Idoru

Cyberpunk, and Gibson’s cyberpunk in particular, is defined by a gritty, tactile, future. The brands, the computers, the specificity of object and place serve to make good cyberpunk dense and hard. This is not good cyberpunk, rather, to borrow an image from the book, it’s a lacquered full-scale replica of a cyberpunk novel. All the surfaces are there; the AI love story, the post-modern technological mercenaries, simulated realities, and philosophical musings on a plastic celebrity culture, but when you lean on it, there’s nothing underneath. But hey, Gibson on his worst day is still better than the Baen back catalog.