The Peripheral - William Gibson

Those unfamiliar with Gibson's novels (as opposed to simply being aware of the influence of his thought) should know that to open a page is akin to stepping onto a moving train. He has never troubled himself with the yawning disjunction between the speed of everyday thinking and that of his own jacked-up prose. Part of what makes his novels quite the rush they are lies in his trusting the reader to grab on and burn with the same manic curiosity and invention he does. He demands a visceral level of engagement which he then rewards tenfold. The Peripheral is a firestorm of a book containing every hallmark Gibsonian element from acutely observed socio-tec extrapolations to grimly familiar political machination. His all-too-plausible futures often turn out to be concealed histories. Subtle tweeks to the recognisable, rather than rendering things strange and exotic, in Gibson's hands, can be shockingly revelatory. The body-shock velocity and quantum-mechanical plotting of his fiction qualifies it perfectly as true multi-sensory art.