It’s nearly November, which means we’re due for our annual check-in on Amazon’s adaptation of William Gibson’s The Peripheral. We first heard about it back in 2018 when Westworld showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy first started developing the project, and then we heard about it again in 2019 when Amazon picked up the series. Now it’s 2020, and Variety says that Chloë Grace Moretz will be starring in the show as Flynne Fisher, “a woman trying to hold together the pieces of her broken family in a forgotten corner of tomorrow’s America.” Maybe by 2021 we’ll get the name of at least one co-star?
The book takes place in two separate timelines, before and after a devastating economic collapse, with Flynne taking a job as a security drone operator in a futuristic video game and witnessing a digital murder that might be a real murder. Saying too much more would probably be a spoiler, but it should be pretty obvious that there’s some high-tech time travel-y stuff involved. It’s sort of like Ready Player One but with a sci-fi dystopia instead of ‘80s movies. Knowing Nolan and Joy, it could all end up being pretty cool in the transition to TV… but with the potential for some odd rough spots if this gets to three seasons.
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“but with the potential for some odd rough spots if this gets to three seasons.”Well, if we’re going by Westworld, it would be ‘gets to a second season’.That being said, Nolan started slow and ended great with PoI.
can we all agree that westworld is bad and has no clue where it’s going?
So pretty to look at, such a huge budget, excellent actors, gorgeous scenery, HORRIBLE WRITING. It’s a true tragedy.
Yeah, I read this headline as “Chloë Grace Moretz signs up for show that will probably be good for one season and devolve into spectacle after that”(I’m a sucker for near-future settings. I watched all of Westworld Season 3 while being totally over it. Help me.)
I did the same. Someone needs to remind Jonathon Nolan that if you want the audience to care about the final twist of the finale they have to care about the events that came before. You can’t have 9 episodes of obfuscation and expect a satisfying pay off, which is what I would argue he’s done all three seasons we just didn’t know it yet with season 1
I thought this seasons twist was going to be that it was intentionally bad and Dolores was in a bad scifi movie trope world. But nope, just bad.
Yeah, it’s exactly like “Ready Player One.” Except completely different and, you know, well written and good.
ouch that is spicy and I like Ready Player One and it is absolute trash garbage, the movie’s worse, I also like it, it’s terrible…I put it on when spending time with a relative, they said “what is this garbage?” I said it’s a Steven Spielberg movie, relative said “Steven Spielberg made this garbage?” I said “Yes, yes he did.” But I will actually defend the Overlook sequence at least.are you the fake Emilio?
I am real. Hover over the username. No misspellings.
so not the one who shouts about SJWs?
It’s an article with a tenuous connection to Westworld and the immediate reaction is not “LIBTARD SJW CUCK SHIT” so I trust that this is the Good Emilio.
I have left the name before, just leave the name, be buddhist, all one all none!
I’m still vaguely ashamed I read that book, he got me on the fucking Tomb of Horrors nostalgia hook, fucker.
But Ready Player One WAS a dystopian science fiction novel. So, uh, now you AND the article are both wrong.
I mean, they both had words in them. So they are both pretty much “Anna Karenina.”If you want to compare that trash to Gibson, you might as well go with The Bridge Trilogy. It’s a really bad imitation of that, but it is closer than “The Peripheral.”
Woo, I’m an old fan of Gibson. I have a copy of his Agency in my living room, demanding the next however long of my time.
I’m not a Moretz lover, there are other actors that have matured outside of the system who could deliver a stronger performance, but I’ll accept it.
I never read Ready Player One, comes across as a bit of a juvenile wank fantasy. I watched the movie for Spielberg.
Now, signing out internet.
Having read the books, I’m not seeing any similarity whatsoever to Ready Player One regardless of quality and am frankly mystified by the comparison. There is a bit where a character in the book’s present (our future in maybe 10-20 years) “plays” what they think is a video game, but they are actually controlling a robot in the future maybe a century later.
Couldn’t get more than a few chapters in before jumping ship. Even as a child of the 80s, the layers of precious references (and did he also fucking footnote them?) turned me off to what little story was happening.
“What’s it?”“It’s peripheral, init.”“Wuzzat?”“You know. Loik, off to the side.”“You sure? Seems more ‘round the edge, dunnit?”
“That’s wut oim sayin’, mate!” ~ Excerpt, The Peripheral, 1999 (Director: Guy Ritchie)
(insert improv about shoving cones and rods up guys’ butts and how gay that is, mate)
‘Mon then, bruv.
Karl Urban (in character): faaaahhhhhkinggggg kant (immanuel)!
I haven’t read it yet, but it’s Gibson, and for fuck’s sake, at least it’s new sci-fi.
Can we get some Old Man’s War now? Maybe get Consider Phlebas moving? Or get really whacky and try to adapt the Ancillary series?
The Consider Phlebas show has been shelved, apparently there were irreconcilable differences between Amazon and the Banks estate. The Imperial Radch/Ancillary novels were optioned a few years ago but no word since then.
I just read the Culture series for the first time and, honestly, I liked Matter the best.
Matter is amazing, I think I enjoyed Use of Weapons the most. I didn’t think any of them were bad though, I had fun with all of them.
I loved the way Use of Weapons was written but I wasn’t so keen on the plot for some reason. I thought the series really got good with Look to Windward.
I liked how it exposed some of the flaws in the Culture’s approach to diplomacy and intervention. It was in many ways the exploration of the Culture’s own cognitive bias.
Oh yeah that was a good part about it for sure, I think it took too long to get anywhere for my taste though.I’m more of a big ideas guy so I think that’s why Matter really appealed to me.
The twist of the ending of A Use of Weapons would make a great film plot to start a Culture Series.
Chloë. Why’d it have to be Chloë.
Puppet show and Chloë Grace Moretz
I found the book to be one of Gibson’s more interesting premises (and he’s had a lot of good ones) yet one of his worst written. The conflicts just never came together in a way that made sense to me, and there was quite a lot of telling, not showing, in the resolution.So, actually, that might make it the best choice for a tv adaptation. More flexibility, not as tightly constructed as something like Neuromancer or even Pattern Recognition.
I went on a Gibson jag earlier this year and it’s interesting that much of his work is pretty poorly written. The whole Blue Ant series is just a bunch of telling without a whole lot happening, it’s REALLY boring. The Sprawl and Bridge books are definitely better, but man did the guy never really recaptured the magic of the Sprawl books.That said I think The Peripheral is fertile ground for a good series.
I feel the opposite, over time and with several rereads Blue Ant has become one of my favourite series of Gibson’s.
I’ll probably reread it next year or something and may change my opinion. I know it has a pretty big fanbase so good chance it’s just not for me.
It’s definitely different from his sci-fi work, and some of it feels dated now because it was so firmly set in the time it was written. But I think it holds up better on a reread than the Bridge Trilogy, which I loved when it came out but was a bit lukewarm on when I revisited it years later.
I’m sure that the lack of sci-fi was a part of why I couldn’t get into it.
“It’s sort of like Ready Player One but with a sci-fi dystopia instead of ‘80s movies.”If it hews to the books it’s not at all like RP1.
I loved The Peripheral, but man was the sequel disappointing. Assuming this is an ongoing series and not a one-off, I really hope they go their own direction with the story or find a way to improve on the second book.
There’s an upcoming sci-fi book by Essa Hansen called ‘Nophek Gloss,’ releasing this November from Orbit books, that is just begging for a tv or film adaption. It is phenomenal stuff. Visually captivating, while playing with biology, super-cool tech, pushing humanity’s normalization of boundaries, and a gods-damned spaceship that can create it’s own universe. And another ship that’s made out of liquid. I landed an ARC of it and it’s one of the best SF debuts I’ve read in ages. Anyone looking for some more modern sci-fi material not named ‘The Expanse’ should put this book on their to-be-read pile. Any TV/film production teams reading this should pick it up as well.