59 pages • 1 hour read
William GibsonThe Peripheral
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Objective versus Artificially Constructed Reality
The Peripheral, like many cyberpunk novels and films, takes reality itself as its central question. In a world where artificial intelligence and virtual reality are so advanced, the characters in both the present and future must contend with the nature of reality, what makes an experience real, how reality is formed, and whether reality can only be experienced or can be shaped. These questions form one of the central themes in the novel, and what often happens is that what the characters think is real is not, and what they think is fake is real.
The narrative does not slowly delve into the issue of the nature of reality. By the time Chapter 9 comes, Flynne is already trying to decipher if what she is experiencing is a game or if it is real in the typical sense, as she understands reality to be. The narrator says that Flynne notices a curiosity about the London she sees while she thinks she is playing the game: “Real London didn’t have as many tall ones (buildings) and in real London, tall ones were more clustered together, came in more shapes and sizes” (28). Flynne is using her own memory here to contrast London as it is in her present with the London she witnesses in the game. As we soon learn, it is not a game that she plays; it is real life in the future. Characterizing the London she knows as the “real” one implies that the other is fake or manufactured for the game. This is not the case, as both versions of London here are real. With this, Gibson asserts that reality is based as much on perception as it is on facts. Flynne’s knowledge of her own present and reality does not rule out future London as real.
Another example along these lines is when Connor first goes up the line into his peripheral. Connor is an amputee and is missing a leg, a foot, an arm, and some digits on his remaining hand. When he uploads into the peripheral, he suddenly has these body parts again, in addition to an impressive athletic ability. Connor is shocked the first time he occupies the peripheral, Pavel. He says, “this better not just be a drug experience” (207) and promptly begins to run, jump, and flip. Connor thinks that he has been given some hallucinatory drug that mimics what it would be like to have his limbs again, except he is sober. While Connor questions what is real and what is artificial–similar to how psychedelics distort the boundaries of reality–the case could be made that the experience inside the peripheral is reality. Connor’s sensory experience is what forms his reality, suggesting that reality comes from how we interact with the world.
Gibson does not impose a definitive answer to the questions he raises in the text about what constitutes reality. However, through his characters’ interactions with the worlds he creates in the novel, the reader reflects on the questions raised. If anything, The Peripheral shows that reality might not be as clear-cut as we tend to think it is.
Environmental Degradation and its Effects on Life
For the entire first half of the novel, the catastrophic events that changed the world are only referred to as the jackpot. We can sense that in the myriad descriptions of future London–and the world, for that matter–that something happened that changed life on the planet. One of the early clues is provided in Chapter 6 entitled, “The Patchers.” In it, the narrator describes the Great Pacific Garbage Patch as a floating island weighing “three million tons and growing” (16). Implicit in the description of the island is the problem posed by plastics ending up in the world’s oceans. The patch signals to the reader that whatever happened during the jackpot had likely to do with some kind of environmental disaster, especially since there really is a Great Pacific Garbage Patch, although the real patch is densely polluted but still liquid rather than a solid landmass.
The reader’s suspicions are confirmed in Chapter 79, which is dedicated to explaining the jackpot, how it happened, and its consequences. First, Netherton tells the story of the jackpot while he is uploaded into the Wheelie Boy in Flynne’s time. He is outside under an oak tree and is able to see the world as it was, which lends a remorseful tone to what he says. The narrator relays the breadth of Netherton’s comments rather than quoting Netherton directly, suggesting authorial editorializing. Rather than allowing Netherton–a character who is known for lying–to directly describe the catastrophe, Gibson opts to have the narrator–who is, oftentimes, more aligned with the author–describe it. In a nutshell, the jackpot is not a precise definition for the catastrophe in that it implies a one-time calamity that dramatically altered life on the planet. Instead, it was a gradual accumulation of irreversible conditions brought about by climate change, which was caused by too much carbon in the atmosphere. The narrator says, “no comets crashing, nothing you could really call a nuclear way. Just everything else, tangled in the changing climate: droughts, water shortages, crop failures[…]” (321). The real tragedy of the situation is that by the time humanity collaborated to do something about it, it was too late.
It is significant that Netherton increasingly enjoys his forays to the past because it shows his inherent sense of longing for a lost world. At the end of the novel, Netherton tells Macon of his motivation for wanting to spend lots of time in his past, “If you spent more time up here[…]you might start to appreciate that sort of thing. It’s relaxing” (484). From his vantage point of living in a post-apocalyptic world, he finds the current world is superior, and his comment here serves as a call to action both to Macon and to raiders in general: Appreciate what you have before it becomes ruined beyond repair.
Dystopian Police State versus Personal Liberty
In both the near and distant futures of the novel, the surveillance state is seemingly omnipresent. In the near future of Flynne’s time, this takes many forms, most notably the drones that are everywhere. While Burton also uses drones for his own security, it is often difficult to discern if the drones in the novel are his or belong to Homes (Homeland Security). There are also cameras recording every last nook and cranny, even in aerial objects like blimps. Flynne notices one of these, and the narrator says, “One of the blimps was hanging over the lot, pretending to just be advertising next season’s Viz. But the banner with the big close-up of an eye behind a Viz made it look like it was watching everybody, which of course she knew it was” (100). The viz is a piece of tech that one can put in their eye and see multiple things at once. It is something like smart glasses but without the glasses needed. The surveillance here is deceptive and hidden behind an advertisement, but the effect is the same. The citizens of Flynne’s world are under constant surveillance, the watchful eye of Homes. In another scene in which four young men are murdered, investigators use satellites to determine who the killer may have been. In most cases, however, the citizens seem to take it all in stride. They are not overcome by paranoia in any obvious manner, as if knowing they are being watched is just a commonplace fact of life.
In the novel’s distant future, this surveillance is taken magnitudes further. We see in the London of the future a world where algorithms predict what people may or may not do. We also see, embodied by Lowbeer, a police state where the police see everything and have an absolute monopoly of force. For example, when Flynne finds out that “party time” is a chemical agent that causes homicidal impulses, she firmly opposes its use even against her enemies. She levels an ultimatum at Netherton that she will no longer participate in the identification of Aelita’s killer if party time is used. Netherton asks Lowbeer if she knew what Flynne said when Lowbeer visits him later on, and she answers, “I do[…]After all these years I still find it vaguely embarrassing. Though it wasn’t that I specifically asked to hear it. The aunties fetched it” (381). First, Lowbeer tends to hear so much of what is said that the other characters have evolved mechanisms for speaking in code. This is best exemplified in the way Ossian and Ash communicate with each other when they do not want anyone to understand. Ash also gives Netherton this power, albeit briefly. Second, Lowbeer essentially exonerates herself from spying, even though that is her job. The way she has constructed the sentence, she is simply receiving the intelligence from the aunties, or the algorithms. She is effectively a conduit through which the police state tracks the citizens of future London. Governmental control exercised through technology is nearly absolute, a hallmark of dystopian fiction.
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