Agency by William Gibson

 

William Gibson has been writing essentially action/caper novels involving tech some degree of beyond the present day since like the early 1980s. This is from 2020 and has most of his concerns bundled in its propulsive prose. Gibson still writes like neon-encrusted noir dipped in silicon, and here he tells something that's almost a time-travel story, but with communication. The far future is at least as grim as Gibson's old Sprawl ever was, though there's a certain surface OKness that might lead one to miss that. That said, there's a core altruism to the far-future protags, here: They want to enable other timelines to be better than their own. There are hints their efforts matter, here, though nothing is guaranteed. Probably more up the alley of Spook Country or Zero History than that of Neuromancer or Mona Lisa Overdrive.