The Peripheral is a 2014 Cyberpunk science fiction mystery-thriller novel written by William Gibson. Set in multiple futures, it tells the story of Flynne Fisher, who takes a job piloting a security drone in what appears to be a video game, but is actually the future (or rather, the further future). To make matters more complicated, she witnesses a murder and now someone's trying to kill her in the past while she must connect to the future through a cyborg-like avatar called a peripheral to help her employers in the future solve the case. It's a lot.
This is Gibson's first sci-fi novel since All Tomorrow's Parties in 1999, and combines multiple genres such as time travel Science Fiction, cyberpunk/postcyberpunk, Whodunnit, and the thriller. The sequel, Agency, set in yet another Alternate History, was released in January 2020. The two books are the first part of the Jackpot Trilogy.
The Peripheral was adapted into a Prime Video TV series in 2022.
The Peripheral contains examples of:
- 20 Minutes into the Future: Twice. Flynne lives in the late 2030s/early 2040s and Wilf lives in the early 2130s.
- Action Girl: Flynne, Tacoma, Clovis, Lowbeer... Most of the female characters could be seen as this.
- After the End: Wilf's London, although the way he describes it, it wasn't so much a massive apocalypse as a slow worsening of everything, until people looked round and realised civilisation had collapsed while they weren't paying attention.
- The Alcoholic: Wilf, who needs to have a whisky before doing anything difficult, and often has enough that he either doesn't do it at all or screws it up. Lev has a smart lock on his bar that will let anyone use it except Wilf.
- Almighty Janitor: A variant. It's revealed that while Lowbeer is officially a mere Detective Inspector for the Metropolitan Police, in actuality, she's "The Adjudicator", an almost mythological figure who is the sole law-enforcement authority with power over the 22nd century's kleptocratic overlords.
- Alternate Universe: The time travel technology allows for electronic signals to be sent and received from the past of very close alternate universes.
- And You Thought It Was a Game: Flynne is told she's playtesting a new game, rather than connecting to another reality.
- Arbitrarily Large Bank Account: Thanks to knowledge of the past and powerful financial algorithms, 'Coldiron', the front company set up by Lev in Flynne's reality, can manipulate markets to generate the funds neccessary to buy anything, from a run-down strip mall, to armoured vehicles, to a controlling stake in Hefty Mart.
- Assassin Outclassin': The villains hire a group of thugs, and later on some ex-soldiers, to try and kill Flynne. However, they hadn't counted on her brother and his friends being elite Marine veterans, who make short work of them.
- Asshole Victim: Lowbeer obtains plans for a 'death cube', from Vespasian, a German 'continua enthusiast' who mysteriously turns up dead in Amsterdam. Given that he was a weapons fetishist who manipulated entire timelines into pointless wars just so he could salivate over whatever creative machines of destruction they came up with, it's unclear if Lowbeer didn't want him to talk or simply found him so vile she couldn't leave him alive.
- Beige Prose: Compare to Netherton's, Flynne's chapters are written in the terse, but still highly descriptive language reminiscent of Gibson's earliest books.
- Benevolent Conspiracy: Milagros Coldiron, the front company set up by Lev in Flynne's timeline, manipulates the stock markets, bribes government officials, and commits acts of terrorism... All with the intention of keeping Flynne alive. And, once Lowbeer takes control, to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
- Big Bad Triumvirate: Hamed al-Habib, Sir Henry, and Daedra West.
- Bio-Augmentation: In Wilf's future, people pretty much have cybernetics wired into their heads. Phone calls come directly to the cerebrum and can be answered with a tap of the tongue to the roof of the mouth.
- Black Box: None of the characters have any idea how the technology allowing communication with the past actually works - the only lead is that the actual server controlling the equipment is located in China.
- Bond Villain Stupidity: After he kidnaps Flynne, Corbell Pickett is smart enough to realise that the shadowy figures offering him an ungodly amount of money to Just Shoot Her aren't telling him just how important she is... But he's not smart enough to realise that he should just take what's on offer rather than leave Flynne alive and attempt to bargain for more money and power, which leads to her rescue and his house getting blown up.
- Chemically-Induced Insanity: 'Party Time', an aerosol chemical weapon that temporarily turns anyone exposed to it, no matter the dosage, into an Ax-Crazy Combat Sadomasochist who promptly goes beserk and kills everyone around them, with survivors of the resulting orgy of violence usually killing themselves soon after they regain awareness. Griff notes that on a scale of war crimes from one to ten, its use is considered a twelve.
- The Chessmaster: Lowbeer is an impressive example of this, considering that there is no point where she does not appear to be comfortably in control. She strikes a deal with Lev to provide him with very detailed information on the past in exchange for access to the stub, figures out that Daedra's unexpected killing of the boss patcher was in fact al-Habib faking his death, organises a Secret Test of Character for Flynne in the past (which she passes) to see if she can be brought into her larger plan for the timeline, and predicts Wilf and Flynne's kidnapping at the party, using this knowledge to flush out Sir Henry so she can expose and kill him.
- China Takes Over the World: Implied. In Flynne's time, there are a few hints that China is now the dominant world superpower, such as the prevalence of crappy Chinese cardboard cars, while in the 22nd century it's noted that China was well-prepared for the jackpot, and is now advanced almost to the level of a Higher-Tech Species — it's believed that Chinese technology is responsible for the series' Time Travel mechanics, and even Lowbeer, who is capable of using London's Nanomachines to pull off near-godlike feats, admits that she is baffled by the country's tech.
- Classical Anti-Hero: Wilf Netherton. He's a selfish alcoholic who despises the polished, artificial nature of his own society, but still puts himself in harm's way to help Flynne and try to catch the murderer.
- Cosy Catastrophe: The jackpot was this for some, hence the name: while crop failures, war, and natural disasters wiped out 80% of the population, the rich kept getting richer. And richer. And richer.
- Corrupt Church: Luke 4:5, in every sense of the word. On the surface, it's a pretty blatant No Celebrities Were Harmed substitute for Real Life extremist groups such as the Westboro Baptist Church, picketing military funerals and anything else they consider "sinful". But it's later revealed that they aren't so much of a religious group as a PR organisation, accepting large "donations" from businesses to kick up a stink about their competitors.
- Crapsack World: Flynne's time period is actually not too long before an actual apocalyptic event, so this is to be expected. Nearing the mid-21st century, the local economy is pretty much reliant on illegal drug manufacture. Ironically, Wilf's post-apocalyptic London is actually quite nice, since there are lots of opportunities for anyone who survived the jackpot, given that 80% of humans died. Everything is clean and eco-friendly, as well as high-tech.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Pretty much anyone eaten up by assembler nanobots. Aelita gets her face eaten in by them as she gets devoured from the inside out when she is murdered. And towards the end, Hamed and Sir Henry both get eaten down to the bone by the nanobots.
- Cyberpunk/Postcyberpunk: It is a William Gibson novel after all. This novel has a unique rural cyberpunk setting in Flynne's era, where she lives in a Crapsack World of a United States shortly before a series of apocalyptic events collectively known as "the jackpot" occurs. Ironically, Wilf Netherton's post-apocalyptic London isn't a crapsack world and is much more Post Cyber Punk, with a clean, eco-friendly, advanced world at the dawn of the 22nd century... However, the global population has been significantly reduced by the jackpot, so there aren't many crowds. The story itself is a noir-like murder mystery involving shadowy characters.
- Depopulation Bomb: Through a incessant series of both natural and man-made cataclysms and the accompanying societal collapse, the jackpot wiped out 80% of the global population before various super-science technologies were developed, allowing the klept and their minions to stabilise things.
- Did Not Get the Girl: Played with. Wilf is clearly attracted to Flynne, partially due to his view of the past as superior to and more genuine than the present, and they end up Holding Hands quite a bit in London, but he ultimately never mentions it to her. He and Flynne both find lovers in their own timelines, which is probably for the best, considering that only data can time-travel.
- Disappointed by the Motive: Lowbeer is displeased to discover that the scheme the villains were concocting, which resulted in murder, kidnapping, and multiple attempted assassinations, nearly caused a global financial crash in an alternate timeline and involved powerful figures within London, was merely a literally cutthroat real-estate scam.note
- Does This Remind You of Anything?:
- In his acknowledgements, Gibson refers to the post-jackpot society "third-worlding" the continua, i.e. using copies of their own past as backwater territories for sociopolitical experimentation much like his contemporary US experimented, for instance, with state-building in Iraq and Afghanistan. Simultaneously, they exploit both the continua and the "neoprimitive" enclaves in their own time as a source of cultural inspiration and ideation, not unlike the colonialism-era Orientalism and similar movements.
- At the start of the novel, Flynne thinks she is playing a realistic VR game, but is eventually forced to acknowledge that what she saw was real in another timeline. However, for most people in that timeline, Flynne's "continuum" is effectively a Simulation Game by virtue of having no direct impact on their history and reality, which people like Vespasian fully exploit for what effectively amounts to Video Game Cruelty Potential.
- Double-Meaning Title: Does the novel's title refer to the literal peripheral Flynne uses throughout the novel? Or to Flynne's own backward continuum, which people in the future, like Lowbeer and the villains, use for their proxy wars so they don't spill over to their own, "central" timeline?
- Evil All Along: Hamed, Daedra, and Sir Henry, the city Remembrancer.
- Faking the Dead: Hamed al-Habib, the boss patcher, was really just using a peripheral and had Daedra "kill" him to fake his death. He was really the man on the balcony who killed Aelita and has been involved in the plot all along.
- The Future Is Noir: More so for Flynne's rural near-future America than Wilf's high-tech glitzy 22nd century London, but in true noir fashion, Wilf is an alcoholic with a Femme Fatale ex-girlfriend and spends most of the novel coming to terms with the hatred for his era.
- Future Primitive: In the 22nd century there are a large number of 'neoprimitives', various tribes of people that either survived the jackpot but regressed, or decided that said regressing sounded like rather a lot of fun and decided to abandon civilisation of their own accord.
- Giving Radio to the Romans: Ash supervises the transfer of schematics for various pieces of future technology to the 2030s, starting with an automatic cut-out that allows Flynne to control a peripheral in the 22nd century. This ramps up a lot later, both with tech used to protect Flynne, Burton and co. from the villains and later still, devices intended to help avert the jackpot.
- Handicapped Badass: Burton and Conner. Burton needs an exoskeleton to walk comfortably, while Conner is quadriplegic. Both are still expert combatants and fend off multiple assassination attempts and successfully assault a drug compound.
- Invisibility Cloak:
- In Flynne's time we have 'Squidsuits', full-body coverings made using modified cuttlefish cells to blend into their surroundings, rendering the wearer effectively invisible.
- Lowbeer's police car also has a built-in cloaking device.
- Judge, Jury, and Executioner: Lowbeer's authority as a Metropolitan Police Inspector in the future London allows her to authorise the killing of anyone, including senior city officials, as long as she has proof they're up to no good.
- Karma Houdini: While Hamed and Sir Henry are dissassembled by nanobots after their plot is uncovered, Daedra escapes punishment because of her powerful father's influence.
- Karmic Death: Hamed and Sir Henry had Aelita murdered by letting nanobots eat her alive, so it's rather fitting when they meet a similar fate at the end of the novel.
- MegaCorp: Hefty Mart, which includes the Hefty Pal online payment system, Hefty Clips hairdressers and so on. When Flynne is told she now owns it, she thinks it's like being told someone bought the moon.
- Merchant Prince: Wilf's London has mostly abandoned actual government as being what caused the jackpot. Instead, it's largely ruled by "the klept" (presumably short for "kleptocracy"); the families of those who survived the jackpot by being the most ruthless Corrupt Corporate Executives. Lev's family is old klept, although the only reason Wilf is comfortable around him is that he's not personally very good at it.
- Morph Weapon: Lowbeer has one; a golden baton of office that retracts into what looks like a lipstick case like an advanced version of a collapsible truncheon, and can also be a gun in emergencies.
- Nanomachines: The reason why Wilf's London is so clean and efficient, and that society was able to recover from the jackpot, was the development of the 'assemblers', nanobots that can complete huge architectural projects, reshape buildings at their owners' will, pass solid objects, including people, through each other, and consume a human body down to the bone, leaving the surroundings untouched.
- Police Are Useless: Inverted. Inspector Lowbeer, a Metropolitan Police officer in the future London, is scarily competent and very dangerous. Luckily, she's firmly on the protagonists' side.
- Powered Armour: Burton and Conner were both part of the Haptic Recon, a U.S. Marines unit which used a primitive form of this, implied to be some sort of exoskeleton which made the user stronger and faster... While also turning them into Meat Puppets. It's clearly damaged Burton's nervous system, considering that he will still 'glitch' occasionally.
- Privately Owned Society: Governments didn't survive the chaos and destruction of the jackpot. Filthy-rich Corrupt Corporate Executives did. This is unsurprisingly the result.
- Rags to Riches: Flynne, Burton and their friends and family are struggling to get by in a Crapsack County of decaying 2030s America, when they suddenly find themselves becoming the focus of a Benevolent Conspiracy with an Arbitrarily Large Bank Account. This is naturally the result.
- Remote Body: What the peripherals essentially are. In Wilf's time, anyone can lease, purchase, or even custom-order an extra body to operate remotely from the safety of their home. That said, at the end of the day, people are still bound to the bodies they were born with.
- Secret Test of Character: Lowbeer sets up one for Flynne and Wilf, simultaneously, by proposing the use of 'Party Time' on the Luke 4:5 protestors picketing Coldiron headquarters in an attempt to aggravate Burton. Flynne threatens to withold her help with the investigation, presumably leading to her death, if this happens, and Wilf agrees to forward this demand to Lowbeer. This satisfies her that they are fundamentally decent people and can continue to play a role in her larger plan.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: While she's initially only interested in the past for the sake of protecting Flynne, as a witness to Aelita's murder, Lowbeer decides to contact her past self and attempts to manipulate historic events on a larger scale in order to prevent the worst of the jackpot in Flynne's universe.
- She Knows Too Much: Pretty much the crux of the plot: the unknown villains want Flynne dead for witnessing the murder, with the protagonists attempting to keep her alive long enough to identify the killer in the future.
- Small-Town Tyrant: Corbell Pickett, car salesman turned drug baron, who rules Flynne's town with an iron fist and has the local police in his back pocket. Flynne and Burton first have to pay him off to ignore the various dead assassins they're leaving in their wake, but when the villains also get in touch with him and he kidnaps Flynne, Lowbeer decides to scare him off by blowing up his house.
- Story-Breaker Power: Thanks to her control over the assemblers and the 'aunties', Lowbeer is, for most intents and purposes, a nigh-omniscient Physical God. She has functional immortality, and she's able to listen in to nearly any conversation, summon microscopic Attack Drones to assault her enemies, construct almost anything, and literally warp the fabric of London to deliver weapons to her allies. This is limited, however, by the fact that she's been given these powers by a corrupt and paranoid oligarchy to root out anyone who might destabilise their control over society — hence, she needs cast-iron proof before she can actually kill anyone.
- Steel Ear Drums: Unusually Averted — Flynne is briefly deafened after being caught up in a close-quarters firefight in an an alley.
- Switching P.O.V.: Like a clock, the books chapters alternate between Flynne and Wilf's points of view, sometimes switching mid-scene to describe it from both angles.
- The Unreveal: Just whose appearance was Flynne's peripheral based on? People in Wilf's time and even Flynne herself keep mentioning how familiar it looks to them, but nothing is ultimately revealed about its origin (at least, not in this book).
- Unscrupulous Hero: Detective Inspector Ainsley Lowbeer. A former spy who serves the corrupt 'klept' of London as Judge, Jury, and Executioner, but nevertheless deeply regrets the loss of a more honest society and her role in its destruction. She has zero qualms about killing or using her nigh-omnipresent surveillance algorithms to eavesdrop on everyone, past and future, but overall decides to not only protect Flynne and solve the murder, but prevent the apocalypse in the alternate timeline.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Sir Henry, the City Remembrancer, is only seen on a few pages before he is killed by Burton, acting on behalf of Lowbeer.
- White Sheep: Lev Zubov, to an extent, anyway. Being the scion of a ruthless, murderous line of Russian oligarchs, he doesn't exactly try and distance himself from the "family business", but instead is an Idle Rich (very rich) layabout and family man who finds all the scheming a little awkward and embarrassing.
- Whodunnit: A sci-fi Time Travel variant, but the story is still this at its very core.
- Zeppelins from Another World: While never outright stated, it's very strongly implied that the craft referred to as 'mobies' in the 22nd century are some form of advanced airship.
