Virtual Light

Steven Lehman teaches English at John Abbot College in Montreal.

In William Gibson’s latest book, Berry Rydell, a young cop from
Tennessee, is transferred to a futuristic West Coast. Chevette, an
orphan from Oregon who lives on California’s condemned Bay Bridge and
works as a bicycle courier, survives an impulsive petty theft that has
unforeseen consequences. Rydell learns the insufficiency of machismo
over the course of Chevette’s rescue.

The two team up to thwart an international urban redevelopment scam
with the help of both the lumpen proletariat and the lumpen
intelligentsia—represented by, respectively, a Japanese anthropologist
and the Republic of Desire, a community of hackers that ultimately helps
bring about a heroic deus ex machina.

While Gibson’s characteristic fascination with multimegabyte
phenomena continues, his focus here is on the impact of this brave new
technology on individuals. Virtual Light is by far his most readable
novel (i.e., it has a definite beginning, middle, and end). The biggest
problem with the book was the binding: it broke during first reading.

Though he is not yet writing at the level of a William Faulkner or a
Margaret Laurence, the mild-mannered genius behind the cyberpunk
movement appears headed in that direction.