The Thirty-fourth Book of 2026: Idoru, by William Gibson
Started 10/10/26, finished 10/12/26
Idoru, published in 1996, is the middle book William Gibson's Bridge trilogy. Like Virtual Light, it takes place in a world closer to our own than his Sprawl books. It uses social concerns and the technology that existed or could be seen coming in the 1990s to tell its story.
The word idoru in Japanese means "idol," in this case a celebrity icon. There are several such people in the story, but at the center of it is Rei Toei, a wildly popular singer and celebrity who doesn't exist except as data. Though she appears as a hologram, everything that she is (and there is no doubt in this story she is indeed a person) is nothing more or less than information.
The other celebrity in the story is Rez, the singer of a long-lived but still immensely popular band called Lo/Rez. Rez and Rei have announced they are to be married. This causes concern in the world-wide Lo/Rez fanbase, and spurs members of the Seattle chapter of the Lo/Rez fan club to send one of their own, 14-year old Chia McKenzie, to Japan to find out exactly what is going on. It is through her eyes much of the story unfolds.
In the meantime, Colin Laney, an analyst for the celebrity gossip show SlitScan, has been fired after the suicide of a woman he was following for the show. Laney has the ability to see "nodal points" in data and from these nodal points he can see things that will happen. He gained this ability as a child, when he was subjected to drug trials for S-5B, a substance that turned most of the subjects into homicidal stalkers -- something Laney has avoided so far.
Laney receives a tip from Berry Rydell (from Virtual Light) that there might be use for his esoteric talents in Japan. There he meets Yamazaki (also from Virtual Light) and Keith Blackwell, security chief for Rez. They want to find out what is behind Rez's interest in the idoru.
As in his earlier stories, Gibson takes the plotlines of Chia and Laney and gradually brings them together. They both want to figure out what Rez is trying to accomplish by marrying Rei. Chia wonders from the point of view of a fan of Rez. Laney's interest comes as someone exploring the data that makes up Rei and the data Rez generates as he lives -- something he finds uniquely difficult because Rez doesn't generate much data on his own. Most of Rez's interactions are at one remove, performed by assistants or the businesses and people surrounding him.
The story is set not long after the turn of the 21st century. Gibson successfully weaves together many elements of the growing online culture of the 1990s: multiuser dungeon (MUD) software, virtual spaces, teleconferencing, fan obsession of varying degrees, the Russian mafia rising from the ashes of the Soviet Union, the promise (or threat) of nanotechnology, which has rebuilt much of Tokyo after the recent "Godzilla" earthquake.
Idoru is a clear step closer to Gibson's next trilogy. Themes and even terminology that he uses in later books make their first appearance here. Here, though, he continues to indulge his interest in artificial intelligence through the person of Rez Toei, the idoru, who has more human concerns than either of the AIs in the Sprawl books. He also explores the relationship of celebrities and their fans. Chia comes away from her experiences in Tokyo having grown up significantly after surviving a dramatic subplot, which leads to her discovering Rez is just another human being like herself.
