The Bridge trilogy is a series of novels by

William Gibson William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as ''cyberpunk''. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, hi ...

, his second after the successful

Sprawl trilogy The Sprawl trilogy (also known as the Neuromancer, Cyberspace, or Matrix trilogy) is William Gibson's first set of novels, composed of ''Neuromancer'' (1984), ''Count Zero'' (1986), and ''Mona Lisa Overdrive'' (1988). The novels are all set in t ...

. The trilogy comprises the novels '' Virtual Light'' (1993), '' Idoru,'' (1996) and ''

All Tomorrow's Parties "All Tomorrow's Parties" is a song by the Velvet Underground and Nico, written by Lou Reed and released on the group's 1967 debut studio album, '' The Velvet Underground & Nico''. Inspiration for the song came from Reed's observation of Andy War ...

'' (1999). A short story, " Skinner's Room", was originally composed for ''Visionary San Francisco'', a 1990 museum exhibition exploring the future of San Francisco.

Setting

The first book of the Bridge trilogy is set in an imaginary 2006, with the subsequent books set a few years later. The books deal with the race to control the beginnings of

cyberspace Cyberspace is a concept describing a widespread interconnected digital technology. "The expression dates back from the first decade of the diffusion of the internet. It refers to the online world as a world 'apart', as distinct from everyday re ...

technology and are set on the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

' West coast in a post-

earthquake An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...

(divided into the separate states of NoCal and SoCal), as well as a post-

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

, Japan, that had been rebuilt using

nanotechnology Nanotechnology, also shortened to nanotech, is the use of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale for industrial purposes. The earliest, widespread description of nanotechnology referred to the particular technological goal o ...

. The trilogy derives its name from the

San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge The San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, known locally as the Bay Bridge, is a complex of bridges spanning San Francisco Bay in California. As part of Interstate 80 and the direct road between San Francisco and Oakland, it carries about 260,000 ve ...

, which was abandoned in an earthquake and has become a massive shantytown and a site of improvised shelter. The bridge becomes a pivotal location in ''Virtual Light'' and ''All Tomorrow's Parties.'' The 'bridge' may also be interpreted as a metaphor for the nascent technologies bridging contemporaneous life and the highly advanced future depicted in the Sprawl trilogy, where cyberspace and nanotechnology are fully developed and commonplace. Characters in each novel interact in a cyberspace construct of

Kowloon Walled City Kowloon Walled City was an ungoverned and densely populated ''de jure'' Imperial Chinese enclave within the boundaries of Kowloon City, British Hong Kong. Originally a Chinese military fort, the walled city became an enclave after the New ...

, which is initially described as an inverted

kill file A kill file (also killfile, bozo bin or twit list) is a file used by some Usenet reading programs to discard articles matching some unwanted patterns of subject, author, or other header lines. Adding a person or subject to one's kill file means t ...

. The walled city shares a number of features with the bridge itself, including an emphasis on self-governance and efficiency in user-construction.

Characters

The novels of the Bridge trilogy loosely share a common cast of characters. Former police officer Berry Rydell and bicycle courier Chevette Washington occupy central roles in the first and third novels. Researcher Colin Laney, who has a mysterious ability to identify patterns in vast tracts of information, appears in ''Idoru'' and ''All Tomorrow's Parties''. Other recurring characters include Rei Toei, an AI pop star, and Shinya Yamazaki, an existential sociologist.

Critical reception and influence

Canadian Poet Douglas Barbour said of the trilogy that it "has all the stylistic verve of his earlier work, but it asks some tougher questions, explores character more deeply, and savagely interrogates our star-obsessed society." ''Virtual Light'', the first novel in the series, was nominated for both the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1994.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bridge Trilogy, The Cyberpunk novels Novels by William Gibson Novels set in the San Francisco Bay Area Science fiction book series Science fiction novel trilogies William Gibson