A review by sisteray
Idoru by William Gibson

4.0

When Virtual Light came out I was excited to see Gibson’s approach to near future. It was packed with fun futurist ideas injected into a wild action story

I started Idoru when it came out, but I lost my copy and despite liking what I read, I never went back to it. I figured after a time I wouldn’t remember where I was and I’d have to reread the thing again. So 25+ years later here we are.

Idoru is far more about showcasing Gibson’s ideas about media, AI, stardom, communication platforms, information retrieval, and privacy than it is about plot. The characters while having their own story arcs are more vehicles to bump into and present concepts and ideas for living in a near future and the plot is far less about high action or danger.

Most Gibson that I have read starts throwing the reader into a lot if disjointed gobbledygook, and the fun if it is figuring out what the hell all the jargon is referring to. This is no different. But as I sank into the book I was deeply compelled to keep the pages turned.

It’s tough to keep a reader engaged flip-flopping back and forth between two main characters with disjointed stories, but honestly I was always excited to dig back into where we left the last character. One of the characters has ADD, so the tone of flitting back and forth with short chapters was perfect.

The predictive concepts are fun to examine 25 years later as some ideas are still futuristic, some are present today and some are horribly outmoded. It looks like Douglas Adams still wins for the Hitchhiker’s Guide being closest to a cell phone.

I screamed through the last hundred pages in one late night sitting because I was so into it. Totally glad that I returned to this.