So I’ve had a few days off of reviewing, mostly down to having a nasty cold, and feeling a little rubbish.
Rather than reading, I’ve been watching a bit of TV, in particular, I watched the Amazon re-imagining of The Peripheral by William Gibson, a book I reviewed recently (here).
There are going to be some spoilers ahead, so if you’ve not read the book, or watched the show and having any plans to do either, then I would hit that back button now, and come back once you have done one or the other, or even both.
Now, the written material would make for a really good extended TV run. One of the primary tenets of the book is that at the point of first contact from the future to the past, a new branch in the timeline is created, referred to in the book as stubs.
As such, this means that you can create a whole new history for each TV series, assuming the start of the series begins with that contact. So you’ve got unlimited options for creating whole new stories, either with the established characters, or whole new sets of people, from both future and past.
I have to say though, that I was a little disappointed with how the TV show finished it’s first series, despite looking at going exactly as I’ve suggested. Hopefully, the second series will pick up on the multiple-stub type storyline, and really get us engaged in the multiple timeline shenanigans.
As for the rest of the TV show. It did OK. The start of the story, and the motivation for all of our characters did change significantly from the book, but they did manage to keep a lot of the key interactions in place, which meant that our interactions with those characters was pretty good when compared to the source material.
This is one of those instances where I would suggest that watching the TV show before reading the book might be a better option. The show is easier to absorb than the book which can get a little complicated at times, but, as ever, the book is the definitive item when it comes to this story, and shouldn’t be missed.