Review: The Peripheral

The Peripheral was nauseating. I didn't read the book jacket. I just read it and my mind was gone from the beginning. Gibson, apparently, has that effect on people. He doesn't hold your hand through the world. He doesn't create settings. Its already been set. History has already happened. Its your job as the reader to get used to it. But once you get through the looking glass? Once you arm yourself with an remote controlled android from the ghost of future past (or past future)? You're in a real, defined powerful world where the Singularity doesn't happen all at once, The Day After Tomorrow is an entire generation, and the references are made to things that haven't been made yet. I cared about the characters Gibson creates even though some of them are flat as fuck. The two protagonists aren't, and really thats all that matters because this is science fiction: the world is the thing we crave. The Peripheral has two. Both equally terrifying. One in its bleakness, and the other in its surreal, tranquil idealism. Heads will be spun.