![]() Cover of first edition | |
Author | William Gibson |
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Genre | Science fiction |
Publisher | Berkley Books |
Publication date | January 21, 2020 |
Publication place | United States |
Pages | 496 |
ISBN | 110198693X |
Preceded by | The Peripheral |
Agency is a science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson, released on January 21, 2020. [1]
It is a 'sequel and a prequel' [2] to his previous novel The Peripheral (2014), reusing the technology from the novel to explore an alternative 2017 where Hillary Clinton won the 2016 Presidential Election. [2] The story line further explores the concept of "the jackpot", a back-story element of The Peripheral.
One plot is set in the alternative 2017, with a young woman named Verity testing a new form of avatar software developed by the military, for a start-up in San Francisco. A second plot line involves people in a post-apocalyptic 22nd century meddling with 2017. [2] [3]
CBC Books listed Agency on its list of Canadian fiction to watch for in spring 2020. [4] It had originally been planned to be published in January 2018. [2]
William Ford Gibson is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as cyberpunk. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, his early works were noir, near-future stories that explored the effects of technology, cybernetics, and computer networks on humans, a "combination of lowlife and high tech"—and helped to create an iconography for the Information Age before the ubiquity of the Internet in the 1990s. Gibson coined the term "cyberspace" for "widespread, interconnected digital technology" in his short story "Burning Chrome" (1982), and later popularized the concept in his acclaimed debut novel Neuromancer (1984). These early works of Gibson's have been credited with "renovating" science fiction literature in the 1980s.
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