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Narrated by:
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Lorelei King
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By:
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William Gibson
About this listen
An instant New York Times best seller
"One of the most visionary, original, and quietly influential writers currently working" (The Boston Globe) returns with a sharply imagined follow-up to the New York Times best-selling The Peripheral.
William Gibson has trained his eye on the future for decades, ever since coining the term "cyberspace" and then popularizing it in his classic speculative novel Neuromancer in the early 1980s. Cory Doctorow raved that The Peripheral is "spectacular, a piece of trenchant, far-future speculation that features all the eyeball kicks of Neuromancer." Now, Gibson is back with Agency - a science-fiction thriller heavily influenced by our most current events.
Verity Jane, gifted app whisperer, takes a job as the beta tester for a new product: a digital assistant, accessed through a pair of ordinary-looking glasses. "Eunice", the disarmingly human AI in the glasses, manifests a face, a fragmentary past, and a canny grasp of combat strategy. Realizing that her cryptic new employers don’t yet know how powerful and valuable Eunice is, Verity instinctively decides that it’s best they don’t.
Meanwhile, a century ahead in London, in a different time line entirely, Wilf Netherton works amid plutocrats and plunderers, survivors of the slow and steady apocalypse known as the jackpot. His boss, the enigmatic Ainsley Lowbeer, can look into alternate pasts and nudge their ultimate directions. Verity and Eunice are her current project. Wilf can see what Verity and Eunice can’t: their own version of the jackpot, just around the corner, and the roles they both may play in it.
©2018 William Gibson (P)2018 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Engaging, thought-provoking and delightful... [Gibson] can always be counted on to show us our contemporary milieu rendered magical by his unique insights, and a future rendered inhabitable by his wild yet disciplined imagination." (The Washington Post)
"Superb... Each sentence is a hand-turned marvel of compact characterization, world-building and sardonic wit, all used to illuminate his vivid milieus.... Gibson has an inexhaustible supply of tricks, new stories and new ways of telling them that make him the most consistent predictor of our present, contextualizer of our pasts and presager of our possible futures." (Los Angeles Times)
"An immersive thriller, fueled by an intelligent, empathetic imagination." (The Boston Globe)
Featured Article: Listen Before You Watch—The Biggest Page-to-Screen Adaptations in Fall/Winter 2022
It’s not just crunchy leaves and cozy vibes that autumn brings. This fall and winter, television and movie fans also have a lot to look forward to, with major page-to-screen adaptations slated from streaming and theatrical releases. So, as your next listen, consider tuning in to the original works that have inspired what are sure to be our new book-to-movie and book-to-television obsessions.

Editor's Pick
The future is now!
"Six years after William Gibson’s The Peripheral, the groundbreaking writer returns with a follow-up sci-fi thriller that continues the timeline hopping fun The Agency. It’s a must-listen for anyone who is a fan of Gibson’s thought-provoking prose. Award-winning narrator Lorelai King’s performance more than keeps up with the fast-paced storyline that bounces between an alternative 2017 and a future London in a different timeline. You first get to know Verity Jane, an app whisperer, as she tests out a new AI named Eunice and assesses the true power it holds. Then there’s Wilf Netherton and his boss Lowbeer, who play with the past in a way that will impact Verity and Eunice. There’s a bit of a runway before it all comes together but it’s a fun ride the whole way."—Abby W., Audible Editor
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Story
Colin Laney is here looking for work. He is an intuitive fisher for patterns of information. But Laney knows how to sift for the dangerous bits. Which makes him useful - to certain people. Chia McKenzie is here on a rescue mission. Her idol is the singer Rez, of the band Lo,Rez. When the Seattle chapter of the Lo,Rez fan club decided that he might be in trouble in Tokyo, they sent Chia to check it out. Rei Toei is the idoru - the beautiful, entirely virtual media star adored by all Japan. Rez has declared that he will marry her. This is the rumor that has brought Chia to Tokyo.
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The narrator made me turn this off in 10 seconds
- By Rob on 12-02-18
By: William Gibson
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Burning Chrome
- By: William Gibson
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Dennis Holland, Kevin Pariseau, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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William Gibson's dark visions of computer cowboys, bio-enhanced soldiers of fortune, and hi-tech lowlifes have won unprecedented praise. Included here are some of the most famous short fiction and novellas by the author of Count Zero and Neuromancer.
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abstract art
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 04-05-14
By: William Gibson
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Archangel
- By: William Gibson, Michael St. John Smith
- Narrated by: Josh Hurley, Victor Bevine, Elizabeth Jasicki, and others
- Length: 2 hrs and 43 mins
- Original Recording
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The year is 2016. Not our 2016. Theirs. Earth is dying, the result of a worldwide nuclear holocaust caused by America’s dictatorial President-for-Life Lewis Henderson, a man who will use any means necessary to maintain power and survive. Enter: The Splitter. A machine capable of splitting off an exact replica of Henderson’s world. A world where the cataclysmic events causing its destruction have yet to occur. That world is ours.
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Under three hours
- By Colin Turner on 08-16-18
By: William Gibson, and others
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The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.
- A Novel
- By: Neal Stephenson, Nicole Galland
- Narrated by: Laurence Bouvard, Shelley Atkinson, Laural Merlington, and others
- Length: 24 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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From best-selling author Neal Stephenson and critically acclaimed historical and contemporary commercial novelist Nicole Galland comes a captivating and complex near-future thriller combining history, science, magic, mystery, intrigue, and adventure that questions the very foundations of the modern world.
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Exceptional voice cast, unconventional format
- By Jesse on 07-03-17
By: Neal Stephenson, and others
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Alien: Covenant Origins
- The Official Prequel to the Blockbuster Film
- By: Alan Dean Foster
- Narrated by: Tom Taylorson
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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The Covenant mission is the most ambitious endeavor in the history of Weyland-Yutani. A ship bound for Origae-6, carrying 2,000 colonists beyond the limits of known space, this is a make-or-break investment for the corporation - and for the future of all mankind. Yet there are those who would die to stop the mission. As the colony ship hovers in Earth orbit, several violent events reveal a deadly conspiracy to sabotage the launch.
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Great narrator, lackluster writing
- By Tobie on 06-28-18
By: Alan Dean Foster
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Secret Histories
- I Am Number Four: The Lost Files
- By: Pittacus Lore
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith, John Reynolds
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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I Am Number Four: The Lost Files: Secret Histories is the second collection of action-packed novellas from Pittacus Lore. Initially published separately as digital originals, these three stories are now together in one volume.
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Not as entertaining as the novels in the series
- By Bob-o on 04-24-14
By: Pittacus Lore
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Reamde
- By: Neal Stephenson
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 38 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem, Neal Stephenson is continually rocking the literary world with his brazen and brilliant fictional creations - whether he’s reimagining the past (The Baroque Cycle), inventing the future (Snow Crash), or both (Cryptonomicon).
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Not perfect, but worth a listen.
- By ShySusan on 10-01-11
By: Neal Stephenson
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Polostan
- Bomb Light, Book 1
- By: Neal Stephenson
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Termination Shock and Cryptonomicon, the first installment in a monumental new series—an expansive historical epic of intrigue and international espionage, presaging the dawn of the Atomic Age.
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Political Intrigue, Science and Polo in the Cold War
- By Bouncybrit on 10-19-24
By: Neal Stephenson
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Eversion
- By: Alastair Reynolds
- Narrated by: Harry Myers
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 1800s, a sailing ship crashes off the coast of Norway. In the 1900s, a Zepellin explores an icy canyon in Antarctica. In the far future, a spaceship sets out for an alien artifact. Each excursion goes horribly wrong. And on every journey, Dr. Silas Coade is the physician, but only Silas seems to realize that these events keep repeating themselves. And it's up to him to figure out why and how. And how to stop it all from happening again.
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An entirely new level of science fiction
- By Possum Bean on 01-08-23
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Seveneves
- A Novel
- By: Neal Stephenson
- Narrated by: Mary Robinette Kowal, Will Damron
- Length: 31 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space.
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Odd narrator choice
- By Josh Mitchell on 05-30-15
By: Neal Stephenson
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Cryptonomicon
- By: Neal Stephenson
- Narrated by: William Dufris
- Length: 42 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse - mathematical genius and young Captain in the US Navy - is assigned to detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists, and some of those people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt. The mission of Watrehouse and Detachment 2702 - commanded by Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe - is to keep the Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the enemy's fabled Enigma code. In the present, Waterhouse's crypto-hacker grandson, Randy, is attempting to create a "data haven" in Southeast Asia....
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Two thirds through and quit
- By Joshua on 06-20-16
By: Neal Stephenson
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Anathem
- By: Neal Stephenson
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman, Tavia Gilbert, William Dufris, and others
- Length: 32 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Fraa Erasmus is a young avout living in the Concent of Saunt Edhar, a sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the "Saecular" world by ancient stone, honored traditions, and complex rituals. Over the centuries, cities, and governments have risen and fallen beyond the concent's walls. Three times during history's darkest epochs, bloody violence born of superstition and ignorance has invaded and devastated the cloistered mathic community.
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I love Neal, but Good lord... ugh!
- By SpiderGrrl on 10-08-19
By: Neal Stephenson
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We Are Legion (We Are Bob)
- Bobiverse, Book 1
- By: Dennis E. Taylor
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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There's a reason We Are Legion was named Audible's Best Science Fiction Book of 2016: Its irresistibly irreverent wit! Bob Johansson has just sold his software company for a small fortune and is looking forward to a life of leisure. The first item on his to-do list: Spending his newfound windfall. On an urge to splurge, he signs up to have his head cryogenically preserved in case of death. Then he gets himself killed crossing the street. Waking up 117 years later, Bob discovers his mind has been uploaded into a sentient space probe with the ability to replicate itself.
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Ignore the Publisher's Summary! This is Amazing!
- By PW on 04-12-17
By: Dennis E. Taylor
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The Three-Body Problem
- By: Cixin Liu
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Set against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion.
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They create a computer using a 30 million man Army
- By Josh P on 12-07-14
By: Cixin Liu
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The Man in the High Castle
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco, the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some twenty years earlier the United States lost a war - and is now occupied by Nazi Germany and Japan.
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Alternative history
- By Michael G Kurilla on 07-28-15
By: Philip K. Dick
I guess my final thought was, ok, well I guess it’s over then.
It’s alright
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There's an emotional softness, here, that doesn't exist in Gibson's early novels. The latter of which were, as is "requisite" of cyberpunk, addictively and intriguingly gritty.
Don't get me wrong. Agency has grit. It has a great pace, and artful unfolding of narrative and character development. Yet it's paired with sentimental warmth you start to see in the Blue Ant series.
It's badass, it's fun, and you probably won't want it to end.
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Other critical reviews I've read aren't wrong. They have valid points. But, they're kinda hyperbolic, at the same time. What can you say? Gibson has set the bar high for himself, over the past few decades.
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But it's still Gibson It the best of ways.
There are a couple minor detracting quirks, but...
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it is a good story it is a good story if you enjoy it for what it is. but it's not an epic Gibson.
I kept waiting for the plot twist...
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Great Reading of a Great Story!
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The next novel may expand Eunice’s influence in the game challenging the power of both the Clept and the Military. Perhaps finding a multiverse instance where the Jackpot isn’t an endpoint in the eschatology.
The intersection of realties and multiverse
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King did a great job with the narration.
enjoyable romp lacking significance
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A real return to form for Gibson
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Cadences didn't hide the cheaffeur me plot
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There is a great deal of setup and the premise seems promising, but I found the resolution unsatisfying. Spoiler: there are a few characters that feel like they may double-cross other main characters, but that never seems to happen. Again, I think the idea is really interesting, but the explanation of the tech is somewhat unsatisfying ("they just found it"). There are many insightful lines about acquiring and wielding power, but the overall plot is sort of meandering.
For those that have read/listened: the detail about which orifice tools come out of the drone robot is too much. The drone lowered itself with a cable released from a compartment on its back. Not a direct quote, but it could have been. The descriptions of tools coming out from different parts of the robot are just endless.
Interesting start to a story
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