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Virtual Light

Spectra

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Average customer rating: 4 stars

Seek your VR story elsewhere

This book has almost nothing to do with virtual reality, and left me feeling somewhat ripped off. All dystopia, no VR. And he named it Virtual Light!

If you're interested in a good VR read, check out Tad Williams's Otherland series instead. Much, much more entertaining. Gibson is sadly overrated.

Not Free SF Reader

Your future may not be bright if you are wearing these shades.

Gibson's technological level regresses from that of the Sprawl books. No cybernetic implants here, but old fashioned gear like googles and gloves for connections.

A lowly courier gets into trouble when lifting the wrong pair of glasses - a super advanced gear prototype with some startling abilities.

Through in a down on his luck investigator and another shady, seedy tale follows.

3 out of 5

Bridge series

The first in the bridge series it introduces two central players, Berry Rydell a out of work cop and Chevette, a San Francisco bike messenger. Throughout the story the Golden gate bridge that was made unusable by a earthquake and now functions as a squatters paradise/no mans land looms in the background. This novel is Gibson's first tenative steps toward contemporary fiction. It works, just cutting edge enough to feed the tech heads with solid story and plot lines.
Even though I still yearn for razor girls and console cowboys Vitural light was a great read. think of that..Gideon's Fall: When You Dont Have a Prayer, Only a Miracle Will Do

w0w

If you are a science fiction fan or a futurist of any sort or just like fiction, you need to read this book. I could write a pious review of the book or praise the author to the heavens, both would be justified. However it's very simple, you need to read this book and see how many people have lifted off Gibson or just been influenced by his work.
Groundbreaking and still relevant 14 years after its initial publication. Truly an original work.

Very Satisfying Story

Gibson has become one of my favorite sci-fi authors. This story is plausible, original, and contains both enough character development and action to make it a satisfying read. There is a degree of moral ambivalence that makes the plot line move along: seeming Good Guys can be revealed as Bad Guys, and sometimes it isn't as cut-and-dried as that. Even one of two main characters in the book is a thief, so the world as it is portrayed here is not simply a backdrop for a straightforward morality play. I like that, because it involves the reader more in the characters and the story line.

I also appreciated the implicit humor in the "Cops in Trouble" media program that played a significant role in this novel: a sort of 60 Minutes/advocacy program for police or vigilantes chosen as heroic and telegenic enough to warrant advocacy--and marketing--it comes to the rescue of those who do the right kind of killing and who break laws in the service of the Greater Good. An amusing thought, in a dark kind of way...rather in the mold of how Dick Cheney sees himself, I'd guess.