  | Book Details Title: Agency |
Book DescriptionAmazon.com Review The year is 2017, and Verity Jane is a talented “app whisperer” who is hired to test a new artificial intelligence called “Eunice.” Verity soon becomes aware that the AI is quite powerful, something that she hesitates to share with her employers. But she can’t hide for long. While Agency opens in 2017, it is a book with both feet placed firmly in the future—a novel of variable timelines, including one set in London where shady characters can reach back into the past to manipulate Verity’s present. The book is a sequel of sorts to Gibson’s 2014 novel The Peripheral—it is set in the same universe and shares some characters—but it can be read on its own. With its pithy short chapters and mind-bending plot, with the recognizably erudite characters and Gibson-esque language and dialogue, and with the inventiveness of a great science fiction, this is a fun first read of the new decade. Agency will entertain you, but it will also leave you with thoughts to chew on. —Chris Schluep, Amazon Book Review Read more Review Praise for Agency “Engaging, thought-provoking and delightful… [Gibson] can always be counted on to show us our contemporary milieu rendered magical by his unique insights, and a future rendered inhabitable by his wild yet disciplined imagination.”—The Washington Post“Superb… Each sentence is a hand-turned marvel of compact characterization, world-building and sardonic wit, all used to illuminate his vivid milieus…Gibson has an inexhaustible supply of tricks, new stories and new ways of telling them that make him the most consistent predictor of our present, contextualizer of our pasts and presager of our possible futures.”—Los Angeles Times “An immersive thriller, fueled by an intelligent, empathetic imagination.”—The Boston Globe“A sensual, remarkably visual ride, vigorous with displays of conceptual imagination and humour.” —The Guardian (UK) “Gibson blurs the line between real and speculative technology in a fast-paced thriller that will affirm to readers that it was well worth the wait.”—Booklist“His language (half Appalachian economy, half leather-jacket poet of neon and decay) is all about friction and the gray spaces where disparate ideas intersect. His game is living in those spaces, checking out the view, telling us about it.” – NPR.com “In Agency Gibson offers another of his uncannily plausible imaginings of near-future life and technology…with Gibson’s trademark panache, the story rattles along with great pace and suspense.” –The Sunday Times (UK)Praise for William Gibson“His eye for the eerie in the everyday still lends events an otherworldly sheen.”—The New Yorker “William Gibson can craft sentences of uncanny beauty, and is our great poet of crowds.”—San Francisco Chronicle Book Review “Like Pynchon and DeLillo, Gibson excels at pinpointing the hidden forces that shape our world.”—Details “Gibson’s work is all edge and chill and incipient panic…There’s not a speck of filler, not a hint of anachronism. Just sleek, high-gloss, hand-tooled cool…His worlds are so striking, so plausible, that you’re just happy to be along for the ride—until suddenly it hits you: Maybe you’re being followed.”—Chicago Tribune Read more About the Author William Gibson is credited with having coined the term “cyberspace” and having envisioned both the Internet and virtual reality before either existed. He is the author of Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Burning Chrome, Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrow’s Parties, Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, Zero History, Distrust That Particular Flavor, and The Peripheral. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with his wife. Read more Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. AGENCY by William Gibson1The UnboxingVery recent hiredness was its own liminal state, Verity reminded herself, on the crowded Montgomery BART platform, waiting for a train to Sixteenth and Mission.Twenty minutes earlier, having signed an employment contract with Tulpagenics, a start-up she knew little about, followed by a wordy nondisclosure agreement, she’d shaken hands with Gavin Eames, their CTO, said goodbye, and stepped into an elevator, feeling only relief as the doors closed and the twenty-six-floor descent began.New-job unease hadn’t yet found her, there, nor out on Montgomery as she’d walked to the station, texting her order for pad thai to the Valencia branch of Osha. By the time she’d reached this platform, though, three flights down, it was entirely with her, as much as the black trade-show bag slung beneath her arm, silk-screened with the logo of Cursion, her new employer’s parent firm, about which she knew very little, other than that they were in gaming.It was with her now as her train arrived. Almost two years since she’d felt this, she thought, as she boarded. She’d been unemployed for half of that, which she supposed might account for its intensity now.She reached for a hang-strap as the car filled.Surfacing at Sixteenth, she went straight to Osha, picked up her pad thai, and started for Joe-Eddy’s.She’d eat, then start getting to know their product. This wasn’t just a new job, but a possible end to sleeping on Joe-Eddy’s curb-rescue porn couch.The early November sky looked almost normal, Napa-Sonoma particulates having mostly blown inland, though the light still held a hint of that scorched edge. She no longer started awake to the smell of burning, only to remember what it was. She’d kept the kitchen window closed, this past week, the only one Joe-Eddy ever opened. She’d give the place a good airing soon, maybe try cracking one of the windows overlooking Valencia.Once back at his apartment, she ate hungrily from the black plastic take-out tray, ignoring the lingering reek of the uncut Mr. Clean she’d used to scour the wooden tabletop, prior to Gavin’s call. If Joe-Eddy’s Frankfurt job lasted, she remembered having thought as she’d wielded a medium-grit 3M foam sanding block, she might scrub the kitchen floor as well, for the second time in a little under a year. Now, though, with Tulpagenics’ contract signed, she might be giving notice to the couple renting her condo, middle managers at Twitter, who hadn’t reported a paparazzi sighting for over three months. In the meantime, for however many more nights on white pleather, she had her silk mummy-bag liner, its thread-count proof against the porn-cooties of persistent imagination.Covering what remained of her order with its admirably compostable translucent lid, she stood, took her leftovers to the fridge, rinsed her couch-surfing chopsticks at the sink, and returned to the table.When Gavin had been packing the bag, the glasses were all she’d paid any real attention to. They’d involved a personal style decision: tortoiseshell plastic, with gold-tone trim, or an aspirationally Scandinavian gray. Now she took their generic black case from the bag, opened it, removed them, and spread the pale gray minimalist temples. The lenses were untinted. She looked for a trademark, country of origin, model number. Finding none, she placed them on the table.Next, a flat white cardboard box, in which a flimsy vacuum-formed tray, also white, hugged a nondescript black phone. Likewise no-name, she found, having freed it from the tray. She turned it on and placed it beside the glasses. A smaller white box revealed a generic-looking black headset with a single earbud. In another, three black chargers, one each for the glasses, phone, and headset, commonest of consumer fruit, their thin black cables still factory-coiled, secured with miniature black twist-ties. All of it, according to Gavin, plug and play.Picking up the headset and switching it on, she hung it from her right ear, settling the earbud. She put the glasses on, pressing their low-profile power-stud. The headset pinged, a cursor appearing. A white arrow, centered in her field of vision. Then moving down, of its own accord, to the empty boxes, the chargers, the black phone.”Here we go,” said a woman’s husky voice in Verity’s ear. Glancing to her right, toward what would have been the voice’s source had anyone been there, Verity inadvertently gave whoever was controlling the cursor a view of the living room. “Got a hoarding issue, Gavin?” the voice asked, the cursor having settled on the miniature junkyard of semi-disassembled vintage electronics on Joe-Eddy’s workbench.”I’m not Gavin,” Verity said.”No shit,” said the voice, neutrally.”Verity Jane.””Ain’t the office, is it, Verity Jane?””Friend’s place.”The cursor traversed the living room, to the closed curtains. “What’s outside?””Valencia Street,” Verity said. “What should I call you?””Eunice.””Hi, Eunice.””Hi yourself.” The cursor moved to Joe-Eddy’s Japanese faux Fender Jazzmaster. “Play?””Friend does. You?””Good question.””You don’t know?””Thing-shaped hole.””Excuse me?””I got one, in that department. Want to show me what you look like?””How?””Mirror. Or take the glasses off. Point ’em at your face.””Will I be able to see you?””No.””Why not?””No there there.””I need to use the bathroom,” Verity said, standing. “I’ll leave the glasses here.””You don’t mind, maybe open the drapes.”Verity crossed to the window, hauled both layers of dusty blackout curtain aside.”You put the glasses down,” the voice said, “I can look out the window.”She took them off, positioning them, temples open, lenses overlooking the street, on a white Ikea stool, its round seat branded with soldering-iron stigmata. Then added, for what she judged to be needed elevation, the German-language making-of volume of a Brazilian telenovela. Removing the headset, she put it down on the book, beside the glasses, went to the kitchen, retrieving her own phone from her purse, then down the narrow corridor to the bathroom. Closing the door behind her, she phoned Gavin Eames.”Verity,” he answered instantly, “hello.””Is this for real?””You haven’t read the nondisclosure agreement?””More clauses than I’m used to.””You agreed not to discuss anything of substance on a non-company device.””Just tell me there’s not someone somewhere doing Eunice, for my benefit?””Not in the sense I take you to mean, no.””You’re saying it’s real.””Determining that to your own satisfaction is part of what you’re expected to be doing for us.””Should I call back on the company phone?””No. We’ll discuss this in person. This isn’t the time.””You’re saying she’s-“”Goodbye.””Software,” she finished, looking from the phone to her reflection in the mirror over the sink, its age-mottled silver backing suggesting a submarine grotto. She turned then, opened the door, and walked back into the living room, to the window. Picked up the glasses. Put them on. Late-afternoon traffic strobed behind transparent vertical planes of something resembling bar code. “Whoa . . .”Then she remembered the headset. Put it on.”Hey,” the voice said.The bar code vanished, leaving the cursor riding level with the windows of passing cars. “What was that?” Verity asked.”DMV. I was reading plates.””Where are you, Eunice?””With you,” said the voice, “looking out the window.”Whatever this was, she knew she didn’t want her first substantial conversation with it to take place in Joe-Eddy’s living room. Briefly considering the dive bar on Van Ness, not that she felt like a drink, she remembered having recently been recognized there. There was Wolven + Loaves, a few doors up the street, but it was usually busy, the acoustics harsh even when it wasn’t. Then she remembered 3.7-sigma, Joe-Eddy’s semi-ironic caffeination-point of choice, a few blocks away, on the opposite side of Valencia. Read more Customers Review: Let’s just get this out of the way. There’s a particular review that was put up the day the book was released where it’s clear the reviewer was triggered by the book and wrote a review, having not actually finished the book but got so mad at Gibson for talking about what’s wrong and right.Anyone surprised by the political tone of this book—kleptocracy baaa’d—either hasn’t read Gibson before or hasn’t thought that one of the main themes in his books has always been: Money and the consequences of extreme wealth. You don’t need to be Einstein to realize Neuromancer was as deeply political about economics as much as it was about technology. Almost all his book have these themes. This book is where he is most explicit about it. If you’re surprised that Gibson has a different political opinion than you do, you may want to pause and consider that one of the most prescient writers of the future and near-future is very much saying what is currently going on is deeply wrong.What this book in particular is very much about is Freedom-agency to choose one’s path.I will say it may not be Gibson’s best book but I think it’s his most effective at capturing a certain sense of the future that a lot of people are feeling right now. And that is worth something. It’s a quick read. Enjoy. Think of what might have been. Also think: what if we’re in a stub?Feb 22.2020 Addendum: now that that awful Troll of a review has been removed or deleted, hopefully, in time, a much better review than mine will be the top review
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207 reviews