Amazon Prime Video, from 21 October
Over the past 40 years, William Gibson has acquired quite a reputation as a seer. A pioneer of the cyberpunk genre, he has predicted versions of everything from the world wide web to online celebrity deification. Despite this, he has long insisted that he, like all writers of science fiction, is 鈥溾��.
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It remains to be seen whether聽The Peripheral, Gibson鈥檚 2014 mystery-thriller novel颅颅颅颅 set in two closely linked timelines, will prove prescient in coming years. But Amazon Prime Video鈥檚 new TV adaptation of this gritty, thoughtful noir seems to share Gibson鈥檚 view that prediction is the least important aspect of sci-fi, which in fact mines far richer seams 鈥� often illuminating our present world.
It is 2032, and the protagonist is Flynne Fisher, a young woman trapped in rural poverty in North Carolina. Flynne barely earns enough in her job at a 3D-printing store to cover her mother鈥檚 medical care.
Her brother Burton is a veteran of the US military鈥檚 Haptic Recon Unit and receives meagre disability benefits due to the chronic pain caused by his cybernetic implants. He secretly works as a 鈥渟im jockey鈥�, helping wealthy clients to progress in the virtual reality games that have become the dominant form of entertainment.
Flynne, however, is far more proficient technologically than Burton, who frequently asks her to use his profile to get through tricky levels. When he is hired by a shadowy organisation to beta test a cutting-edge VR game, Flynne again poses as her brother and enters a hyper-realistic rendering of London in 2099 鈥� or so it appears.
Tasked with kidnapping a woman at a party, she is guided by the voice of Aelita, who draws Flynne closer to a deadly objective. All the while, she experiences pain and pleasure as she explores this sleek future in which hedonistic kleptocrats run society.
When she finally meets Aelita in person, Flynne realises with horror that this version of London exists in an alternate timeline and the people she saw killed were in fact real.
The technology that lets Flynne influence this world sets聽The Peripheral聽apart from other well-worn multiverse narratives. Rather than being transported more than 60 years into her own future, Flynne is simply inhabiting a cyborg body, known as a peripheral, that she controls from her own reality.
The system relies on a form of quantum tunnelling, a phenomenon in which molecules pass through a seemingly impenetrable barrier 鈥� in this case, and obviously fictional for now, allowing data to travel through space and time. What鈥檚 more, the connection works both ways, so nefarious forces from Aelita鈥檚 timeline are able to threaten the safety of Flynne and her family.
It would take many more words or pages to fully explore the show鈥檚 (and the book鈥檚) many themes and ideological discussions, but suffice to say that the first season of聽The Peripheral聽is so stuffed with ideas and world-building that it can be frustrating. Often themes are dangled in front of us, such as the changing role of technology in surveillance states, only for them to be left hanging. But this is no real criticism, provided the show is granted more seasons to flesh out its extraordinarily rich and diverse threads.
Meanwhile, enjoy the many prophecies of聽The Peripheral鈥檚 twin futures. They might even come true one day, in our universe. But with such vivid, frightening worlds to get lost in, does that even matter?
