The Complexity and Twisted Timelines of Agency
William Gibson delivers a virtual and futuristic contemporary piece of science fiction. He introduces a creative young woman, Verity Jane, who accepts a well-defined job from an executive involving a complex piece of technology, an artificial intelligence named Eunice, or UNISS. After Gibson discusses for a couple of pages about the characterization of Eunice and Verity, Gavin, Verity's new boss, is uncertain about Eunice's full potential and decides, for security purposes, to monitor the two. What Verity is unaware of is that her present time of 2017 has been deliberately manipulated by someone from the year 2136, who creates mass destruction and alternate scenarios among possible past timelines; one set in an alternate world where Hillary Clinton won the election and the other in the twenty-second century. Gibson fills in contemporary politics including Russian influence in social media, Hillary Clinton leading the presidency, and Turkey threatening to turn nuclear. Agency is about Verity and Eunice being recruited in order to stop the potential of a global catastrophe.
The following section from Agency highlights the first instances where the audience see unrest with Eunice and more issues start to compile with the company than we originally thought. This is the beginning of the conflict in the story in which we see Verity and Eunice's lives colliding and intertwining. Verity is unaware of what is happening to the twisted timelines.
Gibson uses literary devices throughout his work including similes and metaphors, complex sentence structure, and irony. The election did change part of his story as we notice that Donald Trump is not the president of the United States, and Hillary Clinton is. There are glimpses of twenty-second century London where humanity is impacted by climate change, political instability, and organized crime.
Agency is a sequel to Gibson's 2015 The Peripheral, which is another futuristic world in which people from the future experience variations of the past. Characters from future London like Detective Inspector Ainsley Lowbeer and Wilf Netherton, who were featured in The Peripheral. And the timelines intertwine between Eunice and Verity's present and Lowbeer's and Netherton's futuristic London. The complexity and tension of this choice of storytelling reveals Gibson's equally fundamental dialogue and narrative which can be described as intriguing and fascinating. The importance of Eunice's artificial intelligence wages more weight of the story because if she falls into the wrong hands, the future could be compromised and the results can be catastrophic.
Gibson discusses Agency, and his previous science fiction pieces, to a small audience in the Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington D.C.
The following section from Agency highlights the first instances where the audience see unrest with Eunice and more issues start to compile with the company than we originally thought. This is the beginning of the conflict in the story in which we see Verity and Eunice's lives colliding and intertwining. Verity is unaware of what is happening to the twisted timelines.
Gibson uses literary devices throughout his work including similes and metaphors, complex sentence structure, and irony. The election did change part of his story as we notice that Donald Trump is not the president of the United States, and Hillary Clinton is. There are glimpses of twenty-second century London where humanity is impacted by climate change, political instability, and organized crime.
Agency is a sequel to Gibson's 2015 The Peripheral, which is another futuristic world in which people from the future experience variations of the past. Characters from future London like Detective Inspector Ainsley Lowbeer and Wilf Netherton, who were featured in The Peripheral. And the timelines intertwine between Eunice and Verity's present and Lowbeer's and Netherton's futuristic London. The complexity and tension of this choice of storytelling reveals Gibson's equally fundamental dialogue and narrative which can be described as intriguing and fascinating. The importance of Eunice's artificial intelligence wages more weight of the story because if she falls into the wrong hands, the future could be compromised and the results can be catastrophic.
Gibson discusses Agency, and his previous science fiction pieces, to a small audience in the Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington D.C.