Agency
by William Gibson · first published 2020
45% recommend38% neutral17% critical
Why HN recommends it
Near-future Gibson thriller about AI, corporate politics and programming, and the sequel to The Peripheral in his Jackpot series. Fans like its fast, smooth read and its picture of a chaotic, surveilled world.
Common criticism: Some find the plot thin, the characters flat and the structure disjointed
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
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I love how William Gibson reveals Eunice in Agency. I'd for sure love to be her friend.
on “There’s No Such Thing As ‘Ethical A.I.’” ↗…especially interesting for the HN crowd. It's not sf per se, rather more than contemporary fiction, but the main theme is about programming and politics in a big corporation. Quite original and a lot of fun. Agency - W. Gibson The space between worlds - M. Johnson To sleep in a sea of stars - C. Paolini The algebraist - I. Banks Hope you'll find something to your liking. Happy new year.
on “My Favorite Books 2020” ↗The "klept" word came from William Gibson's The Peripheral and Agency books[1]. Highly recommend. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/series/270911-jackpot
on “Oh, 2022” ↗…immigrants. Very eye-opening, a lot of America's 'wealthy families' got their first pool of capital in this manner. Also: Junji Ito, Uzumaki and No Longer Human William Gibson, The Peripheral and Agency
on “Ask HN: What are some of the best books you have read in 2022?” ↗Yeah, I guess. I suspect that authorities are planning ahead. As we get further into the jackpot (see Gibson's Peripheral and Agency) there'll be more and more disorder and chaos. And so there'll be a need for more surveillance and control.
on “The FBI tracking your browsing history without a warrant might be the beginning” ↗…The Peripheral, it's quite a plot to wrap your head around at first, as is usual with time-related stuff, but once you get rolling with it you won't put it down. It's typical Gibson, which I love. And Agency reads like a hot knife through butter. I can't wait to see how he wraps it up in the third one, if that's what he's going for.
on “Ask HN: Anyone reading “Fall”, latest book from Neil Stephenson?” ↗…convince the O2 voice agent to get me a real person. Conversational AI is a special kind of hell filled with unhappy paths. But for a glimpse of the future watch The Expanse or read William Gibson's Agency.
on “Hey, GitHub – Waiting list signup” ↗…good (actually I think I have the name slightly wrong) Ian M Banks is good. “Use of Weapons” is weaponized fiction. Neil Asher plays in similar waters. Gibson’s new stuff is good. “The Peripheral” and “Agency” (they turned the peripheral into an Amazon show and that’s quite different but also quite good) I guess when we’re calling out sci-fi shows based on books we can’t neglect “Altered Carbon”.
on “Ask HN: Best Contemporary SF Books” ↗Anything by Neal Stephenson. (Except Fall, maybe.) Cryptonomicron is my fav modern novel. Project Hail Mary. The Martian. Artemis. Expanse series. William Gibson,s stuff. Loved Peripheral, and it's sequel Agency.
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?” ↗…under/unemployment. All this termult happening, meanwhile the AI arms race is going on. Nation states hacking eachother using AI. Then you have the AI itself trying to escape the box…want a preview of this? Listen to “Agency” audiobook on Audible. I think it’s by Stephenson or Gibson. It’s surely going to be a wild decade before us.
on “Yann LeCun: AI one-percenters seizing power forever is real doomsday scenario” ↗Don’t think I read the sequels. I have read other Gibson novels (Pattern Recognition, Agency, The Peripheral, and others I can’t think of right now) and liked them.
on “Rereading books” ↗You might be interested in William Gibson's Jackpot triloy - The Peripheral and Agency.
on “Andreessen Horowitz is investing billions into a bleak future” ↗…Rainbow's End (each twice) Tracy Kidder: The Soul of a New Machine (twice) Larry McMurtry: Lonesome Dove (twice) Ross Thomas: Chinaman's Chance (twice) William Gibson: Neuromancer, The Peripheral, Agency (each twice)
on “Ask HN: Which books did you read at least twice?” ↗Yes. And it's fiction. We might as well discuss Excession, Agency, Diaspora (Banks, Gibson and Egan respectively) all of whom have more interesting and insightful things to say about humanity, game theory and ... seriously, as a life long (and I am OLD) science fiction…
I've been waiting for his upcoming novel "Agency" to come out for a long time! https://www.amazon.com/Agency-William-Gibson/dp/110198693X Excited to hear about this: > “Agency” is a sequel to Gibson’s previous novel, “The Peripheral,” from 2014,…
on “How William Gibson Keeps His Science Fiction Real” ↗