Customer Reviews

VIRTUAL LIGHT.

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

William Gibson is an author that creates characters and situations that capture your imagination. When you put one of his books down your thoughts stay with the story. Gibson is a major player in the Sci-Fi genre. His visions of technology and the world to come have influenced many other visions from the TV shows like Dark Angel to films like the Matrix.

Fans of Gibson's work love and hate Virtual Light. In one hand his writing style is still there but the high technology of Neuromancer has been replaced by a less advanced technological culture. Those readers expecting another high adrenaline rush through the matrix almost gave up on virtual light. One of the appeals of Gibson's work is the vision of technology. The world of Virtual light predates the world of Neuromancer by leaps. The Eye phones and goggles take the place of the nerve-splicing and micro bionics seen in his earlier work. The lesser technology almost seems childish in comparison but it does provide an intermediate step for those of us who hope and wish for a glimpse of the matrix as a reality. "Virtual Light" leans more to the characters and plot than earlier work and gives a rich smooth story some times humorous some times sad. The characters take on more than just three dimensions. You can feel them grow and develop as the story continues. Now, if your new to Gibson start with `Virtual Light' then read the sequels `Idoru' and `All Tomorrow's Parties' to get a feel of Gibson's style and technology. Then brace yourself and take the leap to `Neuromancer', `Count Zero', `Mona Lisa Overdrive' and finish up with the collection of short stories that is `Burning Chrome'. On the other hand if you've already read `Neuromancer' or its sequels then try to put aside the lack of technology and just enjoy the story.

This is the first book in the trilogy (Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrows parties), and a good place to start if you are new to Gibson.

In my and most peoples opinion, it is only second to Neuromancer, not because of style or content, but because it's not as revolutionary and original.

William Gibson is excellent in describing characters, technology and environment. This book represents a 'new' style for him (as opposed to Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive). He focuses more on the characters and their travel to the new semi-dystopian world of technology.

At the end you'll want to get your hands on a copy of the sequels (Idoru, All Tomorrows Parties). What the heck! Just buy them too right now!

Virtual Light is a good read. Although very different than Neuromancer, William Gibson's cyberpunk classic, it is still very well written. The book is not only suspenseful, fast-paced, and imaginative, but it has just a hint of humor throughout. All of these things make you want to keep turning the pages, just to see what Chevette and Rydell will do next.

Chevette is a bicycle messenger with an attitude. After some tough luck, she finally has her life pretty much on track and doesn't want to screw it up. Rydell went through some rough times too, but finally has a job that looks promising. He gets hired to help with the hunt for Chevette after she steals a pair of glasses, and something goes wrong.

The plot of the book jumps around at first. It's a bit confusing, but after a few chapters you get the hang of it, and kind of figure out what is going on. The use of technology in the book was surprisingly sparse, compared to many other cyberpunk novels. What I especially liked was Gibson's use of humor. It was thrown in, in all the right places, which really made the book more interesting.

Gibson describes all the characters in the book very vividly. It is very easy to sense what they are thinking and feeling. He also creates a vivid setting. Rydell moves from Tennessee to what used to be California, but is now NoCal and SoCal, two different states. All aspects of the setting are believable and conceivable. This is only the second Gibson novel I've read, but I liked it better than Neuromancer. Everything was much easier to believe and understand, and the entire novel was action packed. The suspense of the book wouldn't let me put it down.

Virtual Light is very much a departure from the world of Neuromancer, showing instead an insidiously closer-to-home look at a possible near future. The grittiness and vivid bleakness are still there, but they make up a different picture: our own society, just a little bit worse. The result is a bit more believable, but neither better nor worse; it's just a slightly different perspective.

Similar in style to Neuromancer's sequels (yet with a bit more substance), the story is actually composed of several stories that meet up throughout the course of the book; each is important. Gibson manages to get a strong feeling of tension going as the characters become more deeply mired in their plight. The story's villain, Loveless, is creepier and more dangerous than expected, adding a sense that the stakes are higher than they seem and that nothing is predictable.

Idoru, set in the same universe as Virtual Light, I'd say is slightly better, but Virtual Light shouldn't be missed. No Gibson fan should pass this up; anyone new to his work should start with Neuromancer and read Virtual Light next.

Chevette, the heroine in Virtual Light, is one of Gibson's finest creations, a bicycle messenger who lives on the Golden Gate bridge with a lot of other homeless people. She's a spunky, streetwise kid, sexy and vulnerable, who hasn't yet lost her innocence. Gibson is obviously a little bit in love with her, as any male would be who reads the novel.

Rydell, the hero, is a security cop assigned to San Francisco to help recover a pair of what appear to be sunglasses stolen by Chevette from an obnoxious masher who had been entrusted with them. Like all Gibson's heros, Rydell is both tough and sensitive, a kind of street samurai of the future.

Despite the charm of the leading characters, the central gimmick-dark glasses that show the wearer where new developments will be built in San Francisco-seems rather mundane in comparison with the cornucopia of technological wonders he created in earlier novels. Plus, the plot is the old one where villains, trying to learn where the city will build next, will kill anyone or do anything to get inside information because it means a lot of money.

The novel is a bit of a disappointment, though not a total loss. Gibson seems to have trouble with conclusions. The one to this novel involves an air strike by characters difficult to tell who they are, what they are doing, or why they are doing it. Yet, it's no worse than other popular thrillers, and it contains a fine cast of fascinating characters.

Virtual Light was my first cyber-punk book and my first William Gibson book. I had to read it three times to make any sense of it. Once I wrapped my mind around the odd wordage of the story, I love it!! I really enjoyed the weird characters and the odd off-the-wall twists in the plot. The story possesses a bent sense of humor which I found to be really different. This book introduced me to the cyber-punk genre and I am hooked.

Gibson is possibly the most consistently original of any sf author of his generation. In this world of our near future (2005, according to the flap copy, but I don't think he's that explicit in the text), almost everything has been privatized, the U.S. has devolved into independent region-nations, and wealth and power enforce the divisions in society. Berry Rydell, a young ex-cop from Knoxville, is working for a private "armed response" outfit in Los Angeles until he screws up and is sent off to San Francisco as a driver for a skiptracer. Mr. Yamazaki, a Japanese student of social psychology and anthropology, is fascinated by the squatter community that took over the Oakland Bay Bridge, which was abandoned after the big quake. One of the bridge's residents is Chevette Washington, a bike messenger in the city, who looks after one of the aging pioneers of the bridge community -- but she also screws up, lifting what she thinks is just an expensive pair of shades from an annoying guy at a party. The glasses embody a secret that would destroy a lot of careers and Rydell's employer wants them back. Chevette is a marvelous character, as is Yamazaki, who enables the reader to see things from a truly foreign perspective. Gibson, a master of metaphor, never wastes a word. A terrific read.

This is one of Gibson's best works, as good as Neuromancer. It does have a few flaws, but they don't detract too much.

What's good about it? The prose style, to start with: rich, dense, polished: all the usual Gibson attributes. The plot (most of the time) tugs you along; the characters; the background; the humor (the quiet sort, that has you gently chuckling about once every two pages and is usually based on parody/satire of current trends). The richness of the weave.

Gibson is obviously an adherent of Checkhov's "gun hanging on the wall" philosophy: there isn't an unused incident in the entire complicated work, nothing that happens is just-for-local-color, everything ties up with something else. Usually with two or three something-else's, with an unspoken invitation to start thinking about the implications of this in society. A few times I found myself thinking "why is he including this?", but there was always a reason further along the line.

The book lends itself to this strand-in-the-weave approach, being written at least some of the time in very short chapters, so that we move from one scene/set of characters to another in an approach that comes to resemble the textual equivalent of sound-bites or video clips. After a series of several 1 1/2 page chapters, I found myself recalling Eliot's "The Waste Land":

These fragments have I shor'd against my ruin

Don't know if Gibson intended that particular allusion, though of course it fits in so well with the general background of the book. But the video-clip approach to writing is surely saying something about the age the book is set in.

What are the bad points? To start with, it was written in 1993, and the blurb says it's set in 2005. Reading it today, in 2003, it would be much more believable if it were set in around 2020. In general, it seems to me a bad idea to write a sci-fi novel set only 12 years in the future, if only because you're limiting the period of time during which it stays believable and therefore you can sell it. Moreover, if Gibson intended the date to be 2005, he has problems here and there with his characters: most of them are in their 20s, they can't really not remember everything from the 1990s; the one who says he wasn't born in 1980 must have been born by around 1981, which is cutting it pretty fine. And he has problems with the time-scale in general: given the post-catastrophe setting, there hasn't been time, in 12 years, for the series of catastrophes that resulted in the present world situation, the development of the political situation as a result, the rebuilding, and the settling down into a new equilibrium, which must have existed for several years, since several of the characters don't remember what it was like before. But I think Gibson is much too experienced and intelligent a writer to make this sort of mistake, and in fact I couldn't find any reference to an exact year in the text itself. Just disregard what the blurb says.

Secondly, the ending: surprisingly weak and also rushed-over, considering how good the plot has been up to now. But by the time you get to the ending, believe me, you've had your money's worth.

Gibson makes you work hard, fitting the pieces together. In general this is a Good Thing, but occasionally degenerated to the level of irritating.

I had a slight problem with the narrator: after the first few chapters ask yourself, who is the narrator? Most chapters are told in the style used by that chapter's protagonist, which makes you feel, even though the narration is 3rd-person, that you're seeing the world through that character's eyes. But why the sparse, timeless, almost dreamlike style of the two chapters that describe the courier's action? Very far removed from his personality, if you consider his actions and believe the comments on him by the other characters. Must be a reason but I couldn't figure it out.

So why 5 stars? Because, even though nobody's perfect, not even Gibson, I've yet to see anybody else do it better.

Excellent book. The concept of The Bay Bridge in San Francisco being taken over by the homeless is worth reading this book alone. There are other reasons too like great new characters (Rydell and Chevette) and new Gibson visions (the future of AIDS and security guards). This book is the first in a new series. This book not only has no Molly (too bad) but less of a focus on the internet and more focus on our future society. In my opinion he leaves too many loose ends at the end of his books and he tried very hard not to do this with Virtual Light.

Virtual Light left me kind of cold, but it wasn't until after reading it that I realized why: it is *too* Gibsonian. The usual Gibson textures are there, with a few delicious nuggets like bridges becoming squatting grounds and police state satellites, but in other areas his technology vision seems constrained to everyday objects like laptops and airplane video games. The real fault here is the incredibly light plot. Things seem to happen for no reason, and I found myself skipping ahead, looking for the next techno-description. Plot has never been WG's strong suit (quick, anybody remember the plot of Count Zero or Mona Lisa?) but the rewards for enduring it here are comparatively thin. If you're looking for post-Neuromancer-era Gibson, pick up Idoru instead.