Virtual Light is a 1993 novel by William Gibson. It is the first volume of the Bridge Trilogy.
Nominated for a Hugo Award.
This novel contains examples of:
- 20 Minutes into the Future: The trilogy, written in the 1990s, is set in 2006, after a massive earthquake has resulted in the abandonment of the Oakland Bay Bridge, which has since been resettled as a sort of squatters' shantytown.
- Abnormal Ammo: Loveless' gun fires "subsonic titanium bullets". Exactly what this does is unclear, but the gun is often described as being somewhat quiet.
- Action Girl: Chevette Washington is really more of a subversion of this trope. While strong-willed, independent, and intelligent, she spends most of Virtual Light running and hiding from her pursuers. In one case, she gets in way over her head and only escapes thanks to Rydell.
- Balkanise Me: General geopolitical and economic turmoil has led to the breakup of many of the world's larger nations, including the USSR , Brazil and Canada, which in itself split into five countries. America has undergone a Downplayed version, with many of the larger states subdividing: California, where the book takes place, is now split into North and South.
- Celebrity Resemblance: Berry Rydell is mentioned to look like a young Tommy Lee Jones—the first time by someone who ran his picture through a computer application that provides an In-Universe exploitation of this (the idea being that it helps people remember someone for identification purposes if they know which famous guy/girl they resemble). Ironically enough, Rydell doesn't even know who Jones is.
- Chekhov's Gun: The bag of drugs Chevette gets from her ex-boyfriend. She later uses it to spike Loveless' drink while he's holding her and Rydell at gunpoint.
- Cool Car: Several, most notably "Gunhead", Rydell's IntenSecure response vehicle. It's an armoured, six-wheeled Land Rover with two engines, an electrified exterior, an assortment of gadgetry and a satellite uplink.
- Courier:
- The Deuteragonist Chevette Washington works as a bicycle messenger in San Francisco.
- There's also "Mr. Blix", the creepy fellow who's delivering the glasses to the city from Costa Rica.
- Cowboy Cop:
- Rydell was booted out of his original job in Knoxville as a police officer for this kind of behaviour: during negotiations with a suspect who was holding his girlfriend and children hostage, Rydell broke into the suspect's house and killed him after he threatened the children.
- He later does it again while working for IntenSecure, smashing his armoured SUV into the wall of a house where a similar hostage-taking is allegedly taking place... Only to find that the homeowner had hatched an elaborate plot to prove his wife was cheating on him and had hacked IntenSecure's systems so that the responding rent-a-cops would catch her and her lover together.
- This behaviour is actually somewhat Enforced In-Universe by the presence of popular reality series Cops In Trouble, which dramatises the stories of law-enforcement personnel who break rules committing 'heroic' acts, siccing expensive lawyers on the police departments responsible so they are forced to keep the Cowboy Cop on. Rydell is nearly featured on the show, but unluckily for him, the producers get distracted by a more exciting incident involving a Serial Killer.
- Cyberpunk: Or Post-Cyberpunk, depending on who you ask.
- Data Drive MacGuffin: A variation. Instead of a hard drive, it uses a pair of VR glasses that hold the data on a MegaCorp's plans for Villainous Gentrification of San Francisco. When Chevette Washington gets a hold of said glasses by happenstance, the assassins of said mega corp come looking for her.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Early on, Chevette runs into a Padanian noble who is about to be married to a media mogul named Cody Harwood. Nothing really comes of it in this book, but in All Tomorrow's Parties, we learn that their marriage quickly fell apart, while Harwood turns out to be the main antagonist of that novel.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Throughout the novel, J.D. Shapely and the HIV/AIDS vaccine he was responsible fornote are brought up time and time again, but no mention of either (or even of AIDS itself) is made anywhere in the subsequent books. It may be a case of an Aborted Arc, or maybe AIDS became less topical by the time Idoru was written (AIDS mortality peaked in 1996, the year it was published).
- Goggles Do Something Unusual: A pair of seemingly ordinary sunglasses are in fact an augmented reality device that lets the user access some extremely valuable data.
- Hello, Attorney!: Karen Mendelsohn, an attractive lawyer for Cops In Trouble, who sleeps with Rydell after he's recruited into the show. She immediately loses all interest in him after a more juicy renegade-cop incident involving a Serial Killer emerges.
- Hypocritical Humor: Rydell's landlord berates him for driving a Spanish car (technically he's borrowing it from Sublett), and suggests he consider something more 'patriotic'... Such as a German or Japanese model.
- Immoral Reality Show: Cops In Trouble, which lionises police officers who ignore procedure or pull Vigilante Man stunts as heroes, then proceeds to tie up their departments with expensive lawyers to stop the Cowboy Cops from getting fired.
- Law Enforcement, Inc.: After getting fired from Knoxville PD, Rydell gets a job at IntenSecure, a corporation providing standard commercial security guards alongside an armed rapid-response service to private clients.
- Psycho for Hire: Good lord, Loveless. He's a ruthless assassin who never misses a chance to inflict needless pain and suffering. He kills a man by pulling his tongue through a hole in his throat, uses banned nanotech handcuffs that tighten when struggled against to the point of causing severe bleeding, shoots dead Chevette's friend Sammy Sal, and makes it painfully obvious that he's going to rape Chevette when he corners her and Rydell two-thirds of the way through the book, presumably before killing both of them horribly. Ultimately though, his depravity leads to his downfall — in the latter scenario he arrives when the protagonists are both asleep, and could very easily have killed them both while retrieving the glasses, but since he was determined to rape and torture, he waits until they wake up, which allows them to escape.
- Rescue Romance: While there isn't an obvious Relationship Upgrade moment, Rydell and Chevette begin to develop feelings for each other after he saves her from a pair of Russian Dirty Cops by stealing Warbaby's car.
- Sinister Surveillance: The LAPD control a powerful Spy Satellite that remains in geosynchronous orbit above the city, monitoring everything taking place in the streets below. It's known to all and sundry, even its creators, as the "Death Star".
- Shoot the Messenger: Chevette Washington, a bicycle messenger, mentions this trope frequently. She's never shot, but she clarifies that the basic idea — blaming a messenger for her message — is true.
- Unintentionally Notorious Crime: A creepy guy leches at Chevette at a party, so, out of impulse, she grabs the sunglasses hanging out of his pocket ... which turn out to be the storage medium for a virtual-reality blueprint showcasing a shady Japanese MegaCorp's plan to fill Los Angeles with giant nanotech structures. As a result, she ends up with private security forces, Dirty Cops and Corporate Samurai coming after her.
- Villainous Gentrification: The VR glasses contain the details of an Evil Plan in this vein: a plot by the Japanese Sunflower Corporation and their US backers to construct a grid of bleeding-edge Nanotech towers around San Francisco, which will gradually link up to each other, turning the city into a Layered Metropolis in true Cyberpunk style.
- Villain Respect: Warbaby subtly salutes Rydell after the latter lures him, Freddie, Svobodov and Orlovsky to Los Angeles and SWATs them with Attack Drones, resulting in all four antagonists getting dragged away by the LAPD. This makes some sense, as it was already established that Warbaby had a fondness for Rydell, and he tended to be the nicest of the antagonists.
- What a Piece of Junk: Subverted: Chevette's bicycle is a cutting-edge paper-wrapped carbon-fiber frame with a rather serious security system, but carefully painted to look like a beat-up old junker.
