We are at the end of the 2030s. Flynne Fisher and her brother, Burton, live in a remote corner of the American South, where unemployment and illegal drug manufacturing are rampant.
Flynne works at the local 3D printing shop. Burton lives on money from the Veterans Administration, for neurological damage suffered in the Marines’ elite Haptic Recon unit, but he works, secretly from Flynne, on the security of an online game set in a virtual world that looks vaguely like London, but a lot weirder.
Asking Flynne to stand in for him, he reveals the truth to her, informing her that he’ll just have to guard a building and repel insect-like creatures when they approach. What Flynne sees though does not correspond to what Burton had described to her. It may be a game, but it may also be the criminal activity of murderers…
With The Peripheral, William Gibson returns to the atmosphere of his cyberpunk masterpieces. With the narrative moving between two different future times, The Peripheral combines sharp social and political critique, fast pace and sophisticated fantasy.
