Insights

I've always enjoyed reading William Gibson, despite the fact that one of his short stories was turned into one of the worst movies ever made. Chalk that one up to some godawful casting and a director who simply didn't get it. I've always thought that Bladerunner, a movie which did get it, at least in presenting a future which felt exactly like you thought the future would feel, owed as much to the vision which Gibson was articulating back in the early 80s as to anything that was actually on Philip K. Dick's pages.

So, in the four days that Soon-to-be Mrs. Dependable and i have been down at our oceanfront hideaway taking care of final details for our upcoming nuptials (the officiant and the cake are confirmed, i've located the best oysterman and shrimp seller and figured out the workings of both the hot tub and the multi-zone stereo system), i've had enough time listen to the surf and chow down on Spook Country, the latest from the master of cyberpunk.

this is, i'm pretty sure,Gibson's first novel (not counting The Difference Engine) set in the past, February 2006, to be precise. In his fiction, Gibson has always been describing, perhaps midwifing, a certain late 20th, early 21st century world that has, after a long and painful delivery, finished being born. (He has some wry comments early in the novel about how it doesn't really matter how wrong many of the details were in those 70s and 80s pieces. Part of the process, really.)

But more so than just capturing the feel of the times, which would not make him a special writer no matter how well he did that, Gibson usually rewards his readers with at least one insight of staggering proportions. Spook Country doesn't disappoint. ("She" is one of the main protagonists, former singer in a postpunk band; "Inchmale" is a former bandmate, and a peripheral character in the novel.)

She remembered Inchmale describing Stockholm syndrome, the fondness and loyalty one could supposedly come to feel for even the most brutal captor. . . . Inchmale thought that America had developed Stochkholm syndrome for its own government, post 9/11.

Worth the price of admission