The novels of his Bigend trilogy, Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History (2003–2010), are situated a year before their respective publication but nevertheless remain saturated with similar speculative elements that made Gibson’s early work stand out from many other cyberpunk authors as well as the stagnation they saw in late 1970s science fiction. Since the turn of the 21st century, his novels have been increasingly about an “actual twenty-first century” that “could be unpacked with the toolkit of science fiction” (Gibson, Distrust That Particular Flavor 46). On Twitter he appears as Gibson started his literary career with visions of a near future populated by nonconformist hackers, manipulative AI, and vistas of cyberspace as a “consensual hallucination” ( Neuromancer 12). His interests include science fiction, postmodern fiction, critiques of capitalism, and more. Keywords: William Gibson, The Peripheral, transhumanism, cyborg, embodiment, dystopia, tremendum.īiography and contact info: Esko Suoranta is currently working on a PhD on contemporary Anglo-American literature at the University of Helsinki. Through such an approach, the dystopian ironies of Gibson’s futures become clear: despite miraculous advancements, the dystopia remains the same for the characters inhabiting his worlds. Finally, the article interrogates the idea of mysterium tremendum et fascinans in relation to transformative technologies in the novel, in turn shedding light on Gibson’s criticism of singularity narratives. This interrogation reveals Gibson’s critical attitude toward technology alone as capable of overthrowing dystopian systems. Further, the novel examines the possibilities of technology to transform both individual experience and oppressive social structures.

Some appear as ironic figures struggling with a capitalist system seeking to incorporate them, others follow a schizoid ethos, embracing, and sometimes embodying, the kleptocratic logic of Gibson’s worlds. Through differing depictions of transhuman characters in two timelines coming into contact, Gibson presents various characters as metaphorical cyborgs. The Ironic Transhumanity of William Gibson’s The PeripheralĪbstract: The article discusses transhuman futures in William Gibson’s 2014 novel The Peripheral. Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research, Volume 3, Issue 1, pages 7–20.

The peripheral gibson