Virtual Blight Essay, Research Paper

Amazon.com The author of Neuromancer takes you to the vividly realized near future of 2005. Welcome to NoCal and SoCal, the uneasy sister-states of what used to be California. Here the millennium has come and gone, leaving in its wake only stunned survivors. In Los Angeles, Berry Rydell is a former armed-response rentacop now working for a bounty hunter. Chevette Washington is a bicycle messenger turned pick-pocket who impulsively snatches a pair of innocent-looking sunglasses. But these are no ordinary shades. What you can see through these high-tech specs can make you rich–or get you killed. Now Berry and Chevette are on the run, zeroing in on the digitalized heart of DatAmerica, where pure information is the greatest high. And a mind can be a terrible thing to crash. Chicago Tribune Convincing…Frightening…Virtual Light is written with a sense of craft, a sense of humor and a sense of the ultimate seriousness of the problems it explores. From Kirkus Reviews , June 15, 1993 Near-future good little-guys vs. bad redevelopers tussle–set in a California split into two states: from the cyberspace and virtual reality guru (Mona Lisa Overdrive, 1988; The Difference Engine, 1991, with Bruce Sterling, etc.). By the year 2005, the middle classes have vanished, leaving a vast struggling mass of impoverished workers or unemployed, with the amoral rich insulated by their purchasing power from the social Darwinistic carnage below. The nightmarish, corrosive backdrop combines nanotech medical machines, virtual reality spectacles, data havens, and secret control by multinational corporations–all standard Gibsonian tools–against which the characters are little better than walking shadows. When motorbike messenger Chevette Washington steals a pair of unusual sunglasses from an obnoxious drunk at a rich San Francisco hotel party, unlucky rent-a-cop Berry Rydell finds himself hired, under peculiar circumstances, to drive for Lucius Warbaby, a freelance skip-tracer who has been retained by a big security firm to recover the missing item. But the glasses have a mysterious importance–their erstwhile owner soon turns up with his throat cut; some Russian heavies, ostensibly real cops, muscle in; a terrifying assassin stalks Chevette, forcing Rydell to decide who’s side he’s on. The glasses, he eventually learns, contain a Japanese multinational’s plans to redevelop the entire Bay area, regardless of the opinions of its inhabitants. Gibson combines an extraordinarily rich prose texture with starkly effective dialogue into a convincing, in-your-face future reality. His plotting, though, even more so than in previous outings, is flimsy and contrived. Dazzling snapshots, then–but, like cyberspace, everything disappears when you switch off. (First printing of 55,000) — Copyright 1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Entertainment Weekly A stunner…A terrifically stylish burst of kick-butt imagination! Amazon.com The author of Neuromancer takes you to the vividly realized near future of 2005. Welcome to NoCal and SoCal, the uneasy sister-states of what used to be California. Here the millennium has come and gone, leaving in its wake only stunned survivors. In Los Angeles, Berry Rydell is a former armed-response rentacop now working for a bounty hunter. Chevette Washington is a bicycle messenger turned pick-pocket who impulsively snatches a pair of innocent-looking sunglasses. But these are no ordinary shades. What you can see through these high-tech specs can make you rich–or get you killed. Now Berry and Chevette are on the run, zeroing in on the digitalized heart of DatAmerica, where pure information is the greatest high. And a mind can be a terrible thing to crash. Chicago Tribune Convincing…Frightening…Virtual Light is written with a sense of craft, a sense of humor and a sense of the ultimate seriousness of the problems it explores. From Kirkus Reviews , June 15, 1993 Near-future good little-guys vs. bad redevelopers tussle–set in a California split into two states: from the cyberspace and virtual reality guru (Mona Lisa Overdrive, 1988; The Difference Engine, 1991, with Bruce Sterling, etc.). By the year 2005, the middle classes have vanished, leaving a vast struggling mass of impoverished workers or unemployed, with the amoral rich insulated by their purchasing power from the social Darwinistic carnage below. The nightmarish, corrosive backdrop combines nanotech medical machines, virtual reality spectacles, data havens, and secret control by multinational corporations–all standard Gibsonian tools–against which the characters are little better than walking shadows. When motorbike messenger Chevette Washington steals a pair of unusual sunglasses from an obnoxious drunk at a rich San Francisco hotel party, unlucky rent-a-cop Berry Rydell finds himself hired, under peculiar circumstances, to drive for Lucius Warbaby, a freelance skip-tracer who has been retained by a big security firm to recover the missing item. But the glasses have a mysterious importance–their erstwhile owner soon turns up with his throat cut; some Russian heavies, ostensibly real cops, muscle in; a terrifying assassin stalks Chevette, forcing Rydell to decide who’s side he’s on. The glasses, he eventually learns, contain a Japanese multinational’s plans to redevelop the entire Bay area, regardless of the opinions of its inhabitants. Gibson combines an extraordinarily rich prose texture with starkly effective dialogue into a convincing, in-your-face future reality. His plotting, though, even more so than in previous outings, is flimsy and contrived. Dazzling snapshots, then–but, like cyberspace, everything disappears when you switch off. (First printing of 55,000) — Copyright 1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Entertainment Weekly A stunner…A terrifically stylish burst of kick-butt imagination! Amazon.com The author of Neuromancer takes you to the vividly realized near future of 2005. Welcome to NoCal and SoCal, the uneasy sister-states of what used to be California. Here the millennium has come and gone, leaving in its wake only stunned survivors. In Los Angeles, Berry Rydell is a former armed-response rentacop now working for a bounty hunter. Chevette Washington is a bicycle messenger turned pick-pocket who impulsively snatches a pair of innocent-looking sunglasses. But these are no ordinary shades. What you can see through these high-tech specs can make you rich–or get you killed. Now Berry and Chevette are on the run, zeroing in on the digitalized heart of DatAmerica, where pure information is the greatest high. And a mind can be a terrible thing to crash. Chicago Tribune Convincing…Frightening…Virtual Light is written with a sense of craft, a sense of humor and a sense of the ultimate seriousness of the problems it explores. From Kirkus Reviews , June 15, 1993 Near-future good little-guys vs. bad redevelopers tussle–set in a California split into two states: from the cyberspace and virtual reality guru (Mona Lisa Overdrive, 1988; The Difference Engine, 1991, with Bruce Sterling, etc.). By the year 2005, the middle classes have vanished, leaving a vast struggling mass of impoverished workers or unemployed, with the amoral rich insulated by their purchasing power from the social Darwinistic carnage below. The nightmarish, corrosive backdrop combines nanotech medical machines, virtual reality spectacles, data havens, and secret control by multinational corporations–all standard Gibsonian tools–against which the characters are little better than walking shadows. When motorbike messenger Chevette Washington steals a pair of unusual sunglasses from an obnoxious drunk at a rich San Francisco hotel party, unlucky rent-a-cop Berry Rydell finds himself hired, under peculiar circumstances, to drive for Lucius Warbaby, a freelance skip-tracer who has been retained by a big security firm to recover the missing item. But the glasses have a mysterious importance–their erstwhile owner soon turns up with his throat cut; some Russian heavies, ostensibly real cops, muscle in; a terrifying assassin stalks Chevette, forcing Rydell to decide who’s side he’s on. The glasses, he eventually learns, contain a Japanese multinational’s plans to redevelop the entire Bay area, regardless of the opinions of its inhabitants. Gibson combines an extraordinarily rich prose texture with starkly effective dialogue into a convincing, in-your-face future reality. His plotting, though, even more so than in previous outings, is flimsy and contrived. Dazzling snapshots, then–but, like cyberspace, everything disappears when you switch off. (First printing of 55,000) — Copyright 1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Entertainment Weekly A stunner…A terrifically stylish burst of kick-butt imagination! Amazon.com The author of Neuromancer takes you to the vividly realized near future of 2005. Welcome to NoCal and SoCal, the uneasy sister-states of what used to be California. Here the millennium has come and gone, leaving in its wake only stunned survivors. In Los Angeles, Berry Rydell is a former armed-response rentacop now working for a bounty hunter. Chevette Washington is a bicycle messenger turned pick-pocket who impulsively snatches a pair of innocent-looking sunglasses. But these are no ordinary shades. What you can see through these high-tech specs can make you rich–or get you killed. Now Berry and Chevette are on the run, zeroing in on the digitalized heart of DatAmerica, where pure information is the greatest high. And a mind can be a terrible thing to crash. Chicago Tribune Convincing…Frightening…Virtual Light is written with a sense of craft, a sense of humor and a sense of the ultimate seriousness of the problems it explores. From Kirkus Reviews , June 15, 1993 Near-future good little-guys vs. bad redevelopers tussle–set in a California split into two states: from the cyberspace and virtual reality guru (Mona Lisa Overdrive, 1988; The Difference Engine, 1991, with Bruce Sterling, etc.). By the year 2005, the middle classes have vanished, leaving a vast struggling mass of impoverished workers or unemployed, with the amoral rich insulated by their purchasing power from the social Darwinistic carnage below. The nightmarish, corrosive backdrop combines nanotech medical machines, virtual reality spectacles, data havens, and secret control by multinational corporations–all standard Gibsonian tools–against which the characters are little better than walking shadows. When motorbike messenger Chevette Washington steals a pair of unusual sunglasses from an obnoxious drunk at a rich San Francisco hotel party, unlucky rent-a-cop Berry Rydell finds himself hired, under peculiar circumstances, to drive for Lucius Warbaby, a freelance skip-tracer who has been retained by a big security firm to recover the missing item. But the glasses have a mysterious importance–their erstwhile owner soon turns up with his throat cut; some Russian heavies, ostensibly real cops, muscle in; a terrifying assassin stalks Chevette, forcing Rydell to decide who’s side he’s on. The glasses, he eventually learns, contain a Japanese multinational’s plans to redevelop the entire Bay area, regardless of the opinions of its inhabitants. Gibson combines an extraordinarily rich prose texture with starkly effective dialogue into a convincing, in-your-face future reality. His plotting, though, even more so than in previous outings, is

flimsy and contrived. Dazzling snapshots, then–but, like cyberspace, everything disappears when you switch off. (First printing of 55,000) — Copyright 1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Entertainment Weekly A stunner…A terrifically stylish burst of kick-butt imagination! Amazon.com The author of Neuromancer takes you to the vividly realized near future of 2005. Welcome to NoCal and SoCal, the uneasy sister-states of what used to be California. Here the millennium has come and gone, leaving in its wake only stunned survivors. In Los Angeles, Berry Rydell is a former armed-response rentacop now working for a bounty hunter. Chevette Washington is a bicycle messenger turned pick-pocket who impulsively snatches a pair of innocent-looking sunglasses. But these are no ordinary shades. What you can see through these high-tech specs can make you rich–or get you killed. Now Berry and Chevette are on the run, zeroing in on the digitalized heart of DatAmerica, where pure information is the greatest high. And a mind can be a terrible thing to crash. Chicago Tribune Convincing…Frightening…Virtual Light is written with a sense of craft, a sense of humor and a sense of the ultimate seriousness of the problems it explores. From Kirkus Reviews , June 15, 1993 Near-future good little-guys vs. bad redevelopers tussle–set in a California split into two states: from the cyberspace and virtual reality guru (Mona Lisa Overdrive, 1988; The Difference Engine, 1991, with Bruce Sterling, etc.). By the year 2005, the middle classes have vanished, leaving a vast struggling mass of impoverished workers or unemployed, with the amoral rich insulated by their purchasing power from the social Darwinistic carnage below. The nightmarish, corrosive backdrop combines nanotech medical machines, virtual reality spectacles, data havens, and secret control by multinational corporations–all standard Gibsonian tools–against which the characters are little better than walking shadows. When motorbike messenger Chevette Washington steals a pair of unusual sunglasses from an obnoxious drunk at a rich San Francisco hotel party, unlucky rent-a-cop Berry Rydell finds himself hired, under peculiar circumstances, to drive for Lucius Warbaby, a freelance skip-tracer who has been retained by a big security firm to recover the missing item. But the glasses have a mysterious importance–their erstwhile owner soon turns up with his throat cut; some Russian heavies, ostensibly real cops, muscle in; a terrifying assassin stalks Chevette, forcing Rydell to decide who’s side he’s on. The glasses, he eventually learns, contain a Japanese multinational’s plans to redevelop the entire Bay area, regardless of the opinions of its inhabitants. Gibson combines an extraordinarily rich prose texture with starkly effective dialogue into a convincing, in-your-face future reality. His plotting, though, even more so than in previous outings, is flimsy and contrived. Dazzling snapshots, then–but, like cyberspace, everything disappears when you switch off. (First printing of 55,000) — Copyright 1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Entertainment Weekly A stunner…A terrifically stylish burst of kick-butt imagination! Amazon.com The author of Neuromancer takes you to the vividly realized near future of 2005. Welcome to NoCal and SoCal, the uneasy sister-states of what used to be California. Here the millennium has come and gone, leaving in its wake only stunned survivors. In Los Angeles, Berry Rydell is a former armed-response rentacop now working for a bounty hunter. Chevette Washington is a bicycle messenger turned pick-pocket who impulsively snatches a pair of innocent-looking sunglasses. But these are no ordinary shades. What you can see through these high-tech specs can make you rich–or get you killed. Now Berry and Chevette are on the run, zeroing in on the digitalized heart of DatAmerica, where pure information is the greatest high. And a mind can be a terrible thing to crash. Chicago Tribune Convincing…Frightening…Virtual Light is written with a sense of craft, a sense of humor and a sense of the ultimate seriousness of the problems it explores. From Kirkus Reviews , June 15, 1993 Near-future good little-guys vs. bad redevelopers tussle–set in a California split into two states: from the cyberspace and virtual reality guru (Mona Lisa Overdrive, 1988; The Difference Engine, 1991, with Bruce Sterling, etc.). By the year 2005, the middle classes have vanished, leaving a vast struggling mass of impoverished workers or unemployed, with the amoral rich insulated by their purchasing power from the social Darwinistic carnage below. The nightmarish, corrosive backdrop combines nanotech medical machines, virtual reality spectacles, data havens, and secret control by multinational corporations–all standard Gibsonian tools–against which the characters are little better than walking shadows. When motorbike messenger Chevette Washington steals a pair of unusual sunglasses from an obnoxious drunk at a rich San Francisco hotel party, unlucky rent-a-cop Berry Rydell finds himself hired, under peculiar circumstances, to drive for Lucius Warbaby, a freelance skip-tracer who has been retained by a big security firm to recover the missing item. But the glasses have a mysterious importance–their erstwhile owner soon turns up with his throat cut; some Russian heavies, ostensibly real cops, muscle in; a terrifying assassin stalks Chevette, forcing Rydell to decide who’s side he’s on. The glasses, he eventually learns, contain a Japanese multinational’s plans to redevelop the entire Bay area, regardless of the opinions of its inhabitants. Gibson combines an extraordinarily rich prose texture with starkly effective dialogue into a convincing, in-your-face future reality. His plotting, though, even more so than in previous outings, is flimsy and contrived. Dazzling snapshots, then–but, like cyberspace, everything disappears when you switch off. (First printing of 55,000) — Copyright 1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Entertainment Weekly A stunner…A terrifically stylish burst of kick-butt imagination! Amazon.com The author of Neuromancer takes you to the vividly realized near future of 2005. Welcome to NoCal and SoCal, the uneasy sister-states of what used to be California. Here the millennium has come and gone, leaving in its wake only stunned survivors. In Los Angeles, Berry Rydell is a former armed-response rentacop now working for a bounty hunter. Chevette Washington is a bicycle messenger turned pick-pocket who impulsively snatches a pair of innocent-looking sunglasses. But these are no ordinary shades. What you can see through these high-tech specs can make you rich–or get you killed. Now Berry and Chevette are on the run, zeroing in on the digitalized heart of DatAmerica, where pure information is the greatest high. And a mind can be a terrible thing to crash. Chicago Tribune Convincing…Frightening…Virtual Light is written with a sense of craft, a sense of humor and a sense of the ultimate seriousness of the problems it explores. From Kirkus Reviews , June 15, 1993 Near-future good little-guys vs. bad redevelopers tussle–set in a California split into two states: from the cyberspace and virtual reality guru (Mona Lisa Overdrive, 1988; The Difference Engine, 1991, with Bruce Sterling, etc.). By the year 2005, the middle classes have vanished, leaving a vast struggling mass of impoverished workers or unemployed, with the amoral rich insulated by their purchasing power from the social Darwinistic carnage below. The nightmarish, corrosive backdrop combines nanotech medical machines, virtual reality spectacles, data havens, and secret control by multinational corporations–all standard Gibsonian tools–against which the characters are little better than walking shadows. When motorbike messenger Chevette Washington steals a pair of unusual sunglasses from an obnoxious drunk at a rich San Francisco hotel party, unlucky rent-a-cop Berry Rydell finds himself hired, under peculiar circumstances, to drive for Lucius Warbaby, a freelance skip-tracer who has been retained by a big security firm to recover the missing item. But the glasses have a mysterious importance–their erstwhile owner soon turns up with his throat cut; some Russian heavies, ostensibly real cops, muscle in; a terrifying assassin stalks Chevette, forcing Rydell to decide who’s side he’s on. The glasses, he eventually learns, contain a Japanese multinational’s plans to redevelop the entire Bay area, regardless of the opinions of its inhabitants. Gibson combines an extraordinarily rich prose texture with starkly effective dialogue into a convincing, in-your-face future reality. His plotting, though, even more so than in previous outings, is flimsy and contrived. Dazzling snapshots, then–but, like cyberspace, everything disappears when you switch off. (First printing of 55,000) — Copyright 1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Entertainment Weekly A stunner…A terrifically stylish burst of kick-butt imagination! Amazon.com The author of Neuromancer takes you to the vividly realized near future of 2005. Welcome to NoCal and SoCal, the uneasy sister-states of what used to be California. Here the millennium has come and gone, leaving in its wake only stunned survivors. In Los Angeles, Berry Rydell is a former armed-response rentacop now working for a bounty hunter. Chevette Washington is a bicycle messenger turned pick-pocket who impulsively snatches a pair of innocent-looking sunglasses. But these are no ordinary shades. What you can see through these high-tech specs can make you rich–or get you killed. Now Berry and Chevette are on the run, zeroing in on the digitalized heart of DatAmerica, where pure information is the greatest high. And a mind can be a terrible thing to crash. Chicago Tribune Convincing…Frightening…Virtual Light is written with a sense of craft, a sense of humor and a sense of the ultimate seriousness of the problems it explores. From Kirkus Reviews , June 15, 1993 Near-future good little-guys vs. bad redevelopers tussle–set in a California split into two states: from the cyberspace and virtual reality guru (Mona Lisa Overdrive, 1988; The Difference Engine, 1991, with Bruce Sterling, etc.). By the year 2005, the middle classes have vanished, leaving a vast struggling mass of impoverished workers or unemployed, with the amoral rich insulated by their purchasing power from the social Darwinistic carnage below. The nightmarish, corrosive backdrop combines nanotech medical machines, virtual reality spectacles, data havens, and secret control by multinational corporations–all standard Gibsonian tools–against which the characters are little better than walking shadows. When motorbike messenger Chevette Washington steals a pair of unusual sunglasses from an obnoxious drunk at a rich San Francisco hotel party, unlucky rent-a-cop Berry Rydell finds himself hired, under peculiar circumstances, to drive for Lucius Warbaby, a freelance skip-tracer who has been retained by a big security firm to recover the missing item. But the glasses have a mysterious importance–their erstwhile owner soon turns up with his throat cut; some Russian heavies, ostensibly real cops, muscle in; a terrifying assassin stalks Chevette, forcing Rydell to decide who’s side he’s on. The glasses, he eventually learns, contain a Japanese multinational’s plans to redevelop the entire Bay area, regardless of the opinions of its inhabitants. Gibson combines an extraordinarily rich prose texture with starkly effective dialogue into a convincing, in-your-face future reality. His plotting, though, even more so than in previous outings, is flimsy and contrived. Dazzling snapshots, then–but, like cyberspace, everything disappears when you switch off. (First pr