Idoru

My only other experience with William Gibson was his most famous book, Neuromancer.  I enjoyed it but I read it directly after Snow Crash which was my introduction to Neal Stephenson, one of my favorite authors.  Following that, even a great book would feel a little lackluster.

I had heard interesting things about Idoru so I picked it up when I saw it for sale at my local bookstore.  Considering my last experience with William Gibson, this book is surprisingly similar to Snow Crash (though still very different).  It was written in 1996 so while it was speculative, it was close enough to the present to get a lot of things right.

The book is set in the near future and the plot is about a celebrity who decides to marry a digital being (the idoru of the title).  The various people this affects, from his fan club to his entourage get caught up in a lot of intrigue and it is an interesting commentary on celebrity culture and some discussion of the future of the internet and fame and romance.

I think the part of the book that I will remember the best is the concept of nodal points.  It is the concept that giant mass of data people generate move in certain patterns around certain points that make it possible to predict large things that are not part of the data.  Now this less exciting with machine learning like when Target advertising determined a teen was pregnant before she told her parents but the concept of a human being able to know what to look for and be able to intuit things like that is interesting. The author says that he based it off of his own ability so it is, seemingly, possible.

At the time I was reading it, I didn’t realize it was part of a trilogy (and the middle book no less!) I really didn’t feel that it was missing in backstory or conclusions, which are both valid concerns for the middle book of a trilogy so I am happy to say that this one can stand alone, though I would have preferred to read it in its proper place. 

Overall, I would give this book an 87%.