Mona Lisa Overdrive
Written by William Gibson.
Narrated by Jonathan Davis.
Publisher’s Summary:
The award-winning William Gibson goes beyond science fiction to the broader mainstream fiction audience. His unique world features multinational corporations and high-tech outlaws vying for power, traveling the computer-generated universe.
Plot summary from wikipedia:
Taking place eight years after the events of Count Zero and fifteen years after Neuromancer, the story is formed from several interconnecting plot threads, and also features characters from Gibson’s previous works (such as Molly Millions, the razor-fingered mercenary from Neuromancer).
One of the plot threads concerns Mona, a teen prostitute who has a more-than-passing resemblance to famed Simstim superstar Angie Mitchell. Mona is hired by shady individuals for a “gig” which later turns out to be part of a plot to abduct Angie.
The second story focuses on a young Japanese girl named Kumiko, daughter of a Yakuza boss sent to London to keep her safe while her father engages in a gang war with other top Yakuza leaders. In London she is cared for by one of her father’s retainers, who is also a powerful member of the London Mob. She meets Molly Millions (having altered her appearance and now calling herself “Sally Shears”, in order to conceal her identity from hostile parties who are implied to be pursuing her), who takes the girl under her wing.
The third story thread follows a reclusive artist named Slick Henry, who lives in a place named Factory in the Dog Solitude; a large, poisoned expanse of deserted factories and dumps, perhaps in New Jersey. Slick Henry is a convicted (and punished) car thief. As a result of the repetitive brainwashing nature of his punishment, he spends his days creating large robotic sculptures and periodically suffers episodes of time loss, returning to consciousness afterward with no memory of what he did during the blackout. He is hired by an acquaintance to look after the comatose “Count” (Bobby Newmark from the second novel, Count Zero, who has hooked himself into a super-capacity cyber-harddrive called an Aleph). A theoretical “Aleph” would have the RAM capacity to literally contain all of reality, enough that a memory construct of a person would contain the complete personality of the individual and allow it to learn, grow and act independently.
The final plot line follows Angela Mitchell, famous simstim star and the girl from the second Sprawl novel Count Zero. Angie, thanks to brain manipulations by her father when she was a child, has always had the ability to access cyberspace directly (without a cyberspace deck), but drugs provided by her production company Sense/Net have severely impeded this ability.
My Take:
Steppin’ Razor is back the final installment of the trilogy. Molly Millions, Sally Shears, Misty Steel…along with a Yakuza Boss, A London mob Boss, an exceptional tech deck cowboy Bobby Newmark are being hunted and extorted by a ghost in the machine Three Jane. As with all of Gibson’s works I am usually three chapters in before I have a clue what’s going on. Excellent writing and the range of the narrator pulls off a stellar performance. Five by five awesome cyberpunk nerdiness points.
The Series (The Complete Sprawl Trilogy):
http://www.audible.com/series?ref_=a_lib_l__vsml_1_1&asin=B006K1POZE
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