THE PERIPHERAL, s1 (2022)

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still from Amazon's THE PERIPHERAL, two robots

Having read Gibson's original novel when it came out almost ten years ago, I can't attest to how faithful this streaming translation was (not that it really matters) but two things did stick out: one, I don't recall Flynn being so irritatingly passive in Gibson's original; and two, Alexandra Billings was phenomenal and needs to be in everything.

Yesbut: too much of THE PERIPHERAL's eight episodes were a slog redeemed only by its last few (probably once Ned Dennehy and Billings showed up): given the source and the WESTWORLDly and SIMPLE PLAN (love that film) talent behind it, I had hoped for more – suppose I was quasi-precient in saying "in Gibson and Nolan and Joy I (mostly) trust," this first season being a case study in that trust being misplaced for 2/3 of the fruits of their collaboration.

Nonetheless, given how this first season ended, I do hope for a season two – but that it took long enough to get rolling that a second season is required at all is problematic, at best.

"… but rather a matter of a personal micro-culture"

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While Gibson fuses the idea of "personal micro-culture" here to writing fiction, I've long considered not only all of my writing, fiction or non–, but also my postings into the ether of here as the digital representatives of the personal micro-culture that makes me well, me:

"And thus we are shaped as writers, I believe, not so much by who our favorite writers are as by our general experience of fiction. Learning to write fiction, we learn to listen for our own acquired sense of what feels right, based on the totality of the pleasure (or its lack) that fiction has provided us. Not direct emulation, but rather a matter of a personal micro-culture."

Recording (and refreshing my memory of) it in this space as a sort of statement of creative intent for the incoming year.