Idoru

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Summary: Today Rewritten as Tomorrow.
Review: Another, surely prophetic, vision of the not too distant future. And I emphasize not too distant -- Gibson's true genius may lie in the way he re-packages today so we experience it as tomorrow. This book reminded me that the future is always the tick of a clock (or should I say the vibration of an atom) away, as is the past. It is this ability to put a new face on every day life that puts Gibson among the greats in the realm of science fiction.

Though I prefer his earlier works, a so-so novel by Gibson is still a spectacular read

Rating:
Summary: A dreadful let-down.
Review: Sigh. I am an enourmous fan of Gibson's earlier works, but "Idoru" - at least as evidenced by this audio cassette - is slightly boring and comes across as lifeless: almost like someone imitating Gibson. The reader does a fine job and is not to fault. The nanotechnology aspect held my attention but it goes nowhere. After the disappointment of "Virtual Light", I am wondering if Gibson has caved into the "easy money" and is just "cranking it out". David Findley [e-mail]

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Summary: The world's changed, but Gibson hasn't. And I'm glad.
Review: Shakespeare had no more than six stories in him. Hemingway managed four or five; Twain just two. William Gibson has only one: innocent youth finds strange object whose owners try to get it back. So don't read "Idoru" for the plot or the characters. Read it to hear Gibson's language in your ear, those words that scorch across page after page and keep you turning and turning and never let you go. Read it for the metallic tang each sentence creates in your mouth, the smell of bunt dust it forces into your nostrils, the pictures it paints so vividly over your frontal lobes that you can even see the bugs in the corner and the cracks in the concrete. Gibson is a poet, not a novelist. Read "Idoru" for the sound it makes on paper, and you can't help but rock and roll with it. Pure poetic punk

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Summary: Never seen Tasmanian so well portrayed, well worth the read!
Review: As a Tasmanian I can only say this book Idoru lets people around the world know that we are not all massacre minded but prefer small scale mind game violence too. Hopefully the character in this book will be remembered long after the Port Arthur gunman Martin Bryant is dead

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Summary: money would be better spent reading scientific american
Review: This is a simplistic sci fi novel that is more concerned with punk than futurism. There is little original or thought provoking material past the one seminal idea that identity and fame are fast becoming comodities which are created and sold . The science is so uneven that people are still exchanging business cards - whereas if one even reads today's real science we have information being 'downloaded' through a handshake! And where there is a glimmer of futurism as with nano-technology being employed to continuously construct/repair buildings, the idea is just left underdeveloped. So much for expanding ideas.The characters are also poorly developed and seem to interact out of a need to fill the pages. Perhaps its a cult thing? But its not science fiction of wide interest

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Summary: This book needs an editor!
Review: I love Gibson's earlier work, in the days when he had an editor tighten his prose. Now that he's a star, he clearly doesn't use an editor (or the editor is asleep). This book needs tightening in its prose. There is little left of the Gibson as Chandler descendent that I saw in earlier works. There is lots of cute that is there for cute, not for forwarding the story. So I thank my wife for the birthday present of Idoru but am extremely disappointed. Mike Zyda

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Summary: Sidelong glance into the mirror.
Review: Gibson is a writer of places. For him, the location and decor of a nightclub is about landscapes both external and internal. Consequently, a key theme for Gibson is the struggle for individuals to maintain the dividing line between what is within and what is without. "Neuromancer" derived much of its power from its full-frontal examination of this tension. "Idoru," on the other hand, looks at what happens to individuals when they become part of the cultural landscape--and when an "individual" is a pure product of that landscape. This book very much continues Gibson's exploration of the semiotics of places--including those places that exist only in the digital realm. "Idoru" is fascinating as an exploration of ideas but works less well as a fully characterized novel. On the other hand, any travelogue this good has its own rewards.

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Summary: Subtle cyberpunk
Review: Initially this book was dissapointing, not many new ideas, other than the major plot premise, and less densely written than other Gibson work. However, as I read more and more, the subtlety and intricacy of the new concepts, associated social mores, and resultant behaviours became clearer and my enjoyment increased dramatically. Don't expect previous Gibson language pyrotechnics, rather this is a novel that examines some aspects of the impact of new technology while managing to have a captivating thriller background

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Summary: IDORU is a way out head trip...
Review: exactly the way I like it - and boy howdy, did I like this book. A page turner, I was desperate to cling to this baby 'till the end then I wished for a few more chapters to sink my teeth into. His characterizations are spot on, he captures whole people here and by the end I never doubt for a moment that the IDORU is real and a whole new world is opening up for the taking. I disagree with the diehard Gibsonites who look for "Neuromancer" in every Gibson book. "Neuromancer" had it's day, it's so, eighties now. IDORU is the work of a mature author secure in his vision and style. Cheers to Gibson for evolving

Rating:
Summary: Graphics resolution should have been set much higher.
Review: Has Gibson been taking too many of his own designer drugs? A nice fast read for a short commuter hop, but nothing to write home from Europe about. To echo one othe other reviews, what happened to the author of "Neuromancer"? Characters are wireframe knockoffs and the plot has been scanned at 64 dpi. For much more loving (if somewhat cheesy) attention to virtual detail, try "Microserfs". For first-rate psychological complexity in a morphed environment, try "Arc d'X". "Idoru" is like ho