The Peripheral is a science fiction novel from William Gibson set in an awfully recognizable near future and a slightly less recognizable but still palpable further future—there’s kind-of-time-travel, but not quite. It’s been so long since I last read Gibson. I’d forgotten how wild and weird his books can feel, while also feeling so grounded in our own reality. I wrote a little about this last week. I have more observations now.

Quick note: The Peripheral was also turned into a TV show, but I haven’t watched that.

Reading The Peripheral reminded me of the strangeness of my own cultural position as a reader. I understand that there’s a readership out there that finds anything less than systemic change in the conclusions of their stories to be disappointing or depressing. Similarly, I know that some people crave a clear sense of who is good and who is bad. They want villains and heroes, not muddled grey palettes with characters who’re very aware that their only grace is being more self-aware of how they’re warping the world.

While I want those things sometimes, I don’t always need them. Thus I find Gibson’s work palatable, even tasty.

The Peripheral does have clear protagonists, and it does have sympathetic characters trying to change the world in a slightly more positive way—but those characters are not traditional clear-cut heroic figures, and even they can see how the change they’re creating isn’t always for the better. The villains, the opposition, aren’t all monsters either. They’re just people, even if some of them are cruel or uncaring. I appreciate that.

I also like that the protagonists and our main POV characters aren’t the normal heroic sci-fi fare because that changes the kinds of scenes and dynamics in which we find them. They’re not the action heroes, they’re mostly regular people who have a few moments of clarity in terrifying situations. Relatedly, there were several scenes where I couldn’t help but think that another author writing this story would have placed the POV with a different character—the action hero character, the one making big, bold, violent choices. That makes our POV protagonists even more interesting, I think, because the moments in which they are heroic (or not) are atypical, and distinct, and honestly feel more accessibly human than the standard action hero fare.

I think that ties into how Gibson’s stories often make me feel.

On one hand, Gibson’s stories have long felt somewhat depressing to me. They tend to feature skilled and talented and committed people facing off against foes far outside their weight class—and while there can be success, it’s more often on a personal scale than an epic one. On the other hand, Gibson’s stories are a powerful reminder that we’re all just people, humans, and that sometimes we make morally laudable choices and sometimes we don’t. We’re fallible. We’re fallible, and the systems and power structures we create are fallible, and even when those big powerful social machines seem untouchable and inevitable they’re not. Those big powerful social machines—the systems and power structures—that we’ve created are fragile and vulnerable to change.

That reminder is both daunting and heartening. It’s like the call of positive nihilism; there is no inherent meaning or value, so it’s up to us to make meaning of our lives. If we want to see good done in the world, we have to get up off our asses and advocate for it, enact it.

I’m wandering from The Peripheral, but I can’t help it. I’m witnessing a president unlawfully arrogate unconstitutional powers for himself and his unelected cronies. I see violations of constitutional law, and the exercise of petty revenge for shits and giggles, and an ongoing attempt to burn down the functioning apparatus of our nation-state in order to secure more ideological support for a kleptocratic plutocracy and to oust any who might oppose that. In short, I’m not wandering from The Peripheral at all because reality is in the process of imitating art, even though I’m pretty sure the art in question was trying to warn us, not entice us.

It is, really, pretty damn awful.

But this is why I said The Peripheral is both daunting and heartening. We don’t have to accept the stupid greedy short-sightedness of the president and his billionaire cult of opportunists. He’s doing a lot of damage. It will take a lot of time and effort to rebuild. But this would-be emperor has no clothes—he’s just trying to bluster his way through breaking laws as quickly as possible because he knows he can’t legally do any of the things he really wants. He’s hoping that no one calls him on it, and that if anyone does call him on it that no one stubbornly puts their foot down and rubs his face in the mess he’s making.

We, like our protagonists in The Peripheral, can call out the bullshit and try to do better.

If you’re looking for escapism, this might not be the book for you right now. It is a good book though.