Agency Audiobook By William Gibson cover art

Agency

Preview
Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Agency

By: William Gibson
Narrated by: Lorelei King
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $18.00

Buy for $18.00

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

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 Audio
Fantasy Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Political Science Fiction Spies & Politics Technothrillers Thriller Thriller & Suspense Espionage
adbl_web_global_use_to_activate_T1_webcro805_stickypopup

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

Intriguing Concepts • Engaging Storyline • Excellent Narration • Complex World-building • Thought-provoking Ideas
Highly rated for:
All stars
Most relevant  
This story does not have the heart or the danger of the previous iteration. It reads like a quest log of a mildly entertaining video game. Go here to do that now go here to do that then go back to where you started and then the novel ended.

I guess my final thought was, ok, well I guess it’s over then.

It’s alright

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

the thinnest story Gibson has written in a while. Really good writing, but still not much happens.

optional

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

...I'm still sorta in love with it. If you haven't read the Peripheral, read that first.

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.

-----
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.
-----

But it's still Gibson It the best of ways.

There are a couple minor detracting quirks, but...

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

that never came. I was expecting some kind of new interesting twist, and kept looking for it until the very end.

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...

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

If the father of the matrix, as a concept, were to rewrite the dictionary, I would excitedly read it. His stories are always action packed and thought provoking. King's reading captured each part perfectly, with a lot of district voices. 10/10

Great Reading of a Great Story!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Agency shifts the focus to a timeline where Clinton won in 2016 and where an advanced AI, Eunice, emerges as a near-sentient force. This book emphasizes how small disruptions can cascade into major changes—something Gibson plays with both in geopolitical terms and in the nature of consciousness itself. The idea that alternate pasts can be nudged and shaped, even from outside the timeline, introduces an eerie fatalism but also suggests the possibility of resistance.

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

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

I'd give this story an additional star for a first time author. One does expect an old master of science fiction to produce something of significance. This is not such.

King did a great job with the narration.

enjoyable romp lacking significance

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

This book is good science fiction and spy thriller combined. I'd suggest reading the peripheral first but it isn't necessary

A real return to form for Gibson

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Story was about a UX evaluator who was emotionally traumatized by exposure to the death of a human-esque AI and thereafter shuttled around by a number of not previously known employees of the AI's almost-sentient shards. Well executed. OK plot.

Cadences didn't hide the cheaffeur me plot

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

I liked it. The performance is good, and the story captivating, but I kept waiting for something to happen.

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

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

See more reviews