Spook Country by William Gibson

Spook Country

William Gibson

There are two levels to the most recent of William Gibson's books. The first, which has been discussed at length during junkets for the book, is what defines sci-fi. The second is much more pertinent to out modern reality, what are all those vast networks of cold war spies up to now?

Since the first has been discussed widely. I will only weight in very briefly. This book is Science Fiction. It is very close to our current reality and culture, but their is a layer of technological glitter that elevate it beyond the everyday. Everything in the book is possible, but Gibson makes it so close to the commonplace that it is not our reality. What separates it from Gibson's other Sci-fi is that it speaks the language of today, which helps the books relevance.

So, to the spies. As evidenced by the title, this is a book about spies. There are a ton of spies, but we follow three of them. Milgrim, an abducted translator. He used to be a hotshot intellectual until he succumbed to addiction. He has been abducted by Brown, a typical member of today's gruff American intelligence community.  Tito is also a traditional spy, one of the many transnational freelancers of the Cold War era. His family is hugely powerful, and who their working for is a mystery. In the middle of this is Hollis Henry, a journalist and former rockstar, she seems to be in the middle of the spies without a clue as to why.

Each of these factional personalities seem to point toward the twisted world of NGO intelligence. Gibson paints it as a very grim reality, but no one has any clear goal. The traditional CIA route is clogged with the task of just trying to find the players before it is all too late. Hollis is being used as a spy by a multimillionaire without her knowledge, although she begins to suspect him. Tito is in the shadows. Tito's story is the one that everyone wants to know. Gibson gets all of these personalities perfectly, and they work well in the plot. Gibson seems to think that all these players are now chasing each other around still, without any ultimate goal. If this is the case, we're all in bigger trouble than we thought.