''Spook Country'' is a 2007 novel by
speculative fiction
Speculative fiction is a term that has been used with a variety of (sometimes contradictory) meanings. The broadest interpretation is as a category of fiction encompassing genres with elements that do not exist in reality, recorded history, na ...
author
William Gibson
William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) 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 ...
. A political thriller set in contemporary North America, it followed on from the author's previous novel, ''
Pattern Recognition'' (2003), and was succeeded in 2010 by ''
Zero History
''Zero History'' is a novel by William Gibson published in 2010. It concludes the informal trilogy begun by ''Pattern Recognition'' (2003) and continued by ''Spook Country'' (2007), and features the characters Hollis Henry and Milgrim from the la ...
'', which featured much of the same core cast of characters. The plot comprises the intersecting tales of three protagonists: Hollis Henry, a musician-turned-journalist researching a story on
locative art
Locative media or location-based media (LBM) are Electronic media, media of communication functionally bound to a location. The physical implementation of locative media, however, is not bound to the same location to which the content refers.
Loc ...
; Tito, a young Cuban-Chinese operative whose family is on occasion in the employ of a renegade ex-CIA agent; and Milgrim, a drug-addled translator held captive by Brown, a strangely authoritarian and secretive man. Themes explored include the ubiquity of locative technology, the eversion of cyberspace and the political climate of the United States in the aftermath of the
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial ...
.
''Spook Country'' quickly reached mainstream North American bestseller lists and was nominated for
British Science Fiction Association and
Locus Awards.
Plot summary
The first strand of the novel follows Hollis Henry, a former member of the early 1990s cult band The Curfew and a freelance journalist. She is hired by advertising mogul
Hubertus Bigend
Hubertus Bigend is a fictional character appearing in the third trilogy of novels of science fiction and literary author William Gibson. Bigend is the antihero of Gibson's ''Pattern Recognition'' (2003), ''Spook Country'' (2007) and '' Zero History ...
to write a story for his nascent magazine ''Node'' (described as a European ''
Wired'') about the use of locative technology in the art world. Helped by curator Odile Richard she investigates Los Angeles artist Alberto Corrales, who recreates virtually the deaths of celebrities such as
River Phoenix. Corrales leads her to Bobby Chombo, an expert in geospatial technologies who handles Corrales' technical requirements. Chombo's background is troubleshooting navigation systems for the United States military. He is reclusive and paranoid, refusing to sleep in the same GPS grid square on consecutive nights, and only consents to talk to Hollis due to his admiration for The Curfew.
Tito is part of a
Chinese Cuban
Chinese Cubans ( es, chino-cubano) are Cubans of full or mixed Chinese ancestry who were born in or have immigrated to Cuba. They are part of the ethnic Chinese diaspora (or Overseas Chinese).
History
Chinese immigration to Cuba started in 183 ...
family of freelance "illegal facilitators", as Brown describes them – forgers, smugglers, and associated support personnel based in New York City – and is assigned by his uncles to hand over a series of
iPod
The iPod is a discontinued series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first version was released on October 23, 2001, about months after the Macintosh version of iTunes ...
s to a mysterious old man. Tito is adept in a form of
systema
Systema (russian: Система, Sistema, system) is a Russian martial art. There are multiple schools of systems that began appearing after the end of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, with teachers claiming their respective "systems" (usually ...
that encompasses
tradecraft
Tradecraft, within the intelligence community, refers to the techniques, methods and technologies used in modern espionage (spying) and generally, as part of the activity of intelligence assessment. This includes general topics or techniques ( ...
, a variant of
free running
Freerunning is an athletic and acrobatic discipline incorporating an aesthetic element, and can be considered either a sport or a performance art, or both. Freerunning is similar to parkour, from which it is derived, but emphasizes artistry over ...
, and the
Santería
Santería (), also known as Regla de Ocha, Regla Lucumí, or Lucumí, is an African diaspora religions, African diasporic religion that developed in Cuba during the late 19th century. It arose through a process of syncretism between the tradit ...
religion. It is alluded that the old man may have connections to American intelligence circles and Tito hopes he can explain the mysterious death of his father. When the old man calls in a favour, his family dispatches Tito on a dangerous new assignment.
The identity of the old man remains unclear, though context implies that he may be
''Pattern Recognition'''s protagonist
Cayce Pollard Cayce Pollard is the fictional protagonist of William Gibson's 2003 novel ''Pattern Recognition''.
Personal history
Aged 32 during the events of ''Pattern Recognition'', Cayce lives in New York City. Though named by her parents after Edgar Cayc ...
's father, having removed himself from the channels of normal life to focus on disrupting what he sees as criminal elements operating in the United States Government.
Tracking Tito's family is a man known as Brown, a brusque and obstinate lead covert operative for a shadowy organization of unclear connection to the U.S. government. Of
neoconservative orientation, Brown appears to have a background in law enforcement, but little training in tradecraft. Brown and his team attempt to track the activities of the old man and Tito with the help of Brown's captive Milgrim, whom he has translate the
volapuk-encoded Russian used by Tito's family to communicate. Milgrim is addicted to anti-anxiety drugs and is kept docile and compliant by Brown, who controls his supply of
Rize
Rize (Greek language, Greek: ρίζα, Laz language, Laz: რიზინი, Georgian language, Georgian: რიზე,
, Ottoman Turkish: ريزه)
is the capital city of Rize Province in the eastern part of the Black Sea Region of Turkey.
Rize ...
. Brown believes that Tito and the old man are in possession of information that would, if revealed, undermine public confidence in the U.S.'s participation in the
Iraq War
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق (Kurdish languages, Kurdish)
, partof = the Iraq conflict (2003–present), I ...
. In his attempts to capture them and their data, however, Brown is instead fed disinformation through the old man's intricate schemes.
The three strands of the novel converge on a shipping container of unspecified cargo that is being transported via a circuitous route to an unknown destination. In Vancouver, the old man's team, with Hollis in tow, irradiate the shipping container, which is revealed to contain millions of U.S. dollars diverted from Iraq reconstruction funds.
Background and composition
Initial conception and development
The writing process for ''Spook Country'' began for Gibson with a desire to write a novel, but without any ideas or themes that he wished to explore. The impetus for the story grew out of the author's visual impressions of
Lower Manhattan
Lower Manhattan (also known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York) is the southernmost part of Manhattan, the central borough for business, culture, and government in New York City, which is the most populated city in the United States with ...
in winter, from which the character of Tito emerged.
[ Little of the material in his original pitch of the novel (posted online as part of an early promotional campaign by the book's publishers][) survived in the final draft.][ The original proposal focused on "Warchalker", an obscure Iraqi ]warblog
A warblog or milblog is a weblog devoted mostly or wholly to covering news events concerning an ongoing war. Sometimes the use of the term "warblog" implies that the blog concerned has a pro-war slant. The term "milblog" implies that the author ...
which chronicles the story of a disappeared consignment of millions of Iraqi reconstruction money. The readers of the blog included a female networks theorist interested in locative technology, and a Manhattanite of mixed heritage who freelanced with his family for organized crime. The plot would have followed those readers' attempt to track a shipping container through Warchalker on behalf of an unnamed villain.[
The characters from the proposal did appear in the final version, albeit in much-altered form.][ An early draft featuring the musician-turned-journalist Hollis and half-Cuban spy Tito as the two protagonists did not satisfy Gibson, and so he introduced the character of Milgrim, the drug-addled translator.][ The story of Tito's family of Chinese exiles in Cuba turning to crime was not based on historical events, though their role as "illegal facilitators" was inspired by real crime families specializing in smuggling, a phenomenon Gibson encountered in the course of his work with the futurist consulting entity ]Global Business Network
Global Business Network (GBN) was a leading consulting firm that specialized in helping organizations to adapt and grow in an uncertain and volatile world. The firm was particularly well-known for using tools such as scenario planning and also offe ...
.[ Although he had intended his 2003 novel '' Pattern Recognition'' to be a standalone work, elements of it manifested in the script of its eventual successor, including the character of amoral marketing guru ]Hubertus Bigend
Hubertus Bigend is a fictional character appearing in the third trilogy of novels of science fiction and literary author William Gibson. Bigend is the antihero of Gibson's ''Pattern Recognition'' (2003), ''Spook Country'' (2007) and '' Zero History ...
.[ As Gibson developed the plot, "it became apparent that ''Node'', the shadowy magazine startup, was way Bigendian",][ and thus ''Spook Country'' came to inhabit the same fictional universe as its predecessor. In a January 2007 interview, the author revealed that the later novel was set in the spring of 2006, and described the shared world of the novels as "more or less the one we live in now".][
Gibson was first introduced to locative media websites through links from a friend, and initially found the phenomenon to be "excessively nerdy and very conceptual".][ Despite his finding compelling the idea of a digital grid mapping the surface of the earth, Gibson saw little storytelling traction in ]geocaching
Geocaching is an outdoor recreational activity, in which participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called "geocaches" or "caches", at specific l ...
and geohacking, and instead reworked the material into the locative art of the novel.[ "When I started, I thought that the 'locative art' stuff would work the way immersion technology did in my earlier fiction",][ he commented in a subsequent interview. "Then I started liking that it wasn’t going to do that."][ The conception of the artworks in the novel was derived from the lowbrow art movement, and was inspired by the movement's talismanic '' Juxtapoz'', the only art magazine Gibson was reading regularly at the time.][ The novel exhibits Gibson's characteristic ]brand awareness
Brand awareness is the extent to which customers are able to recall or recognize a brand under different conditions. Brand awareness is one of two dimensions from brand knowledge, an associative network memory model. Brand awareness is a key consi ...
(a key plot element of ''Pattern Recognition''), which he honed while poring over catalogues of products as part of his writing process.[ The author found the writing process unnerving, as the solution to the mystery of the container – the novel's MacGuffin – did not come to him until after he had written several hundred pages of manuscript.][
]
Pre-release
Gibson announced the novel on October 6, 2006, on his blog, where fragments of the work were posted non-sequentially for some time, leading to much reader speculation on the content and plot of the novel. The following day, the blog featured an exploration of the mooted title by close friend and collaborator Jack Womack
Jack Womack (born January 8, 1956) is an American author of fiction and speculative fiction.
Womack was born in Lexington, Kentucky, and now lives in New York City with his wife and daughter. "Yeah, I was in Kentucky. Lived there till I was 21, m ...
.[ In August 2007, Gibson made an appearance in the virtual world ]Second Life
''Second Life'' is an online multimedia platform that allows people to create an avatar for themselves and then interact with other users and user created content within a multi player online virtual world. Developed and owned by the San Fra ...
to give a reading of the novel;[ later reflecting on the experience, he remarked that the Second Life construct was "a lot more corporate" than he had imagined.][ A report in ''The Times'' described the event as "heavily freighted with meaning" in light of Gibson's role in shaping conceptions of cyberspace and virtual worlds.][
In an interview to promote the release of the novel, Gibson revealed that one of the issues that had most affected his writing process since ''Pattern Recognition'' was the sense that everything in the text was potentially searchable online. "It's as though there is a sort of invisible hyperlink theoretical text that extends out of the narrative of my novel in every direction", he commented.][ A recipient of an advanced reading copy initiated '']Node Magazine
''Node Magazine'' is a literature, literary project in the guise of a fictional magazine created to annotate the novel ''Spook Country'' by William Gibson.
The project is essentially a hypertext version of the novel. It takes its name from ''Node ...
'', a literary project in the guise of the novel's fictional magazine, with the intent of annotating the novel. The author, under the ''nom de plume'' patternBoy, mobilised a cadre of volunteers to track the references and collate the cloud of data
In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted ...
surrounding the work – those elements of the story with footprints on internet resources such as Google and Wikipedia.[ The project had precedent in Joe Clark']
PR-Otaku
an attempt at logging and annotating ''Pattern Recognition'', but whereas that took several years to develop, ''Node'' was complete before the novel was even published.[
]
Themes
''Spook Country'' explores themes relating to espionage
Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangibl ...
, war profiteering and esoteric martial artistry, as well as familiar themes from the author's previous novels such as the unintended uses for which technology is employed (e.g. locative art
Locative media or location-based media (LBM) are Electronic media, media of communication functionally bound to a location. The physical implementation of locative media, however, is not bound to the same location to which the content refers.
Loc ...
) and the nature of celebrity
Celebrity is a condition of fame and broad public recognition of a person or group as a result of the attention given to them by mass media. An individual may attain a celebrity status from having great wealth, their participation in sports ...
.[ The author's preoccupation with semiotics and ]apophenia
Apophenia () is the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things. The term (German: ' from the Greek verb ''ἀποφαίνειν'' (apophaínein)) was coined by psychiatrist Klaus Conrad in his 1958 publication on the b ...
in '' Pattern Recognition'' is carried over in the sequel. In a review for ''The Guardian'', Steven Poole observed that "This is a novel about, and also full of, ghost-signs, or signs that may not be signs, and about the difficulty of telling the difference. Gibson delights in saturating the pages with data that may or may not encode clues for the reader."[
]
Eversion of cyberspace
Through its treatment of locative technology, the novel revisits notions of virtual reality
Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), educ ...
and cyberspace
Cyberspace is a concept describing a widespread interconnected digital technology. "The expression dates back from the first decade of the diffusion of the internet. It refers to the online world as a world 'apart', as distinct from everyday rea ...
prominent in Gibson's early cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of lowlife and high tech", featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyber ...
fiction. One character proposes that cyberspace is everting; becoming an integral and indistinguishable element of the physical world rather than a domain to be visited.[ During the book tour for the novel, Gibson elaborated on this theme, proposing that the ubiquity of connectivity meant that what had been called "cyberspace" is no longer a discrete sphere of activity separate from and secondary to normal human activity, but that those increasingly less common parts of normal life free from connectivity were the exception.][ "If the book has a point to make where we are now with cyberspace", he commented, it was that cyberspace "has colonized our everyday life and continues to colonize everyday life."][
]
Class divide
One of the elements of the novel that the author found most poignant was that of class division and how there is a subset of people who have access to a world of power and wealth that the vast majority will never experience, of which Gibson cited Brown and his evidently routine use of a private jet as an example.[ The author felt that at the time of writing, such social chasms were widening, and drew parallels to the ]Victorian era
In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardia ...
as well as to the world of his breakthrough novel '' Neuromancer'' (1984) in which there is no middle class, only the super-rich and a predominantly criminal underclass.[
In an interview with ''The Telegraph'' promoting the novel, Gibson conjectured that the world was moving to a situation wherein social status is determined by "connectivity" – access to communications technology – rather than material wealth.][
]
Political climate of the post-9/11 world
Sociocultural changes in post-September 11 America, including a resurgent tribalism and the "infantilization of society",[ first appeared as a prominent motif in Gibson's thought with ''Pattern Recognition''.][ Gibson interpreted the attacks as a ]nodal point
In Gaussian optics, the cardinal points consist of three pairs of points located on the optical axis of a rotationally symmetric, focal, optical system. These are the '' focal points'', the principal points, and the nodal points. For ''ideal'' ...
, "an experience out of culture" which irrevocably changed the course of history and marked "the true beginning of the 21st century."[ After crafting 100 pages of that novel, he was compelled to re-write the main character's backstory, which the attacks had suddenly rendered implausible; this he called "the strangest experience I've ever had with a piece of fiction."][ The result saw Gibson noted as one of the first novelists to use the attacks to inform their writing.][ Nathan Lee in '']The Village Voice
''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the crea ...
'' advanced the notion that while ''Pattern Recognition'' focused to an extent on "specifying the ambient sense of invasiveness in all aspects of life after the collapse of the towers", ''Spook Country'' accepted that anxiety as a premise, and was thus "the more reflective, less unnerving of the two novels".[
Politics is present as an underlying theme in ''Spook Country'' to a greater extent than in any of the author's previous novels.][ The novel can be read as an exploration of the fear, uncertainty and pervasive paranoia of an America riven by the unending and divisive ]Iraq War
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق (Kurdish languages, Kurdish)
, partof = the Iraq conflict (2003–present), I ...
.[ Although he had avoided overtly political themes in his previous work out of a distaste for didacticism, Gibson found that in the Bush era, politics had "jacked itself up to my level of weirdness".][ Of the climate in ]Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
during that period, he disclosed in a 2007 interview that "I like the sheer sort of neo-Stalinist denial of reality. That's what makes it work. It's ''interesting''."[ Mike Duffy in '']Scotland on Sunday
''Scotland on Sunday'' is a Scottish Sunday newspaper, published in Edinburgh by JPIMedia and consequently assuming the role of Sunday sister to its daily stablemate ''The Scotsman''. It was originally printed in broadsheet format but in 2013 ...
'' characterized the novel as a "startling, effective guidebook to post-9/11 America";[ Dave Itzkoff of ''The New York Times'' elaborated, proposing that it was "arguably the first example of the post-post-9/11 novel, whose characters are tired of being pushed around by forces larger than they are – bureaucracy, history and, always, technology – and are at long last ready to start pushing back".][
]
Interpretation and reception
''Spook Country'' appeared on bestseller charts by August 7, 2007 – five days after release. The novel entered ''The Washington Post''s hardcover fiction bestseller list for the Washington D.C. area in late August at #4,[ and by September had reached #2 in San Francisco] and Canada. It was listed at #6 on ''Publishers Weekly
''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of B ...
''s hardcover fiction bestseller list for the U.S,[ as well as on ''The New York Times'' Best Seller list for hardcover fiction (where it lasted three weeks][).][ It earned a nomination for the ]BSFA Awards
The BSFA Awards are literary awards presented annually since 1970 by the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) to honour works in the genre of science fiction. Nominees and winners are chosen based on a vote of BSFA members. More recently, m ...
for best novel of 2007,[ and finished second to Michael Chabon's '']The Yiddish Policemen's Union
''The Yiddish Policemen's Union'' is a 2007 novel by American author Michael Chabon. The novel is a detective story set in an alternative history version of the present day, based on the premise that during World War II, a temporary settlement f ...
'' in the standings for the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
The Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel is one of the annual Locus Awards presented by the science fiction and fantasy magazine ''Locus''. Awards presented in a given year are for works published in the previous calendar year. The award f ...
the following year.[ In August 2008, Rebecca Armstrong of '']The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
'' named ''Spook Country'' as one of the "Ten Best Thrillers".[
Mike Duffy felt that although the novel was less overtly ]science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
than Gibson's earlier novels, it retained their "wit, virtuosity and insights", and had "the same giddy mix of techno-fetishism, nuanced edge and phraseological finesse which enlivened his previous work".[ "''Spook Country'', in essence," pronounced ''The Telegraph''s Tim Martin, "is a classic paranoid quest narrative, but one that refashions the morbid surveillance tropes of the Cold War for a post-Iraq era".][ Ken Barnes of ''USA Today'' found that " ndscapes, events and points of view shift constantly, so that the reader never truly feels on solid ground", but judged the novel to be a "vivid, suspenseful and ultimately coherent tale".][ In a review for '']The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'', Bill Sheahan hailed the novel's capture of the zeitgeist, and compared it to the acclaimed literary fiction of Don DeLillo:
Plot, prose, and character
Ed Park of the ''Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'' hailed the novel as a "puzzle palace of bewitching proportions and stubborn echoes", noting the fact that antihero Hubertus Bigend
Hubertus Bigend is a fictional character appearing in the third trilogy of novels of science fiction and literary author William Gibson. Bigend is the antihero of Gibson's ''Pattern Recognition'' (2003), ''Spook Country'' (2007) and '' Zero History ...
was the most prominent link to ''Pattern Recognition'' as "deliciously sinister".[ Tim Martin thought that the plot lacked direction at times.][ Although he conceded that the novel's main Henry/Bigend storyline felt lightweight, ]Matt Thorne
Matthew "Matt" Thorne (born 1974) is an English novelist, writer, and journalist.
Life and career
Thorne grew up in Bristol, England, and was educated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Thorne's first book, ''Tourist'', was published in 19 ...
writing in ''The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
'' conjectured that it was part of Gibson's conscious design that that thread "plays out against a backdrop of hidden machinations that have a much darker, wider resonance".[ Thorne declared ''Spook Country'' a more substantial novel than its predecessor on this basis.][ John Casimir of '']The Sydney Morning Herald
''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper ...
'' concurred, writing that despite the similarity in the plots of the novels, the narrative foundation of the later novel was firmer, its structure "more sophisticated" and its "seams less visible".[
Ed Park singled out the author's prose for praise, proclaiming that " ntence for sentence, few authors equal Gibson's gift for the terse yet poetic description, the quotable simile – people and products are nailed down with a beautiful precision approximating the platonic ideal of the catalog".][ Matt Thorne noted that while he found Gibson's tendency towards hyper-specificity initially irritating, "there's hypnotic quality to the relentless cataloguing".][ The author's prose was also extolled by Clay Evans of the ''Daily Camera'', and by Benjamin Lytal in '']The New York Sun
''The New York Sun'' is an American online newspaper published in Manhattan; from 2002 to 2008 it was a daily newspaper distributed in New York City. It debuted on April 16, 2002, adopting the name, motto, and masthead of the earlier New York ...
'', who declared that "the real news, in ''Spook Country'', is that much of the flair that Mr. Gibson once brought to descriptions of cyberspace seems to fit perfectly, now, on all kinds of things."[ In ''The Seattle Times'', Nisi Shawl gushed that " en without the high cool quotient of the novel's contents, the pleasure of Gibson's prose would be enough inducement for most of us to immerse ourselves in this book...."][ Simon Cooper of '']The Book Show
Radio National, known on-air as RN, is an Australia-wide public service broadcasting radio network run by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). From 1947 until 1985, the network was known as ABC Radio 2.
History
1937: Predecessors an ...
'' agreed with the commendations of Gibson's prose, but felt the plot and characterization let the book down:
In a review for ''The Providence Journal
''The Providence Journal'', colloquially known as the ''ProJo'', is a daily newspaper serving the metropolitan area of Providence, Rhode Island, and is the largest newspaper in Rhode Island. The newspaper was first published in 1829. The newspape ...
'', Andy Smith remarked that the author was "a master of atmosphere, if not character"[ – a sentiment echoed by '']The Post and Courier
''The Post and Courier'' is the main daily newspaper in Charleston, South Carolina. It traces its ancestry to three newspapers, the ''Charleston Courier'', founded in 1803, the ''Charleston Daily News'', founded 1865, and ''The Evening Post'', f ...
''s Dan Conover, who, although praising the novel's intelligence and contemporary relevance, felt that Gibson's underlying political pre-occupation and detached narration came at the expense of character development.[ ]Neil Drumming
Neil Drumming is an American journalist and filmmaker. Formerly a producer with the radio show ''This American Life'', in 2020 Drumming became managing editor with Serial Productions, the company that created the podcasts ''Serial'' and '' S-Town' ...
, of ''Entertainment Weekly
''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular cul ...
'', in awarding the novel a "B" rating concurred, complaining that the protagonists "often just feel like higher-tech automatons with useful features" whose actions are the product of manipulation by "external forces and cagey operatives" rather than conscious decisions.[ In ''The Daily Telegraph'', Roger Perkins was more blunt, remarking that the "relentless pace and breathless dislocation" of the plot hid "character development that's as deep as dental veneer but equally shiny".][ Matt Thorne summed up the issue in opining that "The problem with a thriller which begins with a technology journalist talking to an experimental artist is that, no matter how exciting the events later become, it's hard to care."][
]
Conclusion
Reviewers were divided as to the merits of the novel's ending. Andy Smith lamented that the finale of the "mostly intriguing" novel was "distinctly anticlimactic".[ Tim Martin wrote that it seemed "somehow less than the sum of its parts".][ Clay Evans dismissed it as "not especially meaningful, but fun",][ whereas Matt Thorne found it lacking "a traditional thriller's excitement".][ '']San Francisco Chronicle
The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. de ...
'' reviewer Michael Berry called it "an ingenious reversal" which proved that despite its apparent cynicism, the novel was "oddly optimistic for a ghost story".[ Overall, Thorne judged the novel ultimately unsatisfactory on account of the underwhelming ending and because Gibson "hides the full complications of the plot so successfully that it feels as if everything important is happening offstage".][ Roger Perkins judged the novel to be "a triumph of style over substance – which is exactly the way you suspect that Gibson wants it."][ His colleague Martin mused that along with the regular Gibsonian tropes, there was "something new ... a dark and very contemporary surge of suspicion and bad faith" in the novel which suggested that the author might be approaching the apex of his writing.][ Dan Conover concluded that while the "darkly comic satire" was "a worthy addition to the Gibson canon and a significant cultural artifact", it would not rank among the author's best works.][
]
References
External links
''Spook Country''
at WilliamGibsonBooks.com (author's official website)
''Spook Country''
promotional interview with the author at YouTube
YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
"The Art Pack meets William Gibson"
– interview with the author with background on the novel at Vimeo
Vimeo, Inc. () is an American video hosting, sharing, and services platform provider headquartered in New York City. Vimeo focuses on the delivery of high-definition video across a range of devices. Vimeo's business model is through software as ...
node.tumblr.com
– chapter summaries and background research from ''Node Magazine
''Node Magazine'' is a literature, literary project in the guise of a fictional magazine created to annotate the novel ''Spook Country'' by William Gibson.
The project is essentially a hypertext version of the novel. It takes its name from ''Node ...
''
SpookCountry.co.uk
– discussion and analysis of ''Spook Country'' from a United Kingdom perspective
{{good article
2007 Canadian novels
Novels by William Gibson
Political thriller novels
Canadian satirical novels
Sequel novels
Canadian science fiction novels
Canadian spy novels
Techno-thriller novels
Novels set in Vancouver
Novels set in New York City
Canadian thriller novels