite many much worse examples of downright pathological ignorance and unwillingness to understand the features of computer technology in the works of other authors, and not only science fiction writers.
Neuromancer was the first novel in a trilogy commonly referred to as the Sprawl Chronicles. The next two - "Count Zero" (1986) and "Mona Lisa Overdrive" (1988), - developing the theme of "Neuromancer", have their own characteristics. Numerous artificial intelligences operate in them, free inhabitants of the Matrix, often using people for their own purposes and expecting a certain worship from them. The mix of high-tech sci-fi and voodoo cults has given new flavors to the cyberpunk genre. Gibson is trying to argue with the idea of opposing the human spirit, mind and his physical body. The idea of completely transferring all human activity into cyberspace does not seem to be in line with Gibson's views and is presented more as an example of a perverted perception of technology.
These novels were the last classic cyberpunk works written by Gibson. In the following books, he gradually moves away from the style and subject matter that brought him worldwide fame. This was probably the right decision: the moves and entourage developed by William Gibson were already exploited with might and main by other writers who wished to get their share of success in this unexpectedly popular genre. Once fresh and revolutionary finds gradually became clichés. The inventor of all this, quite rightly, decided not to turn into a lifetime monument to himself, which would be bad form, but tried to go beyond one, albeit very popular at that time, genre.
This was already done in the next novel - "The Difference Engine" (1991), written by Gibson in collaboration with the same Bruce Sterling. Having retained the former thematic relationship with computer technology, they have dramatically changed the scenery. Instead of the near future, we are offered to go to the times of Victorian England and become witnesses of the industrial revolution, which differs from the one known to us in that Charles Babbage nevertheless managed to bring his cybernetic machines to working use, and the era of computers, albeit powered by steam, began a century before. Around this assumption, the events of the novel are built. The genre of the book, which combined the steam and digital eras in such a peculiar way, was subsequently called "Steampunk".
The action of the second, somewhat less known in our area Gibson trilogy, which bears the name "Bridge Chronicles", takes place in 2015-2020, often in Japan and in general in the East. Like the works of the previous cycle, the novels "Virtual Light" (1993), "Idory" (1996) and "All Tomorrow's Parties" (1999), remaining completely independent works, had many points of contact. The writer continued to explore the world that may well be the reality around us. Characteristic style Gibson, in presenting the prospects for the development of new technologies and their penetration into various areas, remained rather gloomy.
So, for example, "Idory" is dedicated to the topic of interaction between computer technology and mass culture, in particular, the creation of virtual pop artists and other characters endowed with artificial intelligence. As you know, such experiments are already taking place in reality, often achieving popularity. Name of the book - Japanese word, which comes from the English idol (idol). Much of the novel comes from Gibson's personal experience of visiting Japan and Hong Kong.
The success of the writer's work sooner or later had to attract the attention of filmmakers. And so it happened, however, Gibson's relationship with the cinema turned out to be peculiar and ambiguous.
The first experience was an unsuccessful attempt to write the script for the film "Alien-3" by David Fincher. Gibson was specially invited to this position and had high hopes for him. But the further the work on the film progressed, the less remained of his version. In the end, the services of Gibson were refused, and the picture was shot according to the script of other authors.
His first film adaptation own work was Johnny the Mnemonic (1995), directed by Robert Longo. main role gave Keanu Reeves, and Gibson himself, of course, wrote the script. The director claimed that they wanted to make a black-and-white film in the spirit of alternative cinema, but soon realized that no one would give money for such an undertaking. In the end, the original idea had to be slightly tweaked, and the result was a colorful and slightly theatrical film. Despite being considered a cult film in certain circles, it failed miserably commercially. Some consolation for the authors was that the version for Japanese distribution was made somewhat closer to the original idea. Either way, Johnny Mnemonic has its good points and remains Gibson's best-known film.
Three years later it was implemented new project to transfer to the movie screen another early story about the difficult everyday life of industrial espionage professionals - "New Rose Hotel". This time, a whole group of writers, including Gibson's colleague in the cyberpunk workshop, John Shirley, worked alternately on the script, as a result of which the original plot was decently changed. The picture did not bring special laurels to its creators.
As for Gibson's most famous work, the company that once acquired all the film rights to Neuromancer went bankrupt. As a result of this, the prospects for the release of at least some film on this topic remain more than vague to this day.
The writer also tried himself in other genres, becoming the author of the poem "Agrippa - A Book of The Dead" (1992) and a number of other poetic works, as well as filming documentary"No Maps For These Territories" (2000). In addition, his articles can often be found on the pages of Wired, Observer and some other magazines.
Having become acquainted with the works of William Gibson and his biography, one inevitably asks questions: how to explain the phenomenon of his works? How did a person who has nothing to do with high technology and who has never worked with computers professionally manage to create works that are rightfully recognized as the best in the genre? After all, in fact, he imitated a whole science, came up with a lot of terms, while managing not to lose the purely artistic qualities of his works. Of course, even Gibson himself could not fully answer these questions. Therefore, one can only make assumptions.
As a rule, mass consciousness is unable to directly perceive any new scientific discoveries or promising technologies. After all, the strict and formalized style of their presentation is convenient for specialists in the relevant fields and is adapted precisely to the characteristics of such an audience. All other people react to the popular retelling of these ideas, and if it is done by a specialist or a developer, then this is more an exception than a rule, this will be almost the last thing that the author of a promising development will attend to. At the same time, the gap between the discovery and the popular interpretation can be many years. In this case, we are not talking about forecasts at all. But products created by high technologies are quickly introduced into everyday life and require reflection and development of at least some kind of attitude, as quickly as possible to fill this vacuum of perception. This is most likely what happened to Gibson: he was able to feel and “translate” the language of new technologies not just into the language of popular science works, but into the language of science fiction, organically linking traditions literary genre and the reality of developing technologies. He caught the trends and essence of the ongoing changes and described them in vivid images, building a picture of the future in the entourage of the very spirit of the times. It required a special kind of talent, and William Gibson possessed it to the fullest.
Alexey Kutovenko, [email protected]
When William Gibson was eighteen, he and his mother lived in her native Whiteville, Virginia, a town where the future was allowed to look, but perceived with deep distrust, a place where finding a job was happiness, and the only help could be considered a parental house, for which required to pay rent. It is quite natural that Gibson tried in every possible way to escape from there, and in the end his mother determined him to study in Arizona, and soon after that she died, collapsing in the middle of the street. After that, Billy fell into a fugue state for a while, and came to his senses already on the Greyhound night bus to Toronto. At dawn, the bus passed a gigantic junkyard, over which the sky seemed gray, like a TV screen on a dead channel. Below, slowly crawling under its own weight like lines of glitched cyberspace code, was a strange pantheon of spontaneously shaped piles of green plastic garbage bags. For the first time in his life, Billy saw disposable garbage bags: in Whiteville, it was customary to carry an overflowing bucket to the cesspool without too much thought. He did not understand why there were so many bags, thousands and millions (on that day there was a garbagemen's strike), and from nothing to do, he began to puzzle over their purpose. Isn’t this a strange thought, for the first page of the zero dossier of a new life, where you were kicked unceremoniously, like Willis Cortot into the Siberian snowy desert, by the bouncer of the roulette of split gods? There are no green men and Winter Silence in this life. It contains green trash bags and beggars at the Rashomon gate.
It's possible Gibson could have come up with a more optimistic future for Flynn Fisher, Burton and Netherton, Flynn's unwitting virtual game partner with surprisingly noirish bugs, but he didn't have the drive (or presence of mind?) to predict it. as he did in Neuromancer and Pattern Recognition. Fortunately, Gibson did not fall into the disease inherent in Bradbury's Truffautian reading of Fahrenheit 451 (we do not predict the future, we prevent it, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah): foreign chestnuts from the atomic fire to fall asleep maturing in the differential calculator of the kleptocratic cyberLondon nanocost. He just hints that on a gaming table with Wells' handwritten palimpsests instead of green cloth, you can hit more than one jackpot at a time, and the periphery of the wheel will erase the differences between red and black. And yes, somewhere in the corner of the corridor nervously smokes David Brin with the unfinished sequel to Clay.
"Periphery" (optimal, in view of the pun not noticed by the translators, translation of the name) - best work Gibson in the sf genre for many years, and it is strongly recommended to read it in the original due to the large number of witty neologisms; kdm17's translation will certainly be professional, but on the example of "Anathema", a work of comparable level and complexity, it is clearly seen how the luster of the sense of wonder inherent in the original has faded. Do not spare the labors, learn to think in the way that the syzygy requires of you. At the same time, appreciate Flynn's style, which, if someone reproduced it in Russian accurately, would have stamped the volume with the seal of Solomon 18+.
Score: 10
Nederton, a drunkard of chatter, needs to lure out a witness, whom he and the police can only reach through a Chinese server. All around are skyscrapers, large, Russian kleptarchs, smart technology, the deserted streets and the hustle and bustle of London's cosplay areas. Islands of garbage, nano-assembler purity, wealth whipping through the nerves from all the cracks. Glamor of poisoned nails, "golden shots". Nostalgia.
Flynn Fisher saw how Aelita West was dissolved in the air - but that only happens in games. Old TV shows, junk around the house, 3D fab (ricator)s of network franchises, drones of veterans of some wars, dork fights, "cancer rent" and a lot of unpaid time - this is the reality of the US presidency of Gonzalez. Almost in disbelief, Flynn agrees to follow the online instructions of those calling themselves "Milagros Solvetra".
The era of the wobbly "Bridge" and the ridiculous "Blue Ant" is over. Gibson is good, like in cyberpunk. Now he himself (the interview is on the cover, the publisher didn’t find a better place), calls Neuromancer “glossy cardboard”, they say, then he couldn’t convey feelings for his mother, and science fiction novels must be a naturalistic social construct. fractal structure.
No one knows what Gibson calls a "fractal," but fans will remember more than just Mom. Hoop on the head, substances, eyes of another body. Disabled intelligence, rich people who portray a separate type of people (Antarctica, remember?), But, most importantly, a branded figurative system, which fills the most ordinary hidden meaning and extracts aesthetic experience from the most sophisticated.
Structure - chapters in size of two, many four, pages. From the switches, scenes, accents and effects of "Peripherals" there is a feeling that the author is putting the book together in your mind, like an editor of a film frame-by-frame, and you immediately see the resulting movie.
Tags of which: time travel, progressorism, saving the world. Partly adult love, finding yourself, a little crazy winning the lottery and casual mechanics. Japanophilia, the cosmos, the advance step into the future of subcultures and the Turing police are lost, but the local ideas for the theory of elites are more dangerous than the voodoo matrix.
Printing is tolerable.
And let the phone here be called "telly", it's good that Gibson wrote this book and thanks that it has come down to us.
Rating: no
I’ll say right away that I haven’t read anything from Gibson before this novel, from a similar alien only Altered Carbon can, and, to some extent, UBIK.
The first half of the novel, but rather 40%, holds attention well, but the middle sags, and the ending is simply disappointing...
Expected a techno thriller, got a sluggish cyber political detective story. It seems that there is a drive, nonsense, but sluggish.
I won't spoil it, there isn't much to spoil.
I wanted an interesting twist towards the end of the book, I waited until the last page until I finished reading it. As a result, in my humble opinion, it would be better to reduce this novel to a story, leaving all the interesting moments so that the reader does not read for a long time before the denouement.
From the misunderstood (not a spoiler) - what kind of problems brother Flynn had, so I didn’t move in, it was possible to remove them, the author didn’t really explain anyway.
I still don’t understand why the novel “for adults” didn’t wait for this either :)
As a result, a score of 7 for the first 40% of the book.
Score: 7
Finally, the novel is not about the present, which instantly becomes the immediate past, but about the future. Again we have a hornet's nest, London and wonderful Gibson details. The beautiful and hilarious Gibson Russians are with us again. On the wall (more precisely, in the hallway under a hanger with children's raincoats) - the most amazing gun that silently bangs out of its two barrels at the end. It is easier to read than previous novels, since it does not require such knowledge of the details of American reality, although it also cannot do without criticism of the current situation and references to it. In general, the novel is simpler, which for me is rather a minus. However, I really enjoyed it. It will be difficult for the translator to cope with all these inventive curses that adorn the speech of the main character.
Score: 10
An amazing book. Undoubtedly, new peak creativity. For the first 80 pages, I tried to figure out what it was about and what was happening, but, frankly, I did not understand anything. Understanding came later. And it's cool.
It’s cool because when the future is described to you, and you understand everything in it, this is not a description of the future, but someone’s invention according to the simple formula “everything is as it is now + gadgets and technologies.” And Gibson seems to have a time machine in his garage. He drove it a hundred years ahead and then tried to explain to us how everything works in the future. But it's like telling your great-grandmother about smartphones. In a word, "Peripherals" is a visionary of pure water.
Don't read this book if you don't know who Gibson is. Don't read if you want easy reading. Don't read if you want "understandable" fiction. Don't read if you just want fantasy. For everyone else, I highly recommend.
Score: 10
A cloudy future #1, a cloudy future #2. A lot of incomprehensible words that you catch up with later. In some places it intrigues, but rarely and not for long. The ending is generally weak. The novel is more designed for computer lovers. games. With Gibson I pass.
Score: 5
For a week I finished reading the first solo for me (before that there was "The Difference Machine" co-authored with Bruce Sterling) novel by William Gibson "Peripherals".
I want to say right away that I liked the creation of the king of cyberpunk and one of the founders of this genre. But without certain "buts" again, in my opinion, it could not do. But in the absence of these, the book for me would have pulled all the "nine", and even "ten" well-deserved points. It didn’t work, though, and why - further.
The beginning of the book, about the first third of it, became for me, as for many, somewhat chaotic. A plentiful number of far from always understandable translated neologisms of the author, two plot and chronological lines, at first it is absolutely incomprehensible how they are connected with each other. But both of these moments were intriguing, as was the general thread of the story that followed, as well as the detective plot. After, when there were more and more clarity, and the setting, that is, the general picture of the world a la the universe of the novel, finally acquired some features, I delved deeper into reading and began to expect a denouement with trepidation. Let the basic fantastic assumption in terms of time travel be not too new (the unknown, unreviewed, and even less translated novel by James Hogan “Thrice in Time” repeats it exactly, although, judging by the year of publication, everything is the same vice versa), but I really liked the world, the details and colors of the future, with which Gibson painted it. And now, with more or less written characters, and with great anticipation, I began to expect the ending, in which I thought to find the influence and influence of slightly stronger players than ... In general, the ending turned out to be a failure. Extremely. I felt a huge and strongest disappointment, because with such a backlog, with such pluses and like this to end.
Yes, this time the review turned out to be extremely emotional, abrupt and, perhaps, somewhat inconsistent, but in fact. Last piece I advise you to choose William Gibson for reading at least because of the prescribed personalities, surprisingly detailed world the future of the 2020s and the end of the 21st century - the beginning of the 22nd. But immediately get ready for the conclusion of “...devices”, which does not give, or even takes away from the novel its depth, meanings, characters, imagery ... But the translation, including the titles, came out as it should. Even if, again, I am unfamiliar with the original, I did not find anything wrong, incorrect - translation errors.
Score: 9
Near future, virtual worlds, dystopia, cool loners and a merciless System. It would seem that the set is traditional for cyberpunk (and even Gibson himself), but there is no bright neon futuristic tinsel of the 80s, the line between reality and virtuality is thinner than ever, most wonderful gadgets are nothing more than a minor development of already existing products, and the future is really gloomy and hopelessly, and most importantly - for many it is already predetermined. The characters, however, are the same.
The plot outline for any fan of Gibson will be familiar and familiar - gradually more and more intertwining fates of different heroes, an unfortunate set of circumstances as a starting point and a situation of constant zugzwang, when out of all the richness of choice there are worse options.
The applied, subordinate role of fantastic elements - do not expect that the heroes, and even more so the author himself, will paint beauty and admire miracles. If you need to hammer in a nail, and the closest thing is a microscope, they use it ... and then they will clearly demonstrate the consequences, in the traditional genre for the writer at the junction of sci-fi and "hard-boiled" detective stories.
An extremely apt definition of “fractal plot” - before you have time to delve into the slang and terminology, at least somehow get used to the realities of the future, you will be stunned by the new facets of the described reality and the relationships between it and the characters, many of which will turn out to be diametrically opposed to the initially assumed motives. The final point, too, does not at all mean the completion of the action - rather, it invites reflection on the possible future of some characters and the past of others, since the composition of the novel, taking into account some details of the characters' relationships, builds in potential not even a ring, but some kind of constantly changing complex structure.
Laconic, dry, harsh and extremely pessimistic... although with a number of happy exceptions to the rule.
Score: 8
I love Gibson, the novel was good news, I downloaded it and began to read - as usual, the beginning is not clear. you find yourself in the midst of events described by new words, waiting in anticipation of what's next and what it all means .... but instead, something dull began, the battles of money and corporations. There is no drive and danger - after all, “our” money is more than that of “enemies”, our fellows outbid everyone, punished the bad ones and got a happy ending. Experienced great disappointment. So everything started well and everything rolled into banality. Hey, there’s movement in time and in bodies, it’s so cool you can twist ... but why did everything go so ... simple ((I probably wouldn’t have expected more from some other author, but I wanted something from Gibson something mind-blowing, bright and shocking.In general, the aftertaste of slight disappointment.
Score: 7
Very good... Finally, after a long break, a rather distant and interesting future, full of unusual details. A good (but unfortunately not great) language is not Pattern Recognition, and not Virtual Light, but still damn delicious! Interesting story, from a certain point it is read avidly. In general, a strong 4 plus. And here's something else - for the first time in a long time, Gibson's novel turned out to be quite cinematic, and the main idea with realities just asks for Hollywood, where lately there have been fewer and fewer interesting ideas with science fiction! I don’t even know if I should be happy about it or rather the other way around ... :))
Score: 8
The first impression of the novel is the same as in its entirety - a hodgepodge. Words, sentences, heroes, worlds...
Dialogues chirp like ping-pong, and sometimes the ball obviously does not keep up with the meaning. You don't feel the characters - they are tightly walled up in shot lines, a cloud of slang and jerky sentences. Who, what, why and why - goes to the second, third, fourth plan, the characters are indicated by mean strokes and rare appeals. Sometimes it is simply impossible to capture their motivations, images, or thoughts, everything is obscured by stacks of endless dashes. It comes to the point that you simply forget or don’t catch with might and main who is communicating right now, since the style and manners are very single-colored, and the heroes themselves are rarely called. Yes, and the structure of the novel, fragmented into a lot of particles, well, very amateurish. Short chapters, sometimes two or three pages, or even one, rarely consisting of anything other than dialogues, take away the remnants of integrity from the story. It seems that either phrases constantly torn out of context are read that someone once said when they were appropriate, or the author initially wrote one text, and then stuck it piece by piece into the previously written one, not caring too much about the final result. This may be an interesting style, but is read in this case like a creepy and tasteless hodgepodge, like watching a series in which not only the series are mixed up, but even the scenes within each episode. In the end, the chronology will still line up, the story will take shape, and the picture will form in the mind, but the process of “layout” itself is quite annoying. And for me it works in the negative also because the characters are shuffled quickly, and as soon as you start to get used to one conversation, the chapter immediately ends. Also considering that there are decent characters in different time periods (most of them in the Flynn section are at the level of references, they say, Conner was lying, Burton was walking, Macon was sitting, etc.), any bright distinguishing features they have a cat crying, so you can get confused in them both at the beginning and in the middle, and only towards the end you begin to more or less “correspond”. And I don’t even want to talk about slang, I’ll just say that he pissed me off, albeit not as much as fragmentary, since he still needs history sometimes, not just because of what he sticks here and there. And the first violin in this nervous "hypermanipulative" orchestra of sly-crazy terminology is played by the abbreviation "telik", which is quite understandable, but does not cease to infuriate. Don't ask why.
The plot didn't work either. Only a couple of moves are interesting, the idea itself and the surprisingly tasty framing of everything related to non-standard “time travel” and “cyberspace”. The detective part - I’d better omit this moment, the author, it seems, didn’t even get hung up on it. The universe of the novel itself, in my opinion, deserves much better descriptiveness and more depth, which could be immersed in, as in various sections. And so Gibson walked literally on top, which is why it is read monotonously, despite the tornness of the chapters, and the dynamics of the novel is not fueled by anything new. At a certain point, towards the end, something interesting is revealed about one character, but the twist itself is so-so, as is its delivery. And yes, repeated pronunciation of this twist also does not paint.
Score: 5
The first 70-80 pages of the novel really strained me. I even feared that "Peripherals" would turn out to be the worst Gibson novel I've ever read. Although I've known for a long time that Gibson is just the "dad" of cyberpunk, but a bold alternative writer who isn't afraid to break literary conventions by building sentences the way he likes. No wonder his novels were published in the yellow "alternative fiction". Probably, precisely because of the ignorance of Gibson's author's style and because of the loud fame of the founder of cyberpunk, many readers pick up his works, for example, the same "Peripheral Devices", and get upset, because. "nothing is clear!".
But after the 80th page, everything began to fall into place. The basis of the book is the idea of the presence of the past in the future and vice versa. In 70 years, much has changed in the world (and not quite in the way we suspect in our time). And those people from the near future are sad about what is lost, so they drag the past into the future, even if it is in the form of an empty toy (peripheral, an artificial body with a human soul and consciousness).
Well, according to the good old Gibsonian tradition, the plot is wrapped in a detective package filled with murder, suspicions, a thriller and a happy ending.
A good novel, after which there was a pleasant aftertaste.
I also want to note 2 things - a chic cover from the "Azbuka" publishing house and the text at the end of the book from the author himself, in which he says that he deliberately confuses readers, so that later it would be interesting for them to re-read the novel again and find everything in it Easter eggs. I will definitely re-read it sometime!