Given the opportunity, I will rant endlessly to just about anyone that listens about William Gibson. Gibson’s work hasn’t just been hugely prescient in predicting technology trends, it’s also whip-smart, at times very funny, and written with a razor sharp economy of language usually lacking in the very dry prose of most science fiction authors. His influence on science fiction in both literature and film has been immense – the dude quite literally invented the word “cyberspace“.
So far his luck with adaptions hasn’t been great; a few of his short stories have been adapted into some entertaining but unmistakably trashy movies (I urge you to watch Johnny Mnemonic if you haven’t) but any proper adaptations of his novels have fallen apart. This seems set to change now, though, with Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, the team behind Westworld, looking to make a TV adaptation of The Peripheral for Amazon.
The Peripheral, Gibson’s most recent novel, is set in both very near future America and relatively distant future London and follows the interactions of these two timelines as they try to solve a murder mystery in one and avert global societal collapse in the other.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the show will be executive produced by Nolan and Joy with a script written by Scott B Smith, most notably known for adapting the screenplay for A Simple Plan.
Given how good a job Nolan and Joy did with a show based on a book by a terrible author, I’m excited to see what they can do with one based on a book by an incredibly good one.
Agency, the sequel to The Peripheral is set to be released this month, so probs the perfect time to pick up the first book if you feel like giving it a bash.
In other fantastic news, the first episode of Westworld season two will air in under a week, so those murderous robot cowboy cravings of yours can finally be put to rest.
