I finished William Gibson’s Spook Country last night. I loved it. In the novel, a couple of fictive elements rang totally true. First, the emergence of a digital genre called “locative art” may already be underway. Gibson’s framing it as a hacker genre is a little far out… he has serious artists working on what emerges as digital graffiti. It drives the story to frame it this way, and by the end of the book the new form finds more traction as the tech support finds a more formalized platform. But that’s not what the book’s about. Locative art is just part of a lattice-work on which to hang the MacGuffin, a mysterious cargo container. Locative art emerges as one reflection of the title, the art pieces shading into existence through a high tech combination of the artist’s creation of realistic, ghostly representational bit maps that are projected at specific locations through some kind of network magic and perceived by the audience through the use of high tech VR I/O appurtenances along the lines of the 3D glasses that used to be handed out at better sci fi theatres everywhere.
Besides the art, there’s another form of ad hoc spookery in play, something else that rings totally true. The world of millennial spy-shops is drawn as a shadowy network of independent agents for good or evil, advancing public interest or self interest as they dance around the MacGuffin which itself comes into solid focus by the end of the book.
Spook Country is one of the best novels I’ve read this summer. Here are a couple of links to reviews worth reading:
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Jon Husband 09.05.07 at 10:12
I finished it two nights ago
I concur.