A Thing I’ve Read 07/26: Virtual Light (Bridge I), by William Gibson

A Thing I’ve Read 07/26: Virtual Light (Bridge I), by William Gibson

This is not a Sprawl-tale. I am both happy and sad about that.
This is, as per the cover-quote, a tech-thriller, and it is very much set in a cyberpunk-ian dystopia, where it plays out very much on the punk-side and very little on the cyber-side.
The book follows an ex-cop and a bike courier, who stumble into a plot to [redacted] San Francisco, and who are mostly trying to stay alive through the whole ordeal.

It was a good read, and I am very curious what other shenanigans the Bridge-Trilogy will hold.

This is indeed not a Sprawl story, and I do miss my sprawl.
On the other hand, I think it’s good that there’s new world-building, and I also don’t think that another Sprawl story would have worked written in the early 90s. I still am sentimental for it.

The world of Bridge is clearly a Cyberpunk-one, with Megacorps, Rent-a-Cops, and a giant discrepancy between the Haves and the Havenots, with weird television evangelists and bike couriers, and with a MacGuffin that’s a pair of VR sunglasses containing The Evil Plan Of The Bad Guys.
Which of course, ehm, finds its way into the hands of Chevette Washington, a teenage bike courier living in the settlement that grew on the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, which is not the Golden Gate Bridge as I have just learned. Oops. The books other main character, an ex-cop, ex-Rent-a-Cop, and overall questionable person by the name of Berry Rydell, is first hired to help hunt both Chevette and the glasses down, and by the way I’ve started this sentence you can probably guess what will happen later.

The novel is a classic wild-goose-chase after something I am not sure can actually be called a MacGuffin, as it has actual in-story relevance. I will not get into this discussion now. It’s well-crafted, and if you’re looking for a new dystopian adventure fix: try this one.
I’ll continue with Idoru, probably soon.