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Idoru
by William Gibson
| List Price: |
$7.99 |
Unavailable for
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Paperback
Publisher: Berkley
ISBN13: 9780425158647
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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In twenty-first century Tokyo, Rez, one of the world's biggest rock stars, prepares to marry Rei Toe, Japan's biggest media star, who is known as the Idoru and who exists only in virtual reality. Reprint."
The author of the ground-breaking science-fiction novels Neuromancer and Virtual Light returns with a fast-paced, high-density, cyber-punk thriller. As prophetic as it is exciting, Idoru takes us to 21st century Tokyo where both the promises of technology and the disasters of cyber-industrialism stand in stark contrast, where the haves and the have-nots find themselves walled apart, and where information and fame are the most valuable and dangerous currencies. When Rez, the lead singer for the rock band Lo/Rez is rumored to be engaged to an "idoru" or "idol singer"--an artificial celebrity creation of information software agents--14-year-old Chia Pet McKenzie is sent by the band's fan club to Tokyo to uncover the facts. At the same time, Colin Laney, a data specialist for Slitscan television, uncovers and publicizes a network scandal. He flees to Tokyo to escape the network's wrath. As Chia struggles to find the truth, Colin struggles to preserve it, in a futuristic society so media-saturated that only computers hold the hope for imagination, hope and spirituality.
| Customer Reviews: |
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| Don't Bother... |
| Customer Rating: 2 out of 5 |
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Talk about cardboard characters and no plot and you've got William Gibson down to a T!!! The only thing that saves this book - a thought that applies to almost all his work - is the near-future background. That's all! AND it is NOT enough. Having read Neuromancer and loved the pace I have been consistently disappointed since. Idoru made me finally decide never to try another of his works.
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| Absurdly dated |
| Customer Rating: 2 out of 5 |
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I had the misfortune of being a teenager in the 90's. I picked this book up in a used bookstore without realizing when it was published. Then again, I've read many, many books written in the 90's that didn't have this problem.
This book is DATED! The phrases used. The slang. The description of bars. The clothes. The teenager's attitude (very, very Seattle grunge/goth 90's). The references. I mean, Geiger? Really? It is irritating to think of this being set in some vague distant future when I feel like I'm stuck in the past. This all likely wouldn't bug me so much if I wasn't, as I said, a teen in those 90's.
One of my biggest pet peeves in writing is when a character is telling a long story. It is a crappy way of telling a story. Also, a story like that would take an hour or two - it wasn't that long! - yet they're wandering around for hours drinking coffee, drinking alcohol, and eating at two different restaurants. It's absurd.
The book is readable, but... it's vision of the future is just absurd. The guy has no vision. He's got us stuck in the 90's with crappy "future technology" that is worse than what we have only 10yrs later.
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| Gibson's Idoru Revisited |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I'm a big advocate of re-reading favorite books - after all, who listens to a favorite CD just once? For many years (until the movies came out) I looked forward to re-reading The Lord of the Rings during Christmas vacation, and some years I prefaced it with The Hobbit. I have enjoyed re-reading many other authors - including William Gibson.
From my all time favorite, Mona Lisa Overdrive, to the rest of the Neuromancer trilogy, the short stories collected in Burning Chrome - and his famous book about the Bay Bridge, Virtual Light, I have enjoyed revisiting Gibson's vision of the near future.
I just finished re-reading Idoru, which was first published 13 years ago, after reading comments by Gibson from the book's wikipedia page saying he related to his character Colin Laney, who sees intuitive "nodal points" when data-mining the same way the author sees clues or indicators about the future that he incorporates into his books.
Over the years I loaned Idoru out several times, mostly to Japanese friends whom I thought might appreciate Gibson's vision of near-future Tokyo - but they weren't necessarily science-fiction fans and I don't think any of them read it. At least I managed to get it back each time, and finally picked it up the other day myself, somewhat apprehensive that "current events" might have overtaken it in the intervening decade. I needn't have worried.
Gibson excels at plotting, and in Idoru he alternates the Laney and Chia chapters until the characters climactically meet, each chapter propelling them through future Tokyo from one cliff-hanger to another. His characters are attractive, including Chia's angry and protective friend Zona, Laney, Rez and his bodyguard - and the amazing title character: Rei Toei, the Idoru.
What has protected Gibson's vision of near-future Tokyo from the passage of time since Idoru was published? Part of the answer is,
his future still a long way off. In a recurring vision spanning many of his books, humans will eventually be able to enter convincing three-dimensional virtual worlds that will surround us while we are wearing ear- and eye-phones and fingertip sensors. At the same time, human-seeming realistic holograms driven by artificial intelligences will be able to interact with us in the day-to-day world, blurring the distinction between "real" and virtual.
That is quite a leap forward from where we are today. From reading e-mails and tweets on the tiny screens of our phones and Blackberries, to becoming fully immersed in intense and believable multi-sensory "consensual hallucinations" with others. Of course, you'll want to be jacked-in in a secure location when visiting these virtual worlds, where you can't be disturbed!
Another technology which we are probably still decades away from commercially exploiting in the manner presented in Idoru is nanotechnology, shown rebuilding Tokyo after a devastating earthquake: buildings constructing themselves in a disturbingly unreal fashion, which Gibson describes poetically using spare metaphors. His Tokyo is still recognizable, a place where you can enter the lower sub-levels of a damaged building to catch a train, but with surreal touches, like the bizarre frozen, odorless piss in the unlicensed nightclub.
Ultimately, the most impressive character is the Idoru herself, who is already so far beyond a "software agent" when we meet her - and grows before our eyes until she becomes almost a godlike presence in both worlds. Her love for Rez and affection for Chia makes her human, but she is the AI equivalent of nanotech, building the edifice of her persona by accumulating enormous amounts of data at an exponential rate.
It's a suspenseful and thought-provoking book, a quick read that nonetheless offers stimulating insights that will reward a second or third visit. When the Idoru says the key to her attaining the next stage of development is "plectics," the same might be said, at least metaphorically, for all of us.
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| Sci-Fi Globalization, Convergence Between Asia and the West |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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In my experience William Gibson never disappoints and Idoru is perhaps his best work. Blasphemy I know to say that it is superior to Neuromancer but I'm gonna call it like I see it. The main reason I feel that Idoru is his best is because of his unparalleled vision of what the world may look like in the future, as Western and Asian cultures and influences continue to converge, mesh and intertwine. It is perhaps the most compelling vision that I have read, ranking up there with the book Chung Kuo: The Middle Kingdom and the movie Blade Runner. Additionally, it is well worth highlighting that Gibson's writing is brilliant, his characters entrancing and each scene intricately crafted. Let's not forget to mention his entirely accurate predictions of the convergence between "real" & digital life, as one of the central ideas is the marriage of a rock star with a Japanese virtual being, an "Idoru."
Is it a dark, dystopian future that Gibson envisions? Yes, in some respects. But, as in all of his novels, there is also a great deal of hope and endless possibility. Idoru is the second book in William Gibson's Bridge trilogy, but it was the first of the series that I read (accidentally) and it truly stands alone, even if you haven't read the first book. Finally, Gibson is able to create realistic female characters, unlike many of his sci-fi peers.
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| Idoru |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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William Gibson offers a fresh squirt of cyberpunk panache with Idoru, named for the Japanese celebrity that doesn't exist, around which the story pivots.
A few decades from now, the celebrity is where the money's at. Colin Laney is the man who can see through the data-trails that such people - or any people - leave as they pass through a high-tech life: credit card transactions, internet surfing, online purchases, the TV channels you watch, the flights you catch. Hired by a media company, Laney tries to find the trail of Rez, one half of the hottest musical partnership Lo/Rez. Rez is also the man who has recently announced that he wishes to marry the idoru, a celebrity who exists only as a digital avatar ...
Also searching for Rez is one of his biggest fans, a 14 years old named Chia who wants to know if the crazy rumours are true. Flying to Tokyo where the idoru is based, she soon falls into a maze of trouble involving nanosmugglers, an evolution of the Russian mafia, and a group of otaku technogeeks operating out of the virtual Walled City.
Chia serves as the innocent eyes viewing the insanity of the world that Gibson is presenting, the same universe in which his 1993 novel Virtual Light is set. It is frantic, post-modern and frothing with insane tech. The nature of the world is the nature of the novel, which has the TV-remote-rapidity of earlier hits like Neuromancer, which set the stage for the genre and inspired such films as The Matrix. The writing is sharp and fast, described accurately on the cover as being "as glacially poetic as J. G. Ballard's", which pretty much hits the nail on the head.
The dialogue is modern and snappy, but the technology of this future contrasts with the modish gadgetry of the Neuromancer universe, sometimes coming off a little trite (virtual reality experienced through boxy goggles and wired-up gloves, for example). The frothy exposition and fast-paced narrative rapidly swallow any such minor complaints though, leaving the text roiling with cool gimmickry and spunky, laconic characters. As the story unfolds, the reader is exposed to not more of a thinly-constructed world, as in a lot of post-modern science fiction, but of new layers of Gibson's new Tokyo, stacked both upwards and down, slotted within the underlying accounts of an earthquake that levelled parts of the city, which are left to crumble further as other areas are rebuilt with rampant nanotech.
Thankfully Gibson deals with his world with total confidence, which beams through every page. The text is neat, precise and engaging, with realistic characters the reader is comfortable relating to. A fast, thoroughly entertaining read that cyberpunk fans will exhilarate in assimilating.
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