I gave it a really good try with this book but only realised belatedly that it was a sequel. I found it very difficult to keep track of the cast of characters and how they inter-related. This might have been simpler to keep track of if I had read Peripheral. I was intrigued by the alternate universe idea but all the information about technology and artificial intelligence got extremely confusing and I realised that I had just disengaged. Despite beginning it with great enthusiasm, I suspect that I was not the right reader for this book but will definitely look out for more William Gibson in the future - but I think with a writer this inventive then I would need to start with the first in a series!

I have attempted to start this book on a couple of occasions and I am just not gelling with it. It may not be the book for me so I am officially marking it as Did Not Finish.

Thank you for the copy.

This is book 2 in a series and I did not realise this when I started reading it, so it was a mess of confusion for me. I didn't get most of it, but at the same time, I really didn't feel as though there was much by way of a plot. As much as I enjoy books featuring a sentient AI type situation, this did not work for me.

The world that this novel is set in is based on the concept of alternate realities, where there is a main world with different realities spun off due to deviations in the choices made during events that have massive future-changing consequences. A group of people in the main world have the ability to influence events in these sub-worlds, with the objective of stabilising them to avoid repeating past mistakes in world events.

This book starts of with perspectives from two alternate realities; and eventually the characters from both timelines get introduced to each other and the story flows more cohesively and in “chronological order”. I found the plot difficult to follow at first as many terms belonging to the more advanced timeline were not introduced. I did try to continue reading as I was fascinated by the interactions between Verity and Eunice the AI “bot”. Upon reading reviews by other people, I realised that it might have been easier reading had I already read the first novel in this series: The Periphery; so I’m looking forward to reading that to fill in some of the blanks in the story. I just found it implausible that Verity decided to trust and go along with whatever Eunice is doing even though Eunice herself is uncertain of what is going on due to her “replicated self programs” or laminae, until these get merged back into her core identity.

#agency #netgalley

While I was offered a free review copy of the book (ARC), I did not have time to download the free copy. I ended up purchasing the kindle and audible version later on when time permitted. Agency is a satisfying follow up to Peripheral. Although it is not required, I recommend everyone read Peripheral first before attempting this book else you might have trouble comprehending narrative threads.

The book is set in two alternate realities, the first parallel to our own, a reality veering of our timeline in a tangent. Imagine Trump lost, and Brexit never happened. In this universe, a shadowy company hires Verity Jane to test out new technology, a paranoid digital assistant / AI called Eunice. In an alternate reality in the future, the story is based in London after an apocalypse, In London Netherton tries to use Eunice in the past to alter Verity's timeline to avoid the future apocalypse. Think Terminator sending someone back in the past to change the future. However, this time using the paranoid AI called Eunice in our timeline, with the usual timeline plot complexities, and you'll get the idea.

It's a pleasure to live vicariously through Netherton, Lowbeer, and Conner again. The plot does highlight just how poor Amazons Alexa would be as a robot companion. I'm a long term fan of Gibson and Cyberpunk in general, so have to admit I'm biased towards Gibson, despite this to me Peripheral was the story, this is its shadow. If the series turns out to be a trilogy, this feels very much the "Empire strikes back" of the trilogy. It sets ups the third part of the story without epic battle or drama, more plot building in the hero's journey than ending. The first quarter of the book is excellent and a real page-turner, the last three quarters were slower going. On the plus side, the audiobook narration is superb. I wholeheartedly recommend you get the audible version as the story becomes more engaging. Overall I enjoyed the book; although this isn't Gibson's best work, it's still far better than most author's best work, overall worth buying.

Friends have recommended William Gibson’s novels to me for some time but I hadn’t got round to reading any of his stuff. Agency is a cracker of a SciFi novel.

Agency isn’t an easy read, you have to work at it, as the basis of the plot unfolds quite slowly and you are left wondering what is going on and struggling to keep track of the different threads for a while. Press on because it is well worth the effort.

The novel switches from San Francisco in 2017, where Clinton won and Brexit didn’t happen, to a weird techno London a century in the future. Are we jumping back and forward in time or are these different parallel strands of history and who controls who?

This is very reminiscent of some of the best of Philip K Dick (the all time master of SciFi for me) leaving the reader wrestling shifting reality and consciousness. I loved it and will be plunging into more of Gibson’s work soon. Read it!

A bit of a mixed bag really, as I've found many of Gibson's novels.

We get off to a great start and some interesting ideas to get you hooked. I worked through the first third of the book at a good rate of speed and would call it a page-turner. The characters were interesting with good backgrounds and the concepts that were being played with were interesting.

Then in the middle things got lost for me. A lot of that is my own fault. Had I read "The Peripheral" first I would have known more of the central characters. While that book isn't a requirement to enjoy this one it would certainly have helped.

Fortunately things come together nicely at the end. All the loose ends get tied up and the final few chapters have plenty of action leading to a inevitable but good conclusion.

So all in all all a good read, but read "The Peripheral" first.

Wow, what a world this would be. It feels even stranger to be reading this now, looking at the world as it currently stands in utter crisis.

No one but no one writes what William Gibson writes, nor writes how he writes. From the "Neuromancer" days, three and a half decades ago, we've been blessed with enigmatic, fast-paced science fiction (and sometimes almost not sci-fi) that vibrates with post-ironic intelligence. "Agency" follows 2014's "Peripheral" in a universe where remnant oligarchs fiddle around divergent time-travel strands in the past, like Zeus's menagerie of Gods. In the roaring opening pages of "Agency," in a present-day America in which Trump didn't win, our hero Verity, an app tester (of course) takes on a spunky new AI, Eunice by name, who struggles to understand herself even as the machinations of present and future battle over her. Gibson is a punctilious stylist who peppers his worlds with objects and settings almost, but not quite, normal, and he's a super choreographer of his careening plots. Dialogue dominates even the most James-Bond-like scene, and the dialogue is waspish and beautiful to read. "Agency" is a monster of a read that may well be heralded as one of Gibson's classics.

Gibson takes us back into the stubs, in another action-packed thriller with his usual dose of scarily real futures, both different and the same, a window into our world wearing a slightly different outfit. Agency bounces you between worlds (or stubs or histories or futures) with flair and electric energy.

Having read (and loved) The Peripheral https://thedustlounge.com/2019/05/11/on-reading-the-peripheral-by-william-gibson/ it was hugely entertaining to spend time with Netherton and Lowbeer again, not to mention Conner who is a massive amount of fun to hang around with. Everyone should have a Conner robot in their lives. The newer additions, Verity and Eunice provide an interesting layer to Agency, an exploration of the nature of friendship, identity and Artificial Intelligence. Suffice to say, AI appears to have some kinda sass.

Gibson writes with his characteristic edginess, writing that strikes very much at the heart of the moment, treading the boards between prophetic and playful. You know you’re in safe hands when you pick up a Gibson book, and Agency is no exception.

The question you’re left with, is what the hell stub are we in right now, and when is Lowbeer paying us a visit?

Favourite line: “Rule of thieves brings collapse, eventually, because they can’t stop stealing.”

Read if: You love your science fiction close to the bone, close to home and messing with our past, present and future in and all too real way.

Read with: Some cool glasses, and Alexa to chat to.

Review will be posted to www.thedustlounge.com

Superb, but then, when does something from the pen of the master fail to delight ?
It takes a short while to get the premise (or at least it took me a while), but once the conceit was in place it rocked along. Really good storytelling, great pacing, all round another excellent work from Mr Gibson.

What if the British voted to remain in the EU, Clinton won the presidential election in 2016, and you're actually living in an alternate universe while people in another universe in the year 2136 try to help you stay alive and prevent a nuclear war from breaking out in your universe? Confused? I know I was. This book started off running at full speed and I had a hard time trying to keep up with it.

This book is told in dual timelines. In San Francisco in 2017, Verity Jane is a so-called app whisperer who was hired by a dubious company to test out their newest technology: an AI called Eunice. Eunice quickly evolves and takes control of Verity's life. Meanwhile, in London in 2136, officials from something called the klept are observing what's going on in Verity's world. Led by Lowbeer - a seemingly all-seeing, all-knowing shadow figure - and her sidekick Wilf Netherton, they use Eunice to try and interfere in Verity's universe and prevent that world from ending up like their 2136 world.

Once the two worlds and timelines started to converge, it was easier to follow what was happening and by the end I at least partially felt like I had some idea of what was going on. But I'll probably have to pick up this book again in the future, just to make sure.

This is a timely, politically relevant story. None of the main characters fully understand what's going on, everyone's playing around with advanced technology and algorithms without much thought for the consequences, and truth (in the form of Verity) has the least agency of all. What a wonderfully subtle metaphor.

Firstly Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read/review this. William Gibson is a great writer and literally changed Science Fiction for the better back in the 80's but it has to be said this is not anywhere close to his best work. I seem to recall from the Guardian that the premise of the Stub in question ( i.e Trump loses and Remain wins the Brexit vote) came to him relatively late in the day and to me it felt like it. I liked the character of Eunice the AI but grew a bit bored with Verity and gradually lost interest in the way the plot was meandering. really wish I'd enjoyed it more but this was a bit of a disappointment

Rather disappointing. Both intriguing concepts and characters are here, but the plot is difficult to follow because of shifting perspective. Verity and Eunice are strong, memorable characters but I can't say the same about the characters from the future. While I like open endings, I would prefer to get more answers here.

My thanks to Penguin Books U.K./Viking for an eARC via NetGalley of William Gibson’s ‘Agency’ in exchange for an honest review.

I wasn’t aware that this was a sequel to his 2015 ‘The Peripheral’ but it worked fine as a standalone.

Although I have long been aware of Gibson’s career and his pioneering of the cyberpunk sub genre of science fiction, this was the first time that I have read one of his novels. I had thought that his narratives might be too abstract or complex for me. However, I was surprised that I was able to follow the plot with no issues.

In San Francisco, 2017 things are rather different to our reality. Clinton is in the White House and the U.K. voted Remain. Verity Jones, who is known as 'the app-whisperer’, has just been hired by a shadowy start-up to evaluate a pair-of-glasses-cum-digital-assistant called Eunice.

Yet Verity finds out quickly that Eunice is capable of much more. Eunice is also quite paranoid with good reason it seems as suddenly baddies are after Verity (and Eunice).

A century from now in a post-apocalyptic PR fixer Wilf Netherton is tasked by all-seeing policewoman Ainsley Lowbeer with interfering in the alternative past in which Verity and Eunice exist.

These two timelines are initially developed separately though eventually come together when innovative technology allows them to interact not only through time but in the different realities.

As noted above I was pleased to discover how accessible ‘Agency’ was. The characters came alive on the page, which isn’t always the case with SF. It’s very much a novel of ideas including the inevitable ‘what ifs’ possible when writing about alternative realities and futures.

I enjoyed ‘Agency’ very much and quickly obtained its audiobook edition, narrated by one of my favourite readers, Lorelei King. This allowed me to do an immersive read/listen.

I have now resolved to read more of Gibson’s work and immediately bought ‘The Peripheral’ ebook/audiobook combination.

Sequel to Gibson's The Peripheral, Agency is a book that can be read as a standalone, although that leaves the reader with a a job of catching up to do. Still, we are brought up to speed pretty quickly.

The book takes place across three alternate timelines - our world, albeit in 2136, and two versions of 2016, including one where the results of the UK's Brexit referendum and of the US's presidential election were different. With its events taking place in San Franciso, the latter timeline gives some quiet signs of hope in the US: a mural celebrating "the President's" courage, for example ('Her opponent loomed behind her, as he once actually had'). We don't see the outcome in the UK in this scenario. But Gibsons insists that people are generally no happier, not knowing what they've been saved from - and the "jackpot", a horrible future featuring decades of catastrophe, is still coming. Nothing immediately hangs on the difference in political outcomes and we don't see the longterm effects. Rather the conflict that motivates the book takes place under the radar and at a more personal level.

Gibson's conceit is that "our" timeline is the "real" one from which the others are "stubs", branches formed when somebody in "our" world communicates back to inhabitants in the distant past.. How such communication is possible isn't explained (I think that's where reading The Peripheral, which I hadn't, may help) but Gibson uses the idea with gusto, having the inhabitants of 2136 London intervene in 2016 for a variety of reasons - one is malicious and enjoys causing trouble, others see it as a hobby, while our main protagonists - a Detective Inspector Ainsley Lowbeer and her sidekick, Netherton - seek to help. In particular, they're trying to prevent alt-2016 perishing in a nuclear war, and therefore seek traction in that world. (This is challenged by an indignant resident of one of the other timelines as simply colonialism)

At the other end of this process is Verity Jane, a young woman renowned in the tech world as the "app whisperer" and in the tabloids as Stetson Howell's ex. Howell is a powerful force in tech and having broken ups with him, Verity is of great interest to social media. When the book opens she's just about to take a new job evaluating an AI personal assistant for startup Tulpagenics - something that will change her life for ever.

The AI, Eunice*, becomes key to this story and the relationship between it - her - and Verity both touching and intriguing. As chapters alternate between San Francisco and London, we gradually see a more complete picture of what's going on, but to achieve that you need to get your head round some complicated setups involving tele-presencing between the two timelines (and occasionally, all three).

So you can have a character (generally Netherton) living in 2136 London but virtually occupying a drone in 2016 alt-San Francisco, interacting with the inhabitants there and observing that reality through a game-like interface while occasionally exchanging words with someone with him in the (2136) - the conversation also including other characters who are effectively dialled in to the events, from one or other of the timelines. I found it really confusing at times ('...his phone's feed provided by her device's camera. She couldn't see him, though he could show her what he was seeing'), and the descriptions of what was being seen on that virtual display sometimes took a lot of effort to interpret.

There is also a lot of tech speak. 'She's an intermittently hierarchical array, complexly coterminous' for example, or 'a locus of clonic indeterminacy' or 'competitive control areas'. The book is in one sense a lot of extended conversations, undertaken as characters run for their lives. But, new words to learn! At least now I know what "noetic" means.

I realise this may sound as if I didn't like the book. That's not so at all. I really enjoyed Agency and look forward to reading more Gibson. The stuff above doesn't really hold up the narrative or make the essentials hard to follow. And he has some mind-bending concepts - see the character who has had her animated tattoos removed and installed into the hide of an indoor yurt, so that as she sleeps she's surrounded by moving animal figures. Or the idea of an electronic privacy filter created by a circle of dancing bots swirling shawls made of a smart fabric. And there is some really smart, even beautiful use of language here ('Her eyes and chartreuse lips seemed to float there, a disembodied Cheshire goth...', '"...something like Uber," Eunice said, "but for following people"', 'that horror movie feel of any unoccupied cam feed').

Above all, the characters feel real, part of a community, a family, at home ion their places - whether that's Verity sofa-surfing in San Francisco or Netherton with his wife Rainey and his son of even Lowbeer in her preposterous mobile situation room. The book feels deep, these characters care for each other, they have history and have made compromises and they know better to raise certain issues or to do certain things, and Gibson communicates all this subtly, he shows it, for which I can forgive him any amount of tech speak and mind-bending multi-way situations.

It was great fun. But do read The Peripheral first.

*Untethered Noetic Irregular Support System

Agency is the long-awaited second science-fiction epic in The Peripheral series and although I would strongly recommend reading the preceding novel first, Gibson has previously stated that they can easily be read as standalones or out of order. This is a science-fiction thriller heavily influenced by our most current events. There are two timelines: one set in an alternate 2017 where Verity Jane is handling the fact that digital assistant and AI Eunice is more powerful than both she and the developers could ever have known. Hilary Clinton has been voted into the office of president after a successful campaign and the UK has voted overwhelmingly to remain in the European Union. There is also fear and tension in the Middle East with concerns that recent terrorist attacks in Syria could lead to instability and nuclear catastrophe.

Meanwhile, a century ahead in London, in the timeline which makes up the bulk of the plot, Wilf Netherton works amongst survivors of the terrifying apocalypse jackpot. His boss, the enigmatic Ainsley Lowbeer, can look into alternate pasts and nudge their ultimate directions. Verity and Eunice are her current project. Wilf can see what Verity and Eunice can’t: their own version of the jackpot, just around the corner, and the roles they both may play in it. This is a book that starts with a bang and is both action-packed and creative and the writing is in Gibson’s inimitable style. What makes it so terrifying is that it is so close to real life that you feel on edge and mighty uneasy the whole way through. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable read but it is not Gibson’s most accomplished. I hope there will be another instalment as I loved the cast of engaging characters and universes. Many thanks to Viking for an ARC.

This is the second instalment in William Gibson’s Peripheral series, and follows pretty much the same format as the first book. Two separate timelines that slowly get drawn together as events in one begin to have an effect on the other.

As with The Peripheral, which I reviewed a couple of days ago, one of the timelines in this book is Wilf Netherton’s early 22nd Century, and while the mid-21st Century timeline of the first book does have a small part to play in this novel, the primary stub we get to explore is a variant on our own contemporary world, only instead of Trump, Hillary won the 2016 presidential campaign, and the UK voted to remain in the EU. Of course, this being a William Gibson novel, not everything in this alternate reality is running smoothly. Terrorist action in Syria has led to a rapid escalation of the Middle East conflict and the world sits on the brink of nuclear annihilation.

Despite the near-apocalyptic tone of the setting, the bulk of the narrative focuses on the apparent emergence of the world’s first fully aware artificial sentience, Eunice, and her desire to claim control of her own life. Along for the ride is Verity, an ‘app whisperer’ who is hired to beta-test Eunice, though as Eunice begins to take control of her own life Verity’s freedom is rapidly curtailed.

Just like in the first book Wilf is brought on board to liaise with the denizens of the stub, specifically Verity, though back in his own timeline he finds himself getting drawn into a bit of cloak and dagger involving his employer, Lowbeer, and the Russian kleptocrats who think they control her. As a result, where the storylines of the first book converged as the novel unfolded, here they diverge, ultimately leaving us with two separate and distinct narratives.

Once again this is an excellent read from Gibson. There are still passing references to the mysterious server that allows Wilf’s timeline to communicate with the stubs of the past, but we’re still no closer to finding out the true story behind that. Assuming the next book is the finale then I suspect we’ll learn a lot more about that server and just how the various timelines are interconnected when that hits the shelves. I just hope we don’t have to wait another six years for book three.

This is definitely one you should read if you’re a fan of Gibson’s earlier work, or indeed of cyberpunk in general, though if you haven’t read book one then I strongly suggest you do that first.

I'm a fan of William Gibson and I did a joy dance when I was approved for this ARC.
Unfortunately Mr Gibson sometimes sleeps and this book is the result.
I found it confusing and flat. There are some interesting ideas but I couldn't be involved and the book fell flat.
Maybe it was mood or maybe it's not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

I read half of Agency before realising I barely had a clue of what was happening. Something about a software tester going off with a rogue AI and lots of important-sounding people standing in probably expensive buildings saying lofty things – I think the software tester and the rogue AI were being chased by some nebulous enemy? This is my first and last William Gibson – I feel that his reputation is overstated given that Agency is bad scifi combined with even worse writing and storytelling.