There’s a fine line between slick elegance, and flimsy thinness. William Gibson finally crossed that line with Spook Country. I’m in the tank for Gibson, but I can’t really recommend this one. Spook Country is definitely worth reading for Gibson completists like me, but afterwards I didn’t feel like it was must read for the general SFF fan.
Per usual Gibson, there are three interlocking narrative threads. One involves Hollis Henry, which tangentially connects Spook Country with Pattern Recognition through the reappearance of Hubertus Bigend and his Blue Ant company. A second thread involves Tito, of Cuban, Chinese, and professional espionage heritage. The tale of shadowy operative Brown, (CIA, NSA, Rogue?) rounds out the storylines. Brown ruthelessly and somewhat illegally pursues a secretive plot threatening national security. Brown’s pursuit of Tito’s patriarch puts them on a head on collision. Meanwhile, Henry’s involvement with the GPS artist, Bobby Chombo, winds up entangling her in Tito and Brown’s conspiracies.
Spook Country is a story of the present future. There is no speculative fiction, all of the technology and science is here today. Living in the future that Gibson describes diminishes the techno-cultural ether that is his trademark. The reader is left with the characterization and the plotting. The former isn’t particularly deep and the latter is convoluted, partially obscured, and a bit unsatisfying at the end.
What Spook Country does well is capture the sense of an infinite set of plots and backstories that seems pervasive in today’s popular culture. There’s always another behind the scenes story or expose or investigation or true report out there. What it doesn’t do well is challenge the reader’s conceptualization of how technology, culture, and society intersect. That’s the hallmark of Gibson’s past work and he missed the mark by coming a little too close on our event horizon.