Trying something new. Every week(ish), I'm going to write a round-up of the most interesting stuff I've read, with some thoughts on each. And I'm going to use it to take advantage of the new paid memberships/patrons feature added to , the absolutely crackjack blogging engine powering my website. (If you want to know why Leaflet, and the decentralized technology it's built on, are so awesome, check out my essay Leaflet, Blogging, and How to Fix Social Media.)
The way it'll work is each weekly(ish) update I'll share one thing I read at the top, and then the rest will be behind the paywall. If you want those reading recommendations and thoughts, you can become a member, at a handful of paid options, starting at just a few bucks a month. You'll be supporting my writing, getting some fun recommendations, and getting access to some upcoming fun stuff, like (finally) new fiction. But all my essays will remain entirely free.
Okay, so I'll start with the novel I finished this week.
Idoru by William Gibson
Gibson is, I think, my favorite science fiction writer. I've been a fan since high school, and have read each of his books as they've come out. Recently, I set myself the project of going back and rereading all of them. Or, re-listening, as I'm doing them all as audiobooks this time around. I got through the Sprawl Trilogy not too long ago, and am now working my way through the Bridge Trilogy.
So Idoru. It's the second in the trilogy and, I think, a step down from the first, Virtual Light. Which, from internet lists of people's favorite Gibson books, puts me kind of on the fringe. Everyone seems to love Idoru, and rank Virtual Light as a lesser work. Without spoiling any plot, I think those people are wrong.
I should say, Virtual Light, which is my favorite of Gibson's novels so far in this rereading of his corpus, scratches a particular itch for me that's probably not widely shared. Namely, it's effectively Gibson writing an Elmore Leonard crime novel. It's a story of a handful of not-the-brightest protagonists who get in over their head, and the prose sees Gibson dial back the density in favor of flow. It reads like someone breathlessly telling you a story they need to get out before they forget, and it's smooth in the way Leonard is, which is to say it's smooth in a way that looks easy and effortless, but just try to pull it off.
What also makes Virtual Light work so well is the worldbuilding. The setting of the Bridge Trilogy is nearer future than the Sprawl. It's not as flashy, not as thoroughly cyberpunk in its technological tropes. But it is sociologically dense and fascinating. This is Gibson pivoting from whiz-bang technologist to cultural anthropologist, and he's a fantastic speculative cultural anthropologist.
What makes it such a strange read now, 30 years later, and I swear I'll get to Idoru in a moment, is the context of Gibson's third trilogy, Blue Ant. The thing he did with the Blue Ant Trilogy, which are set in the present day of the early 2000s when he wrote them, is make the present feel like the future. He described actually existing tech and actually existing tech adjacent subcultures in ways that make them seem alien and futuristic. There are shades of Russian Formalism at work.
And 30 years later, the Bridge Trilogy feels the same. Because the books are packed with tech that was the future when he wrote them, but just are the tech we've actually got today. And they're packed with tech adjacent subcultures that feel the same. So the Bridge Trilogy estranges the now-present like the Blue Ant Trilogy estranged the then-present. It's a weird reading experience.
So Idoru. Where I think it is not as good as Virtual Light is first that Gibson moves the action from Los Angeles and San Francisco to Tokyo. And his future Tokyo isn't as interesting as his future Los Angeles and San Francisco. But the other reason, even if you dig his Tokyo, is that the two viewpoint protagonists, who we swap between chapter-by-chapter, are disappointingly passive. They don't actually do anything. Instead, each is a perspective on other people doing things. Chia and Laney meet people, get taken places by those people, and things happen at those places. They're along for the ride. Which saps the novel of the momentum Virtual Light had.
Still, Idoru is good. Because Gibson is an extraordinary writer. It's just not as good as I was hoping for.
Essays Around the Web
Here are the essays I found most interesting this week:
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