Seen the Amazon Prime series that just came out #1 in US: The Peripheral? Based on a novel.

The novel begins sometime in the mid-twenty-first century in an unnamed rural American town. Flynne Fisher lives with her single mother and brother, Burton. Formerly one of the top officers in the Marines, Burton has been brain injured ever since his cohort implanted him with a faulty cybernetic device. Burton leaves home to engage in a counter-protest against an extremist religious group, asking Fisher to take his shift as a security officer for a virtual game world. Fisher accepts; at the time, neither of them realizes that the job provides surveillance for people in a future “branch” of spacetime. Fisher grows suspicious of the nature of the job when she witnesses a man murder a woman, who is then eaten by a swarm of “assemblers,” tiny robots which convert complex matter to simpler building blocks.

The novel shifts to the early twenty-second century, the timeline of Wilf Netherton. Several decades earlier, after a global climate apocalypse, the world government ran a lottery known as “The Jackpot” which implemented a new social order in the hope of reducing conflict. Working for American celebrity and diplomat Daedra West, Netherton ventures with her to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, now a solid landmass, on a mission to establish peace with its denizens, the “Patchers.” In an unfortunate skirmish, Daedra kills the Patcher boss, Hamed al-Habib, and flees. Assuming he is fired, Netherton meets his friend, Lev Zubov, the son of an uber-rich Russian oligarch family. Lev informs him that Aelita, Daedra’s sister, was killed while under the surveillance of Burton Fisher. They decide to find him to learn if he has any knowledge about her murderer.

Burton refers Netherton to Fisher, who tells him and Lev what she saw. Netherton conceals the fact that the murder took place in real life, rather than a virtual reality. He warns her that Burton is now a target of whoever killed Aelita; in response, Burton and his friends set up a military force at their house. Meanwhile, Netherton and Lev meet with Ainsley Lowbeer, the detective on Aelita’s case. She arranges for Fisher to come to the future via a peripheral. They get her online, explaining that they are from the same future where she witnessed the murder. Suspecting that more evidence will emerge at a party thrown by Daedra, Lowbeer gets Netherton and Fisher to attend. Conner, Burton’s friend, pilots another peripheral to guard them. Fisher is abducted by a drug kingpin, Corbell Pickett, who has been paid off by Aelita’s murderers under the alias “Matryoshka.” Conner and Burton rescue her, and Netherton appoints them to roles at Matryoshka’s competitor in the future, Coldiron USA.

The evening of Daedra’s party, Fisher catches a glimpse of Aelita’s murderer. This time, she is kidnapped by the man and Daedra. The man reveals himself as Hamed al-Habib, who staged his death in coordination with Daedra and underwent cosmetic surgery. The two have been plotting to sell the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and killed Aelita because they feared she would expose them.

Conner and Burton rescue Fisher and Netherton after battling it out with Hamed and his ally, Sir Henry. The latter two are killed, but Daedra is arrested and sentenced. At the novel’s end, Fisher marries a police officer with whom she has long been in love. Netherton sends Conner, who is a quadriplegic, futuristic 3D printing instructions for bionic limbs. Netherton falls in love with his old colleague and maintains contact with Fisher through their quantum channel. Fisher also keeps a channel open with Fisher’s mega-corporation, Milagros Coldiron, in the hopes of repairing the social and environmental decay in her universe and nurturing a more peaceful branch in spacetime. The Peripheral is rife with invented words and shifts back and forth through disparate and chaotic futuristic worlds. Gibson’s story suggests that the possibilities for ecological repair - and destruction - are just as numerous as the possibilities for technological evolution.