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…I think I’d probably tell you that it’s easier to desire and pursue the attention of tens of millions of total strangers than it is to accept the love and loyalty of the people closest to us.
There is an odd surface tension here; some readers may approach Idoru from the wrong bias, through the lens of Neuromancer and the Sprawl trilogy. Those readers will expect the traditional cyberpunk romp of amphetamine-fueled Yakuza battles and twisted violent sex in coffin hotels; those readers will be disappointed and may not be able to penetrate the skin of this charged, deeply emotional book. Idoru is William Gibson’s Through the Looking Glass. Read the rest of this entry »
The mission, the secret has been compromised. Our own expedition was a success in as much as our craft — a lightweight, one-man, helium-propelled bicycle of an aircraft — returned to base. What none of us had banked on was that we would be pursued by a friend. (M.F., was that you?) His craft however, was not so provident. Our intelligence reports tell us that he chased after us, that he out-performed us in the air, that he then went off the radar and never came back. As the pilot, I am angered and shamed; as his friend I am saddened and confused. Intelligence tells us that he had been coerced by Communists. So many plausible explanations, so little time to find him. We spring immediately to action. Our evidence leads us to an elementary school. We question the teachers, the students, we study the equations scribbled on the math class’ chalkboard. Where could he have gone?
