October 01, 1999
Idoru
If you are already a fan of Cyberpunk, a genre created by William Gibson, this novel will not disappoint. I love Gison's habit of dumping you in the moment, usually some not too distant future, without any attempt to explain what has happened to society between the present and the content of the novel. References to some things are explained, others never are. He writes as if he was within the future time he describes. Imagine, if you will, someone writing a novel about the present day, where the characters walk into a McDonald's for a burger. The writer would not have to explain what a McDonald's or a burger were - they are givens. This is how Gibson writes.
Idoru concerns several characters converging on Tokyo, where the lead singer of a contemporary pop band has announced his engagement to a "software agent", an artifical intelligence created by media moguls (consider Lara Croft, or, more recently and closer to the mark, Ananova). Gibson's vision of the totality of the net in our future lives is amazing.
