What I’m Reading
My standing-at-the-kitchen-bench, lunch time reading this week has been William Gibson’s Spook Country—and I’m loving it. I am a long time William Gibson fan, ever since I read Mona Lisa Overdrive way back when, couldn’t put it down, and then went back and read Neuromancer—which effectively started the Cyberpunk scifi subgenre—and Count Zero. I loved the Virtual Light trilogy as well.
I was disappointed with Pattern Recognition when it came out, because I was expecting cyberpunk and it wasn’t that. In fact, it wasn’t even scifi at all and I was not quite sure exactly what I was reading … so as you may imagine, there was a little resistance to picking up Spook Country. It’s described on the back as a “thriller” and I suppose it is, although I feel there are decided “caper” elements as well–but there are also classic William Gibson elements around technology, popular culture, and alternate culture so—with different expectations this time around—I am enjoying it a lot.
I’ll almost certainly go on and read his latest, Zero History, as well.
By the way, for all you “punk” lovers out there, it’s arguable that William Gibson started not just cyberpunk but also steampunk, given he co-authored The Difference Engine with Bruce Sterling in 1990.