The World We Live In-William Gibson's Spook Country
The godfather of the cyberpunk movement in science fiction continues his transition into telling tales about the here and now in Spook Country, which both is and is not a spy novel, as the title might lead you to think. There is plenty of cloak-and-dagger in Spook Country, but as in Pattern Recognition, Gibson's other novel set in the early 21st century, the cloak-and-dagger bits are really just the frame of a plot Gibson needs to spin out his observations about society, politics, homeland security, the war in Iraq, humans and technology, and even what I took to be a crack about Scientology. For those more familiar with Gibson's earlier novels such as Neuromancer or Mona Lisa Overdrive, do not despair-the sharp understanding of where we are going with our technology is here as well. Among other things, Gibson envisions a use of the Ipod that I'm fairly certain Steve Jobs never intends to happen. The usual cast of those living in the shadows of society and used by the powers-that-be is here as well. Gibson writes with empathy for those living in the cracks of the walls of the larger society around them.
Effortlessly written and dryly hilarious, Spook Country is also a dispassionate dissection of the policies of the Bush administration in matters of foreign policy and domestic security. I will leave it up to the reader to decide where Gibson comes down on these issues, but I will say it made me wince to think this might be how our neighbors to the north (Gibson is a Canadian national) really see us.
William Gibson-he has envisioned our future, and now he looks at our present. I'm not sure he approves of where we are, but no novelist is doing a better job right now of helping us understand where we are and just maybe, where we are going.
