I haven’t read the book, and the silliness around the time travel (and yes, sending information is time travel, it’s literally the definition of time travel) is annoying me, but not enough to totally ruin the show. But I’m not sure I like it. I don’t normally complain about shows being slow, but they really could have done everything so far in two episodes. And I’m less and less convinced the show is interested in the things I find interesting about the premise.
This is me. At most, it takes the central premise and characters of the book and imagines a different story; one which is IMO quite silly.
Or as Gibson himself apparently said, it’s a different stub of the book? Though I can’t really figure out why he likes it.
I thought the story was fine until the magic bacteria thing. Yeah you have to hand-wave being able to print future tech in an earlier period but it’s not so far as to be crazy, especially if you assume the study of the haptics caused advancement ahead of schedule. But the bacteria is just stupid magic spell stuff.
I think the show misunderstands the central premise of the book, too.
The book: “It was no one thing. It was multicausal, with no particular beginning and no end”.
The show: “This is the moment commonly pinpointed as the edge of the cliff, after which there was no turning back. The Jackpot was unstoppable. … Then came the end, a domestic terrorist attack on the United States”.
The implication of the book is that we could already be in the middle of the jackpot, and we haven’t realized it yet. It’s an interesting lens with which to look at day to day events where we hear about climate change, microplastics, fine particulate matter, PFAS, the current pandemic, etc.
I read it as a non-linear combination of things that together lead to an almost extinction level event (wasn’t it something like 80-90% of people died off?). The scarier thing is asking if we’re already in it, and it’s too late to reverse course.
Spoiler for book 2:
Wasn’t it book 2 where there’s a different stub that does have a single event that cascades into nuclear war? I wonder if the TV authors mixed that up/in? I still haven’t seen the show yet, but will probably get started soon.
This is my take as well. The whole Jackpot museum was a low point in the tv experience for me. I don’t need the Jackpot explained; probably none of us do, if we’re reading the papers. Anyone who wakes at 3AM worrying about the state of the world already understands the Jackpot implicitly.
I quite liked the book, which turned out to be my favorite Gibson since the Neuromancer/Count Zero days. The show is fine, an action-heavy insight-light take on the source material. I hoped for more, but it’s not so bad I won’t watch it through to the end. An amuse-bouche of a show.
So, uh, yeah, this didn’t end well. In science fiction terms I felt any sense of internal consistency was crapped upon. In character terms, well it’s hard to get to character terms b/c in plot terms it was all over the map, a chaotic mess.
I felt like it ended up being a weird hybrid of a bunch of different shows that didn’t mesh.
A disappointment after a reasonably strong beginning.
I guess it had more to do with Westworld than Gibson. Chloe Grace did a great job.
Is there a connection between The Peripheral show and the Westworld show?
same producers, Lisa Joy + Jonathan Nolan
i haven’t watched ch 10 but i don’t have nearly the same amount of rage as in westworld. it’s a fine, fun TV show. Helps I didn’t read the book.
I think the earlier comments about viewing the show as a stub or variant story that starts from a similar premise but diverges are smart.
Lots of the action & fight bits are superfluous to the story (and even kinda dumb), but Chloe does a nice job with the character, the world looks great, and I found the story interesting despite the many changes.
What’s more worrisome is what happens next season (assuming the show gets renewed). I’d be surprised if the show followed the next book into a different stub with different characters, since they have invested time in developing these actors / characters / world on-screen in season 1. My guess is that they’ll continue by telling a wholly different tale that follows some of our known characters into a different stub and future instead. It’s potentially interesting, but risky because they won’t have Gibson’s writing doing much of the work for them. And we know how well TV writers typically do when inventing new material (see the later seasons of GoT).
I guess one of the main reasons I like this thing is the actors and story relationships. I can overlook all sorts of hand waving plot shenanigans, if the dialogue is to my taste.
Love the sibling shit talking in this one. Rings true to my own family.
You’re correct about book 2, but that explicitly was not the jackpot, that stub was about to end in a different way due to the future messing with it.
TBH, they don’t have Gibson’s writing doing much for them here.
yeah the sibling stuff was very realistic. the ribbing is inconsequential and ultimately they support each other like good family.
They bought the title and character names, but it really has very little of the novel in it.
That ending was dreadful. Hand wavy timey wimey shit more suited for Dr. Who.
She can now just jump from stub to stub and doesn’t even need a helmet? And she has to die in the “real world” to save everyone else? But it doesn’t matter, she can upload herself anytime?
Yeah, perhaps it was the edible, but I didn’t understand any of that nonsense.
I’m gonna read the book/series and count it as an overall positive experience!
What hooked me early on is that there seemed to be a fabric of interesting and consistent sci-fi ideas, plus good acting and good character writing. And on top of that, some nice sci-fi action as frosting on the cake. And then the sci-fi component got turned into random inconsistent mush. The acting and character writing remained strong, but the action became gratuitous as the connective tissue of plot became more and more frayed.
It’s not as bad as all that.
She created a new stub, branching off from her current moment. The Flynn in that new stub therefore knows everything she does and retains the stolen information. In her own timeline, she arranges her own death so that Newland will not need to trigger the jackpot to eliminate her. In this way she saves her own versions of Burton, Connor, Tommy etc.
The surviving Flynn from the new stub can still access the peripheral in the shared future, and will be the instrument of her revenge. Supposedly Newland cannot easily pinpoint the new stub to retaliate.