Welcome to NoCal and SoCal, 2005, the uneasy sister-states of Northern and Southern California, in a nation and society still divided along seismic fault lines of wealth and power..chasms seldom crossed except in fear, exploitation, or violence. The millennium has come and gone, leaving in its wake the ruins of our outworn modern era and the first chaotic suggestions of a new paradigm. In Tokyo a new city is growing from the rubble of Godzilla the Superquake. In San Francisco Mr. Yamazaki, a Japanese anthropology student, investigates the deeper meaning of an anarchic squatter community constructed around the disused Bay Bridge. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Berry Rydell just wants to make a living. Not the easiest thing for an ex-cop from Tennessee to do - now that the network has decided not to base that episode of Cops in Trouble on his brief but all too eventful career with the Knoxville P.D. Rydell signs on with IntenSecure Armed Response, driving a six-wheeled Hotspur Hussar.. It's only a matter of time before he runs into Chevette Washington, a bicycle messenger who has just crashed the wrong party..and who is about to pick the pocket of another kind of courier - an employee of Costa Rica's Medellin-financed havens of illicit data. When IntenSecure sends Rydell to San Francisco to drive for Lucius Warbaby, a skip-tracer in the Virtual Reality maze of DatAmerica, Rydell and Chevette find themselves on a journey into the ecstasy and dread that mirror each other at the heart of the postmodern experience. A tour de force of relentless suspense, daring insight, and graphic intensity Virtual Light is a provocative and unforgettable portrait of life on the edge of the twenty-first century. Publishers Weekly Gibson's cyberpunk thriller set in a near-future L.A.--a two-week PW bestseller--depicts the hunt for virtual reality glasses containing classified data. (Aug.) BookList Since the ground-breaking "Neuromancer" (1984), Gibson has been the acknowledged dean of cyberpunk, the sf subgenre that merges cutting-edge technology with the street-smart grittiness of crime fiction. In a departure from his first three novels, which plumbed the intricacies of the cyberspace universe called the Matrix, Gibson here follows the sometimes violent misadventures of Rydell, an ex-security guard, and Chevette, a San Francisco bike messenger, as they unwittingly become ensnared in a plot involving a pair of high-tech-virtual-reality sunglasses. When Chevette impulsively steals the glasses from a wealthy customer at a party, she immediately attracts the heat of a private security team that hires Rydell as a driver. After running afoul of his noticeably corrupt employers, Rydell joins forces with Chevette in a perilous contest with their adversaries when the pair discovers the real nature and dire purpose of the sunglasses. Once again, Gibson proves masterly at fusing razor-edged characterizations with a richly textured, crisply described background via electrifying prose. (One particularly ingenious idea here is the transformation of the San Francisco Bay Bridge into a sprawling enclave for the city's homeless.) Much of the novel's conceptual turf is already well-traveled territory for Gibson, but routine Gibson is still superb science fiction. Discriminating fans, whether of cyberpunk in particular or not, won't be disappointed by his latest. What People Are Saying Robert Crais Gibson's writing is a diamond sharp kaleidoscope of sensations that will leave you breathless. Do not miss this book!

Tom Robbins If Raymond Chandler had been abducted by sexy alien comediennes and forced to compete in a cybernetic rodeo on the dark side of the moon, he might have come home and written books like Virtual Light.

 Bantam Books 0553074997 / 9780553074994
Hardcover As New Condition New York 

Price: 16.34 USD