SOURCE.

Gibson's familiar idées fixes—passing references to Cornell boxes, nodal points, lateral thinking and the like—survive his inaugural foray into the present tense intact. The added currency also allows him to wax hypertextually on topics as varied as terrorism, Russian oil, globalization and viral marketing. If Gibson's tendency to let his characters exposit lengthily loses some of its energy in the absence of a novel future setting, his peerless ability to channel corporate intrigue, consumerism, semiotics and Japanese culture into gleaming prose and brutal, beautiful set pieces is as vital as ever.