From The Washington Post:
Spook Country by William Gibson.
He famously invented the word “cyberspace” in his 1984 novel “Neuromancer,” which has sold more than 6 1/2 million copies. This was before virtually anyone — including him — knew that something called the Internet was being born. He is also credited with inventing the idea of the “matrix,” as well as foreseeing some of the twistiest aspects of globalization.
This post-9/11 frisson fits, as it happens. “Despite a full complement of thieves, pushers and pirates,” the Washington Post book review says, ” ‘Spook Country’ is less a conventional thriller than a devastatingly precise reflection of the American zeitgeist, and it bears comparison to the best work of Don DeLillo. . . . With a clear eye and a minimum of editorial comment, Gibson shows us a country that has drifted dangerously from its governing principles, evoking a kind of ironic nostalgia for a time when, as one character puts it, ‘grown-ups ran things.’ “
“Politics has, like, jacked itself up to my level of weirdness,” Gibson acknowledges. “I can work with this,” he says, thinking of recent turns of events. “I like the sheer sort of neo-Stalinist denial of reality. That’s what makes it work. It’s interesting. I’d like to see it get less interesting. But I don’t know that it necessarily will.”
More here.