The future exists now: Bringing William Gibson’s The Peripheral to television

The Peripheral combines elements of noir murder mystery, time travel, and the author's trademark cyberpunk futuristism. The novel is so difficult to adapt for television that Prime Video was able to do that with its new series, The Peripheral.

There are no major revelations below.

The source material is different from the TV adaptation. There are two plot lines that eventually start to intersect in the series. Flynne is the young woman who is the focus of the first arcs. Flynne is employed at the local 3D-printing shop. Burton, Flynne's brother, is a veteran of the US Marine Corps' elite Haptic Recon force and suffers from brain trauma due to his implants. Burton works for a company that maintains a video game. Flynne sometimes substitute for Burton, and one day he asks her to try a new kind of headset that introduces her to a virtual reality so vivid, it seems like she's actually there. She actually is there, but she doesn't know where or when.

The second part of the series takes place in a futuristic and desolate London in the aftermath of an apocalyptic event. The world is ruled by Russians. There is a link between the two timelines and the black market technology known as peripherals. The peripherals link the users to the past, and when they make contact, the past splits into two timelines. The plot involves a hunt for a missing woman, corporate espionage, political corruption, and multiple attempts on Flynne's life.

Vincenzo Natali was a big fan of the novel and was working on a film adaptation. The film never got made, but he became friendly with the man. He received a copy of The Peripheral when it was published. The novel was too complex for a feature film, but Natali's producing partner thought it would make a great TV series.

Natali was the first person to direct an episode of Westworld. He sent a copy of The Peripheral to Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy because he thought they might like it. Nolan and Joy signed on the dotted line. Nolan stole his brother's copy of Count Zero from the library when he was a teenager. It's the second novel in the trilogy, which began with Neuromancer and ended withMona Lisa Overdrive. Nolan told Ars that the second Vincenzo said that he was in from the jump.

Scott Smith didn't have much of a science fiction background so the material presented a whole new world to him. He agreed to adapt the novel on the strength of its characters. "Gibson is so renowned for the science part of the science fiction that I think his naturalistic writing, his skill at creating characters, is sometimes overlooked or sold short," he said. Flynne's superpower was being compassionate. She can enter this world that is divided from her own and meet people who are real to her. She doesn't treat them differently than other humans. Technology can have a different effect when it dehumanizes. Humans triumph over the tech.