Idoru

By William Gibson
G.P. Putnam's Sons, $24.95

ISBN 0399141308

Also available in audio from Putnam Audio, $17.95

Audio ISBN 0399142258

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Review by Charles Wyrick

Few science fiction writers have received the accolades of William Gibson. With the publication of Neuromancer in 1984, Gibson provided readers with a new term for a world in which he set his global, technological thrillers. For anyone reading at the time, Gibson's word "cyberspace" jumped out of his novel to become the term to describe the new telecommunication/information world of the Internet. Neuromancer became the immediate classic of a new genre of science fiction writing, placing Gibson at the head of a class of other young "cyberpunk" writers including Greg Bear and Bruce Sterling. Gibson received the Hugo Award for best novel, the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award, and the Nebula Award for best novel after the publication of Neuromancer and has followed up with three acclaimed novels including Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, and most recently 1993's best-selling Virtual Light. But Idoru, Gibson's fifth novel, is possibly his most exhilarating work to date.

To those new to Gibson's work expect at first to be disoriented. Idoru, like his other novels, is set in some undisclosed time in the near future. The novel's action takes place in two unreal, strangely malleable settings. On one hand stands a post-millennium Japan, a place still recovering from a devastating earthquake that occurred sometime after the year 2000. Surreal "nanotech" buildings capable of repairing and rebuilding themselves constantly reshape the physical landscape of Tokyo. The sight of these self-perpetuating constructions is unnerving. As Colin Laney, one of the main characters of the book observes, "the entire facade of one of the buildings seemed to ripple, to crawl slightly." There is something almost organic about Gibson's Tokyo, and in that quality something frightening and unreal.

Japan's bizarre, mobile urban landscape is mirrored in Idoru by the strange, dreamlike realms of cyberspace. In Gibson's future, cyberspace is accessed visually. Characters navigate through virtual rooms and topographies even more twisted and transient than the physical world they have left behind. The opposition between virtual and physical worlds is an essential aspect of Gibson's works -- there is a funhouse quality to these different landscapes both for his characters and his readers. Yet in the end, the development of the story hinges on the demands the physical and virtual worlds make on each other.

The title Idoru comes from another Gibson neologism. An idoru in Gibson's future is an advanced software program meaning "idol-singer." The idoru is a pop star, a cybernetic Madonna of the future. Rei Toei, Gibson's idoru, is set to be married to a real-life rock star named Rez. To both Rei Toei and Rez their union will symbolize a step in both the evolution of technology and of humanity. Yet this symbolic juncture between the physical and virtual worlds cannot occur without unraveling other dangerous and powerful forces surrounding these two pop figures. Idoru is another great achievement for Gibson. Once again, his take on the future shows him weaving a great, surreal thriller out of imagination and invention.

Charles Wyrick plays in a band called Stella.