What makes William Gibson a great science-fiction writer is he is a poet. This was apparent to anyone who read the first line of his first novel Neuromancer, which was published in 1984: “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” The futures in his fiction have always been close to the world we live in—which is economically globalized and universally connected by technologies that process and transmit information faster than the blink of an eye. The Peripheral, his first novel in four years, will certainly transport us to a future that has all of its elements and key features in our current, post-crash (2008) moment. (University Book Store, 4326 University Way NE, bookstore.washington.edu, 7 pm, free)

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...