★★★★★ Maybe everything is not entirely awful

Mona Lisa Overdrive

William Gibson

Mona Lisa Overdrive is the third and final novel in William Gibson's Cyberspace trilogy, To me, this one felt different from the first two, in that it feels more happy, and not everyone in it is a petty criminal down on his/her luck. The main point-of-view characters are Mona, Angie, Kumiko, and Slick Henry. Mona and Slick Henry fit the character types of Neuromancer and Count Zero -- Mona is a cheap drug-addicted prostitute and Slick Henry an ex-con with brain damage. They live in or near the Sprawl -- the vast conurbation on the Eastern seaboard of what used to be the USA. Angie and Kumiko, however are rich and lawful. Angie (whom we first met in Count Zero) is the biggest of simstim stars. Kumiko is the daughter of a wealthy Yakuza boss, visiting London while her father tries to survive a gang war. While her father is the leader of a criminal gang, Kumiko herself is not a criminal.

While undoubtedly the world has gone to Hell in a handbasket between here and the Sprawl, things are not quite so entirely desperate for rich folks. Because we have two of them, Angie and Kumiko, as point of view characters, the world of Mona Lisa Overdrive feels a little less awful than that of Neuromancer and Count Zero. Clearly it is the same world and is just as terrible a place, but we get an impression of niches in which joy is possible. Our old friend Molly shows up in London under the alias Sally Shears and takes Kumiko in hand, and she is as always a tower of strength and dark-hued joy.

I don't want to overstate this. Angie, Kumiko, and Sally have their problems, and the world of Mona Lisa Overdrive is still the dystopia of Neuromancer and Count Zero. But one feels that this dark world has some bright spots in it, or at least I did.

Mona Lisa Overdrive is not exactly a happy ending to the Cyberspace trilogy, but to me it kind of had that feel.

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