In 'Agency,' William Gibson Builds A Bomb That Doesn't Boom (And That's OK)
Gibson's new novel is a sequel to 2014's The Peripheral, jumping back and forth in time as investigators, military contractors and killers chase down a rogue AI, and tensions flare in the Middle East.
by Jason Sheehan
Jan 21, 2020
3 minutes
William Gibson does not write novels, he makes bombs.
Careful, meticulous, clockwork explosives on long timers. Their first lines are their cores — dangerous, unstable reactant mass so packed with story specific detail that every word seems carved out of TNT. The lines that follow are loops of brittle wire wrapped around them.
Once, he made bombs that exploded. Upended genre and convention, exploded expectations. The early ones were messy and violent and lit such gorgeous fires. Now, though, he does something different. Somewhere a couple decades ago, he hit on a plot architecture that worked for himexplode. Bombs that are art objects. Not inert. Still goddamn dangerous. But contained.
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