author : William Gibson

These essays, from the technological and cultural frontier, confront our attempts to make sense of this new territory. They cover a variety of subjects, including: ‘Metrophagy - the Art and Science of Digesting Great Cities’; an account of obsession in ‘the world’s attic’ – eBay; reasons why ‘The Net is a Waste of Time’; Singapore as ‘Disneyland with the Death Penalty’; and a primer on Japan, our default setting for the future.

Studded with revealing autobiographical fragments, these pieces map the development of Gibson’s acute perceptions about modern life. This is a guide to the new territory we find ourselves in – written by one of the first to explore it.

Verity, aka ‘the app-whisperer’, has just been hired by a shadowy start-up to evaluate a pair-of-glasses-cum-digital-assistant called Eunice. Only Eunice has other ideas.

It’s soon clear that Eunice is smarter than anyone she’s ever met, conceals some serious capabilities and is profoundly paranoid, which is just as well, since suddenly some bad people are after Verity.

Meanwhile, in a post-apocalyptic London a century from now, PR fixer Wilf Netherton is tasked with interfering in the alternative past in which Verity and Eunice exist. Something nasty is about to happen there – and fixing it will require not only Eunice’s unique human-AI skillset but also a little help from the future.

A future that Verity soon fears may never be…