William Gibson became famous for his Cyberspace trilogy (Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive), which became the cornerstone of cyberpunk and determined the face of modern literature for decades to come. But very quickly the genre revolutionary became constrained by the boundaries of any genre - and the joint steampunk epic “The Difference Machine” with Bruce Sterling was followed by “Virtual Light”, the first novel of the “Bridge Trilogy”, the action of which takes place in a kind of alternative present, and the plot of a thriller, futuristic surroundings and masterly parsimony of stylistic techniques - give rise to an explosive, but inevitably attractive cocktail. So, a powerful earthquake divided California into North and South, and the degeneration of the ecosphere divided all people into allergy sufferers and “adapted” ones. Loser policeman Rydell and cyclist courier Chevette-Marie are brought together by chance and together they try to survive the hunt arranged for them by the owners of extremely important information stored in sunglasses of the “virtual light” system...