William Gibson’s Resistance Reading
May 23, 2017
Allow us to blow our own horn here. The great science-fiction novelist William Gibson has just given Outbreak! The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior by Hilary Evans and Robert Bartholomew a big thumbs up in Mother Jones. “At 784 pages,” he writes, “a literal encyclopedia of the workings of rumor, fear, and the madness of crowds…The election of Donald Trump is best understood in terms of collective behavior. Familiarity with the weird and terrifying things we’ve done before, as a species, is essential to understanding what many of us, driven by fear and uncertainty, are doing now. Baffled by Trump’s popularity (such as it is)? Read Evans and Bartholomew on lycanthropy and laughing epidemics. Seriously.” Please note that the political spin on the review is Gibson’s, not ours. Thank you, Mother Jones!