Idoru by William Gibson Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $2.98 You Save: $5.01 (63%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Idoru
Book Review: Exploring the nature of celebrity in the Information Age
Summary: 4 Stars
Lo/Rez is the hottest rock band on the planet, but their fan club is horrified by rumors that Rez, the band's lead singer, intends to marry Rei Toei, a Japanese idoru, an "idol singer." The problem is, this isn't your run-of-the-mill Tokyopop princess-Rei Toei is a software agent, a complex amalgamation of computer code that simulates a human being. The Seattle branch of the Lo/Rez fan club is disturbed enough to send one of its members, fourteen-year-old Chia McKenzie, to Japan to investigate. Enroute, a strange woman gives her a package to carry through Customs, and Chia soon finds herself in a whole lot of trouble.
Meanwhile, data analyst Colin Laney is losing his job at Slitscan, a company that gleans, manufactures, and spins news about the rich and famous. Laney has a singular gift-he can intuitively spot trends developing within masses of seemingly-unrelated data. He tried to thwart the suicide of a celebrity's girlfriend, an incident only he could foresee, and that action wasn't in Slitscan's financial interest. To make matters worse, Laney's been offered a new job by a menacing representative of the conglomerate that manages Lo/Rez. Slitscan would like nothing better than to destroy Lo/Rez with the scandal of the century. If Laney accepts the job offer, he risks much more than the loss of Slitscan's goodwill, and if he rejects it...well, let's just say that's not really an option. He's caught between two powerful forces that covet his talent, an ability even Laney doesn't completely understand.
Something earth-shattering is about to happen, and Laney is the only one who can see it coming. He doesn't know exactly what it is yet, but Rez and the idoru are at its heart. Is Rez just an eccentric rock singer who's fried his brain with recreational drugs? Is Rei Toei something more than a fancy computer program? What's inside that mysterious box in Chia's purse? Inquiring minds want to know, and they're willing to kill for the information.
In Idoru, William Gibson, the acclaimed father of cyberpunk and author of Neuromancer and Mona Lisa Overdrive, takes us once again to a near-future world where the line between the real and the virtual blurs. This time, he explores the nature of celebrity in the Information Age, a phenomenon not fully explained by either reality or illusion. In the world of Idoru, celebrity is a commodity, and its creation and destruction are a profitable business. Fans create a living mythology that shapes both the object of their adulation and themselves. Virtual reality and telepresence create autonomous societies within the infosphere invisible to the outside world and wielding enormous power. True artificial intelligence hovers just beyond the limits of technology, composed, as one character says, of the "aggregates of subjective desire." When, and if, it emerges, Gibson asserts it will be in a place and of a form that no one would have expected.
Idoru is a gripping story, intriguing and suspenseful. My one disappointment was that all the characters, even the ones who were ostensibly pulling the strings, seemed to be wandering in a fog, pushed about by forces they couldn't control or fully comprehend. Yeah, I know, life can be like that-a lot-but the story builds up an overwhelming sense of some guiding intelligence orchestrating events from the shadows that ultimately devolves into randomness. Remarkable and frightening things happen, but like Laney, who manifests his analytic gift without understanding how or why it works, I felt like Gibson never quite got around to telling me why these things were happening, or why they were so important and inevitable. There are hints aplenty, but I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, even at the end of the story.
On the other hand, I loved Gibson's foray into the world of image brokers, fangirls, mafioso of various flavors, and a virtual world that seemed just as real and surreal as the physical world. The characters were interesting and memorable, especially Rez' security chief, Keithy Blackwell, a Tazmanian ex-con and one of the smartest and scariest hired goons I've encountered in a long time. He's a complex character, and his ethics are, to put it mildly, ambiguous. Another character remarks that the most frightening thing about Blackwell is that "sometimes I find myself getting used to him," and that's a pretty good assessment.
Idoru was published in 1996, but it still feels fresh and plausible to me. Some of Gibson's projections are very close to becoming reality, and a few are already here.
I'd rate the material at an R overall, for a few stretches of raw language, a couple of non-explicit adult situations, and some violence, mostly implied, but perhaps more frightening because it's implied.
Book Review: Fast-paced and edgy
Summary: 5 Stars
Set in the same world as Virtual Light, not long afterward (but not quite a sequel), Idoru is a slightly better ride. I found it to be somewhat more of a page-turner, and it kept up a hastier pace.The characters seem a bit more likeable than in Virtual Light; Yamazaki makes a stronger mark than in the other book, and Colin Laney is just a guy who can't figure out why his talents should mean as much as they do to the people around him. Chia McKenzie is a headstrong kid out of her element, but likeable. The bad guys aren't as nebulous but instead are a present threat; among them are the Russian mafia and Laney's truly witchy old boss who wants her pound of flesh.
It's really pretty close to call, but I prefer this one just a hair over Virtual Light. Of course neither is Neuromancer, which I still consider to be Gibson's crowning achievement. Idoru is a great read, especially for a Gibson fan.
Book Review: Gibson covers new ground!
Summary: 3 Stars
To summarize:A hapless specialist, recently put out of a job due to unfortunate circumstances mostly beyond his control, is drafted by a creepy looking, scarily bent henchman with a dodgy past and a weird lieutenant to serve a mysteriously motivated and surrealistically wealthy celebrity who is actually being manipulated by an artificial intelligence reaching for transcendence. Along the way he is persued by an indescribeably ruthless and brutal shadow organization on account of a balance of power shifting prototype mcguffin, is aided by a bizarre and tightly-organized techno subculture, and teams up with a plucky white trash girl swept into a parallel plotline, all while surrounded by stainless steel German countertop appliances epoxied to the wall, funny-named Japanese products encased in polycarbonate, and robot trucks poking their way through streets strewn with bubblewrap.
Gibson's sort of like the Ramones: their work all sounds the same, but they're still fun to dip into every so often.
Book Review: Gibson in transition
Summary: 4 Stars
Idoru is typical Gibson with his post-modern strengths and weaknesses. There is probably no contemporary writer who packs so much detail into his prose; one can read him over and over again and endlessly pick out elements that one didn't notice before. On the other hand, his characterization is weak. His characters are kind of like cutouts: they don't as characters rise to the level of his vision of the not too distant future. This in my judgement is true of all of Gibson's work, even his most recent text, the title of which escapes me. Perhaps, in fairness to Gibson, characterization is beside the point. Characters and personalities are absorbed into the sheer sweep of post-modern life, in which the corporatization of technogical innovation stamps out -- or nearly stamps out -- the cult of the individual.
Although I enjoyed Idoru, I feel that it doesn't measure up to the cyberpunk master's earlier work. The same vigor just isn't here.
Perhaps it is a post-success syndrome. Success for some writers means that the initial motivation and energy just is no longer there. Hopefully, this is just a phase that Gibson is going through.
That being said, even inferior Gibson is just on a different level than most than the work of other writers of speculative fiction. Here is an author who combines a coherent vision of what the near future looks like with a truly grand, pop-literate, post-modernist style.
I will continue to devour Gibson's work and look forward to each new text. I would however recommend that those of you who are new to his work to start with the earlier novels.
Book Review: Gibson is god.
Summary: 5 Stars
A few years ago I was a bit disappointed after reading 'Virtual Light'. I felt that Gibson had lost his touch. But with this new novel I can clearly see that Gibson is still the best writer alive today. Idoru is a beautiful novel with great characters and awe inspiring settings. I felt the ending of the book was excellent. I can't wait to see if he follows Idoru up with another novel with some of the same characters( Laney, Chia, Zona/Mercedes, Rez-Rei, and Blackwell).