The Peripheral

by William F. Gibson, William Gibson

Paperback, 512 pages

English language

Published Oct. 6, 2015 by Berkley Publishing Group, Berkley.

ISBN:: 978-0-425-27623-5

(104 reviews)

Depending on her veteran brother's benefits in a city where jobs outside the drug trade are rare, Flynne assists her brother's latest beta-test tech assignment only to uncover an elaborate murder scheme.

"William Gibson returns with his first novel since 2010's New York Times-bestselling Zero History. Where Flynne and her brother, Burton, live, jobs outside the drug business are rare. Fortunately, Burton has his veteran's benefits, for neural damage he suffered from implants during his time in the USMC's elite Haptic Recon force. Then one night Burton has to go out, but there's a job he's supposed to do-a job Flynne didn't know he had. Beta-testing part of a new game, he tells her. The job seems to be simple: work a perimeter around the image of a tower building. Little buglike things turn up. He's supposed to get in their way, edge them back. That's all there is to …

"New novel from New York Times bestselling author William Gibson"--

14 editions

Øyvind reviewed The Peripheral by William Gibson

A drepressing future

4 stars

First of all I enjoyed the TV series more than the book. Both are a bit slow at the beginning, and to certain degrees follow different story lines, which is kinda expected. The world is kinda interesting, but the setting never gripped me as much as I hoped it would, and it is a depressing setting. All in all well worth a read. If you enjoyed the show you might be a bit disapointed by the book all depending on which part of the show you enjoyed the most.

Noam reviewed The peripheral by William Gibson (unspecified)

A halting creaky ride through a fascinating world

3 stars

A pile of very interesting ideas, strung together with badly paced and incoherent plotting. The sci Fi concepts are fun and the writing is spare and engaging, but neither the plot nor the characters quite come together enough.

Compared to the TV show, this book has better sci fi coherence but its representation of the near-future Appalachia is a lot worse and less fun.

Hyperlink Your BOOKS reviewed The Peripheral by William Gibson

Interesting ideas, but disappointing execution

3 stars

Content warning Spoilers for the plot of The Peripheral (novel)

This novel is based on some great concepts, but overall I don't think it did enough with them.

The premise is that the inhabitants of a post-apocalyptic future have the ability to communicate with the past, which creates alternate timelines that they can continue to communicate with. They can recruit people in these alternate timelines (which they call "stubs") to control drones in their present, including humanoids that they call "peripherals".

This seems like a setup to explore wealth inequality and imperialist exploitation - the stub would be labour-rich while the future is depopulated - and it does have an element of that. However, it is portrayed more as a hobby, an intellectual exercise to see if anything can be done to avoid the apocalypse in the stub by making advanced technology available to it. The action of the novel is incidental to the nature of the stub or its relationship to the future - an accidental witnessing of a murder which makes it a battleground between forces that are alien to it, over matters that don't concern it.

In the end, this rich-man's fancy is unambiguously beneficial to the people living in the stub, and that's where it's left. Yay billionaire philanthropy, I guess.

I also found it quite difficult to follow what was going on initially. It starts out with one of my pet-peeves - a "game" that does not seem like something that an experienced gamer such as the protagonist would plausibly find entertaining: flying a drone around and bumping other drones out of the way for some unspecified reason. The TV show does much better with this by having the neural control tech for peripherals available in the stub from the beginning, and having it used in a way that could plausibly be an action-adventure game. But, this isn't a review of the TV show :P

Iam reviewed The Peripheral by William Gibson

Review of 'The Peripheral' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Underwhelmed. Nice ideas. Just didn't like it.

reconbot reviewed The Peripheral by William Gibson

A lot of fun, no kidding it's a tv show now

4 stars

A wonderful world to visit, a classic Gibson story that leaves you gasping "that escalated quickly"

franksbooks reviewed The Peripheral by William Gibson

Review of 'The Peripheral' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Reading out of order sometime has benefits. Finding out more about Flynne and Wilf from the original sources was quite satisfying actually. As with The Agency, this book also ended with far too much an unsatisfactory rush after an intricate build up. There’s a feeling almost that together they form the foundation for what the story is going to end up being; what’s going on with Lowbeer and who are the Aunties?

Pentapod reviewed The peripheral by William Gibson (unspecified) (Jackpot, #1)

Review of 'The peripheral' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

A novel set in two different timelines; main characters being Flynne and her brother Burton some unspecified time in our future where things are falling apart even further, and Netherton and Rainey 70 years into the future, after some kind of serious societal collapse that has resulted in a huge population drop and essentially only the very rich or very lucky surviving.

Flynne's brother and his friend Connor, former army vets, now run a company called Haptic Recon where they perform surveillance via drone and similar security tasks. They get a surveillance job they think is beta testing a game using similar drone surveillance systems, but when Flynne fills in for one of her brother's shifts, she witnesses (via drone) an event that turns out to be a real murder. This puts her and her brother in danger as well as in demand.

Things become more complicated when it turns out the murder happened in Netherton and Rainey's timeline, and that they have a way of communicating with Flynne and Burton in the past, and allowing them to interact in the future timeline via VR controlled "peripherals". They bring Flynne into a peripheral (essentially a humanoid android she controls remotely) in their future, wanting her to virtually attend a party in hopes she'll be able to identify the killer. Meanwhile, the killer's allies want to try and kill her and her family back in the past, before she can do this. As Netherton and Rainey manipulate the past to try and protect Flynne and her family, the race is on to try and identify the killer before it's too late.

It's an interesting premise, an interesting view of the way the future might turn out, and an interesting speculation about where technology may go. I found the first half of the book much stronger than the second however. As the plot progresses, Netherton et al's ability to manipulate the past seemed somewhat inexplicable - both in how, as well as why it's worth so much effort. The resolution of the final conflict seemed very deus ex machina, and did not feel satisfying to me. And where the value is in maintaining a cross-time business relationship never seemed satisfactorily explained to me either. Overall an interesting set up and some intriguing ideas, but it didn't feel to me as if the actual story was very internally consistent and I was often puzzled about why a character was doing any particular thing.

SharonC reviewed The peripheral by William Gibson (unspecified) (Jackpot, #1)

Review of 'The peripheral' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I re-read the beginning--which really was more solid than I thought originally. The animated tattoos are a very futuristic-but-plausible idea from this one. Gibson continues the idea of video games being a very substantial part of the future economy.

Still not sure why Peripherals themselves were supposed to be interesting?

I liked the character of Ash--she was just steampunk enough for me without going too far. The birdsong double-encoded language was cool.

Unruly Stacks reviewed The peripheral by William Gibson (unspecified) (Jackpot, #1)

Review of 'The peripheral' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Part whodunit, part dystopian, part time travel, part thriller, and all Gibson. Very nice.

Max Pearl reviewed The Peripheral by William Gibson

Review of 'The Peripheral' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

I tried to like this book, I wanted to like this book, I really did. As someone who likes technology, and is interested in ideas related to the future of technology, I liked Neuromancer. But this one... I just couldn't get into the story. The concepts he was trying to get across got in the way for me. I couldn't really relate to the characters, I didn't get to really feel like I cared about them because there was too much other stuff in the way. The world didn't really come alive for me.

I do appreciate that he wrote a strong woman protagonist really well, so I added a star for that.

Don reviewed The peripheral by William Gibson (unspecified) (Jackpot, #1)

Review of 'The peripheral' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

William Gibson expertly crafts a highly entertaining and believable dose of futurism.

chadkoh reviewed The Peripheral by William Gibson

Review of 'The Peripheral' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

The first time I read this book I only gave it 3 stars. Maybe I found it confusing and thus unsatisfying? This time round I saw what he was doing, and I admired his craft much more. This is maybe a 4.5 star book, since there is some confusing stuff in there that I think narratively could be drawn out, furthermore the pacing is unbalanced and I wanted to know more about what happens after the story (a good sign I suppose — leave them wanting more — and potentially a good setup for a sequel). Speaking of sequels, I am moving on to [b:Agency|34943643|Agency|William Gibson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1493829667l/34943643.SY75.jpg|56213188] next.