Spook Country

Wednesday, October 31 2007 @ 10:26 AM GMT+4

Spook Country by William Gibson. A William Gibson novel is one that I pick up these days with the intent to savor, and take a deliberately long time consuming in order to maximize my enjoyment of his language and commentary on consumerism. Spook Country, his latest, is a direct successor to Pattern Recognition (not to be confused with a sequel), but it is also the least sfnal of any Gibson book yet. This is less indicative of the mainstreaming of science fiction authors, than the fact that we've finally caught up with the imagined capitalist wonderhorrors; we've lost the fear of Japanese takeovers and the oil crisis that fueled the cyberpunk movement of the 80s. We are living in the future, and the future is William Gibsonland.

Like Pattern Recognition's Case, the protagonist heroine Hollis has a strange relationship with celebrity and culture. The former lead singer of a rock group called The Curfew, she's now a freelance journalist for a Belgian magazine which may or may not exist. Tracking the figures involved in a 'locative' art exhibition, her story first parallels and then intersects with that of an ipod smuggling cuban refugee, a Russian speaking bennie addict, and the “flying dutchman” of shipping containers. Giving his title several layers of meaning, Gibson blends the best elements of Cold War spy novels with virtual ghosts and a maze of dead celebrity and viral marketing. Recommended for readers of any sort of fiction, especially those who've been afraid to check out Gibson thus far.

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