The novel “The Peripheral” by William Gibson was published for the first time in 2014.

Life is hard for Flynne Fisher and her brother Burton in the rural town where they live, where many people make money by producing synthetic drugs. Burton suffered neurological damage while serving in the Marines and has some veteran benefits but can work for the producer of a virtual world that reproduces a futuristic London. When Flynne takes over for him, she realizes that in that virtual world there’s much more than she expected.

Wilf Netherton works with celebrities in post-apocalyptic London at the end of the 21st century, where the not-rich have little chance of surviving. Among the services he offers, the trendiest is a connection with the past but when something happens to a client, things become very complicated since the only person who has an idea of ​​what happened is in the past.

Since the beginning of his writing career, William Gibson has written stories that show a near future with dystopian tendencies, also due to the consequences of certain uses of advanced technologies. His fame has grown far beyond the field of science fiction, also for having published some novels in the last decade in which the science fiction elements were limited so they were sold with other genre labels. “The Peripheral” marks a return to a science fiction without compromise so to speak, in the sense that it’s more centered around openly science fiction elements. He keeps his habit of telling about the Western society of the near future but in this case, he adds a second setting, at the end of the 21st century.

William Gibson’s novels are always complex, with many details concerning not only possible evolutions of current technologies but also details related to the possible social evolutions of the near future, even inventing slang expressions that further complicate the reading. In the case of “The Peripheral” there’s the further difficulty of the parts set in a more distant future and in the interconnections that are created between the two times that generate a series of ramifications.

William Gibson throws the readers into the middle of this double setting letting them put together the many pieces of an extremely rich mosaic. The beginning is difficult because you need to understand what’s happening in the two times in which the novel is set and in the virtual environment. Going on is still difficult because the intertwining of the timelines becomes more complicated.

In many ways “The Peripheral” is a typical novel by William Gibson but the technological elements are updated with the presence of (more or less) virtual reality, nanotechnologies, and more and the parts set in the near future reflect the current situation, also regarding the state of the environment.

The novel is full of action moments and twists but there are also many others based on dialogue where the pace gets much slower. Sometimes my impression was that William Gibson could have cut some exchanges that seemed too long to me and distracted me from important details. The novel is long, it certainly didn’t need to have more pages added.

William Gibson’s works are certainly not famous for their cheerful tones and “The Peripheral” seems even more pessimistic with the aggravation of the current problems to peak with a global catastrophe. Nevertheless, it’s not a hopeless future but the current problems must be solved to avoid the future described by the author.

In April 2018 the news came that Amazon acquired the rights to create a TV series from “The Peripheral” whose development was entrusted to Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan. The two of them created “Westworld” so they already have experience of complex stories and we can hope for a high-level adaptation.

Recommending a William Gibson novel isn’t easy, not for problems related to quality but to the difficulty and that’s true for “The Peripheral” as well. It’s certainly not a relaxing reading but requires focus and rereading it helps to get the various details. If all this doesn’t scare you, don’t hesitate to read it. It’s available on Amazon USA, UK, and Canada.