The author of Neuromancer takes you to the vividly realized near future of 2005. Welcome to NoCal and SoCal, the uneasy sister-states of what used to be California. Here the millennium has come and gone, leaving in its wake only stunned survivors. In Los Angeles, Berry Rydell is a former armed-response rentacop now working for a bounty hunter. Chevette Washington is a bicycle messenger turned pick-pocket who impulsively snatches a pair of innocent-looking sunglasses. But these are no ordinary shades. What you can see through these high-tech specs can make you rich--or get you killed. Now Berry and Chevette are on the run, zeroing in on the digitalized heart of DatAmerica, where pure information is the greatest high. And a mind can be a terrible thing to crash.


From Publishers Weekly
Gibson's cyberpunk thriller set in a near-future L.A.--a two-week PW bestseller--depicts the hunt for virtual reality glasses containing classified data. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Chicago Tribune
Convincing...Frightening...Virtual Light is written with a sense of craft, a sense of humor and a sense of the ultimate seriousness of the problems it explores.


From AudioFile
Actor Peter Weller does an excellent job. His variety of voices perfectly captures the cast of sleezy characters. For cyberpunk fans. J.W.L. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Kirkus Reviews
Near-future good little-guys vs. bad redevelopers tussle--set in a California split into two states: from the cyberspace and virtual reality guru (Mona Lisa Overdrive, 1988; The Difference Engine, 1991, with Bruce Sterling, etc.). By the year 2005, the middle classes have vanished, leaving a vast struggling mass of impoverished workers or unemployed, with the amoral rich insulated by their purchasing power from the social Darwinistic carnage below. The nightmarish, corrosive backdrop combines nanotech medical machines, virtual reality spectacles, data havens, and secret control by multinational corporations--all standard Gibsonian tools--against which the characters are little better than walking shadows. When motorbike messenger Chevette Washington steals a pair of unusual sunglasses from an obnoxious drunk at a rich San Francisco hotel party, unlucky rent-a-cop Berry Rydell finds himself hired, under peculiar circumstances, to drive for Lucius Warbaby, a freelance skip-tracer who has been retained by a big security firm to recover the missing item. But the glasses have a mysterious importance--their erstwhile owner soon turns up with his throat cut; some Russian heavies, ostensibly real cops, muscle in; a terrifying assassin stalks Chevette, forcing Rydell to decide who's side he's on. The glasses, he eventually learns, contain a Japanese multinational's plans to redevelop the entire Bay area, regardless of the opinions of its inhabitants. Gibson combines an extraordinarily rich prose texture with starkly effective dialogue into a convincing, in-your-face future reality. His plotting, though, even more so than in previous outings, is flimsy and contrived. Dazzling snapshots, then--but, like cyberspace, everything disappears when you switch off. (First printing of 55,000) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Entertainment Weekly
A stunner...A terrifically stylish burst of kick-butt imagination!


Review
  "A stunner... A terrifically stylish burst of  kick-butt imagination." -- Entertainment  Weekly

"Convincing...  Frightening...Virtual Light is  written with a sense of craft, a sense of humor and a  sense of the ultimate seriousness of the problems  it explores." -- Chicago  Tribune

"In the emerging pop culture  of the information age, Gibson is the brightest  star." -- The San Diego Union-Tribune

"Although considered the  master of 'cyberpunk' science fiction, William Gibson  is also one fine suspense writer." --  People


Review
  "A stunner... A terrifically stylish burst of  kick-butt imagination." -- Entertainment  Weekly

"Convincing...  Frightening...Virtual Light is  written with a sense of craft, a sense of humor and a  sense of the ultimate seriousness of the problems  it explores." -- Chicago  Tribune

"In the emerging pop culture  of the information age, Gibson is the brightest  star." -- The San Diego Union-Tribune

"Although considered the  master of 'cyberpunk' science fiction, William Gibson  is also one fine suspense writer." --  People


Book Description
2005: Welcome to NoCal and SoCal, the uneasy sister-states of what used to be California. Here the millenium has come and gone, leaving in its wake only stunned survivors. In Los Angeles, Berry Rydell is a former armed-response rentacop now working for a bounty hunter. Chevette Washington is a bicycle messenger turned pickpocket who impulsively snatches a pair of innocent-looking sunglasses. But these are no ordinary shades. What you can see through these high-tech specs can make you rich--or get you killed. Now Berry and Chevette are on the run, zeroing in on the digitalized heart of DatAmerica, where pure information is the greatest high. And a mind can be a terrible thing to crash...


The publisher, Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
"2005: Welcome to NoCal and SoCal, the uneasy sister-states of what used to be California. Here the millenium has come and gone, leaving in its wake only stunned survivors. In Los Angeles, Berry Rydell is a former armed-response rentacop now working for a bounty hunter. Chevette Washington is a bicycle messenger turned pickpocket who impulsively snatches a pair of innocent-looking sunglasses. But these are no ordinary shades. What you can see through these high-tech specs can make you rich--or get you killed. Now Berry and Chevette are on the run, zeroing in on the digitalized heart of DatAmerica, where pure information is the greatest high. And a mind can be a terrible thing to crash...

"A stunner... A terrifically stylish burst of kick-butt imagination." -- Entertainment Weekly

"Convincing... Frightening...Virtual Light is written with a sense of craft, a sense of humor and a sense of the ultimate seriousness of the problems it explores." -- Chicago Tribune

"In the emerging pop culture of the information age, Gibson is the brightest star." -- The San Diego Union-Tribune

"Although considered the master of 'cyberpunk' science fiction, William Gibson is also one fine suspense writer." -- People


From the Inside Flap
2005: Welcome to NoCal and SoCal, the uneasy  sister-states of what used to be California. Here the  millenium has come and gone, leaving in its wake  only stunned survivors. In Los Angeles, Berry  Rydell is a former armed-response rentacop now working  for a bounty hunter. Chevette Washington is a  bicycle messenger turned pickpocket who impulsively  snatches a pair of innocent-looking sunglasses. But  these are no ordinary shades. What you can see  through these high-tech specs can make you rich--or  get you killed. Now Berry and Chevette are on the  run, zeroing in on the digitalized heart of  DatAmerica, where pure information is the greatest high.  And a mind can be a terrible thing to crash...


From the Back Cover
"A stunner... A terrifically stylish burst of kick-butt imagination." -- Entertainment Weekly "Convincing... Frightening...Virtual Light is written with a sense of craft, a sense of humor and a sense of the ultimate seriousness of the problems it explores." -- Chicago Tribune "In the emerging pop culture of the information age, Gibson is the brightest star." -- The San Diego Union-Tribune "Although considered the master of 'cyberpunk' science fiction, William Gibson is also one fine suspense writer." -- People

ANNOTATION

The New York Times bestselling "cyber-mystery thriller" by the visionary creator of Mona Lisa Overdrive. In 2005 in the states of Northern and Southern California, an ex-cop agrees to track down a young thief who has stolen a valuable technological prototype--for which a mysterious corporation will pay any price or break any law to get back.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Now, with his most fascinating novel to date, Gibson looks into our very near future, bringing it into sharp and darkly comic focus. Welcome to NoCal and SoCal, 2005, the uneasy sister-states of Northern and Southern California, in a nation and society still divided along seismic fault lines of wealth and power...chasms seldom crossed except in fear, exploitation, or violence. The millennium has come and gone, leaving in its wake the ruins of our outworn modern era and the first chaotic suggestions of a new paradigm. In Tokyo a new city is growing from the rubble of Godzilla the Superquake. In San Francisco Mr. Yamazaki, a Japanese anthropology student, investigates the deeper meaning of an anarchic squatter community constructed around the disused Bay Bridge. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Berry Rydell just wants to make a living. Not the easiest thing for an ex-cop from Tennessee to do - now that the network has decided not to base that episode of Cops in Trouble on his brief but all too eventful career with the Knoxville P.D. Rydell signs on with IntenSecure Armed Response, driving a six-wheeled Hotspur Hussar... It's only a matter of time before he runs into Chevette Washington, a bicycle messenger who has just crashed the wrong party...and who is about to pick the pocket of another kind of courier - an employee of Costa Rica's Medellin-financed havens of illicit data. When IntenSecure sends Rydell to San Francisco to drive for Lucius Warbaby, a skip-tracer in the Virtual Reality maze of DatAmerica, Rydell and Chevette find themselves on a journey into the ecstasy and dread that mirror each other at the heart of the postmodern experience. A tour de force of relentless suspense, daring insight, and graphic intensity Virtual Light is a provocative and unforgettable portrait of life on the edge of the twenty-first century.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Gibson's cyberpunk thriller set in a near-future L.A.--a two-week PW bestseller--depicts the hunt for virtual reality glasses containing classified data. (Aug.)

BookList - Carl Hays

Since the ground-breaking "Neuromancer" (1984), Gibson has been the acknowledged dean of cyberpunk, the sf subgenre that merges cutting-edge technology with the street-smart grittiness of crime fiction. In a departure from his first three novels, which plumbed the intricacies of the cyberspace universe called the Matrix, Gibson here follows the sometimes violent misadventures of Rydell, an ex-security guard, and Chevette, a San Francisco bike messenger, as they unwittingly become ensnared in a plot involving a pair of high-tech-virtual-reality sunglasses. When Chevette impulsively steals the glasses from a wealthy customer at a party, she immediately attracts the heat of a private security team that hires Rydell as a driver. After running afoul of his noticeably corrupt employers, Rydell joins forces with Chevette in a perilous contest with their adversaries when the pair discovers the real nature and dire purpose of the sunglasses. Once again, Gibson proves masterly at fusing razor-edged characterizations with a richly textured, crisply described background via electrifying prose. (One particularly ingenious idea here is the transformation of the San Francisco Bay Bridge into a sprawling enclave for the city's homeless.) Much of the novel's conceptual turf is already well-traveled territory for Gibson, but routine Gibson is still superb science fiction. Discriminating fans, whether of cyberpunk in particular or not, won't be disappointed by his latest.

AudioFile - Jeanette Larson

Actor Peter Weller does an excellent job. His variety of voices perfectly captures the cast of sleezy characters. For cyberpunk fans. J.W.L. ￯﾿ﾽAudioFile, Portland, Maine

AudioFile - Eugene E. LaFaille

A vibrant, gritty Southern California of the future is the setting for this tale of an unusual pair of sunglasses which sinister forces seek to reclaim from bicycle messenger Chevette Washington and private security guard Berry Rydell. Frank Muller￯﾿ﾽs voice lends a surreal quality to this cyberpunk story. He caresses each word to increase its emotional level. His reading style is charming, edgy and whimsical. And his range of accents, as well as gender and age distinctions, is superb. Muller￯﾿ﾽs version of Virtual Light shines as an example for other readers to emulate. E.E.L. An AUDIOFILE Earphones Award winner ￯﾿ﾽAudioFile, Portland, Maine

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Gibson's writing is a diamond sharp kaleidoscope of sensations that will leave you breathless. Do not miss this book! — Robert Crais