Questions about The Peripheral by Wm. Gibson (part 2)
May 25, 2022 11:54 AM   Subscribe

Preliminary to reading Agency I'm re-reading The Peripheral and I have questions about that first scene in the future.

  1. Why is Daedra West parafoiling into the Patch? To interview a Patcher?
  2. Wilf apparently called them "post-human filth" but what exactly are these Patchers? Do/Can they speak? Were they the result of some proto-Peripheral fabrication/experimention?
  3. Okay, created during or after the Jackpot, but by who? How'd they get way out in the ocean -‌- are they spawned by the Patch, somehow?
  4. Who directed them to clean up the ocean -‌- and if they can't be communicated with, how does that directing work? Maybe some instinct, installed during creation?
Previously: Mid's Questions about The Peripheral from late 2016.
posted by Rash to Media & Arts (10 answers total)
 
Best answer: 1. Yes; she's a media personality who does high-risk interviews and things.
2. They're people with a weird philosophy, and the ability to execute/live it - they aren't particularly technically revolutionary, from what I remember, but are aesthetically interesting to the post-Jackpot society.
3. I don't think that they were created by anyone; they chose to live/exist in a certain way, and were possibly infiltrated by a political agent for the attempted assassination. They got out to the Patch however they felt like, presumably - a boat or a plane or some sort of post-Jackpot transport.
4. Again, they seem to be described with as much autonomy as anyone else; they wouldn't have to be ordered by anyone. I think they're also described in the book as communicating, or at least to have stated conditions for the visit to take place.
posted by sagc at 12:01 PM on May 25, 2022 [3 favorites]


Best answer: I also think they’re maybe not fully developed in Gibson’s mind.


SORT OF SPOILER


They’re almost completely irrelevant to the rest of the book. Functionally, they mostly seem to be an indication that this is a weird and complex future that the reader shouldn’t think they understand completely.
posted by LizardBreath at 12:13 PM on May 25, 2022 [4 favorites]


I figured they were similar to the communities of people with specific philosophies/body modifications/lifestyles in Transmetropolitan - a distinctive and non-normative but autonomous community of modified humans.
posted by ASF Tod und Schwerkraft at 1:26 PM on May 25, 2022


From what I recall: The patchers have been using the debris in the ocean to create a new landmass that they are living on. They have modified themselves extensively both for esthetic reasons and to have physical protection from the extreme conditions they face from living on a huge piece of plastic in the sun/wind/sea, and in so doing changed themselves so much that they have become culturally isolated from the rest of the world. They've extracted and recycled so much plastic from the ocean that people are interested in making some sort of deal with them to use that material like a natural resource, and Daedra is attempting to make contact and start those negotiations.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 2:09 PM on May 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


Best answer: Coincidentally, I just finished reading The Peripheral and will take a shot at this...
FWIW, I think this book is chock-full of shit Gibson either just let hang in the air, or never developed.

1. It’s never exactly made clear why Daedra was parafoiling onto the Patch. The narrative seems to wobble between art piece, interview, negotiation, or a combo of all of them. In any case, there’s an inference that somehow the US government is somehow peripherally involved. This is never explained.

2. The Patchers, as I came to understand it, were/are the ones who first utilized assembler tech to convert the enormous plastic “patch” in the Pacific ocean into something akin to a liveable island of sorts. The Patchers themselves are presented as some sort of extremely modified humans, perhaps by assembler tech. It’s also never explained adequately.

3. Never explained. The inference is that the Patch is the ginormous gyre of plastic waste floating in the middle of the Pacific that we have today. I assumed the Patchers were the ones who first applied assembler tech to the Patch to create the thing they live on.

4. Again, never explained. I think it’s best to understand the Patchers as being one aspect of what is implied to be a movement of groups turning away the modern world of that near-future, post Jackpot, Earth. The Patchers are presented as being a more dangerously eclectic group, though.

As I said, the book is full of unexplained things that some of the story hinges on, and stuff that’s just left hanging.

My biggest unexplained bit of this book is the how and why stubs are created in the first place, and how is communication between the two performed? And why was it necessary to employ people in the stub to run drone security/surveillance of one particular place in the post-Jackpot world. That bit alone makes no reasonably fucking sense at all.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:03 AM on May 26, 2022


Response by poster: Thanks for all your answers and conjecture! Just realized, I omitted a question:

5. Why do they call the vessel they've got out there a moby? It's obviously a ship; it has decks.
posted by Rash at 8:45 AM on May 26, 2022


Response by poster: And responding to your last questions, Thorzdad, Gibson says the communication is via a Chinese (or sometimes vampire) server, in a location which cannot be determined. Yes, makes no sense -‌- but without this setup, he's got no story.
posted by Rash at 8:53 AM on May 26, 2022


Response by poster: Ah, got it.

5. A moby is an airship, the term possibly related to Flynne's observation of 'whales' floating over London.
posted by Rash at 1:17 PM on May 26, 2022


Gibson says the communication is via a Chinese (or sometimes vampire) server, in a location which cannot be determined.

I believe the mysterious chinese server is hypothesized as the way the bad guys (matryoshka) have somehow entered Coldiron’s stub. That’s supposedly technically not possible, and yet it happens. I don’t think they ever explain where Coldiron’s server, or whatever, is located.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:32 PM on May 26, 2022


I think that the way Gibson makes you fill in a lot of the blanks is part of why his books are so arresting. He hints at ideas, and we'll have these discussions about what it all means, and that carves out a space in our heads for the world he's created. He makes us participate in making that world, and when that's done well it's total magic. I don't feel this way about all his books, but the ones that work are amazing.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 2:43 AM on May 27, 2022 [1 favorite]


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