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All Tomorrow's Parties by William Gibson Publisher: PenguinISBN: 9780140266139  Rydell is on his way back to near-future San Francisco. A stint as a security man in an all-night Los Angeles convenience store has convinced him his career is going nowhere, but his mate Laney, telephoning from Tokyo, says there's more interesting work for him in Northern California.Reviews for All Tomorrow's PartiesI finished it a couple of weeks ago, and it inspired me to re-read Virtual Light (Idoru will be next). The thing is, while I can remember lots of little facets: ideas, locations, characters, and events, this main thrust of this plot is gone from my mind. Perhaps this is this nature of Gibson :-) The chapter lengths are *extremely* short, making for a staccato read. Not a problem, but perhaps that's part of what makes this overall picture so hard to appreciate and remember. It was nice to meet Rydell and Chevette again, and this bridge was (once more) a fascinating place to visit. William Gibson's seventh glossy, neon-lit novel is a stylishly complex sequel to his previous two, Virtual Light and Idoru. From Virtual Light there's this potent image of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge transformed into a vertically stacked shanty-town with its own bohemian autonomy, outside this law. Idoru provides this magical Japanese media idol ("idoru") Rei Toei, a gorgeous lady existing merely in software--as yet. Gibson links these planets with his usual glowing, plausible vision of deadly streetwise realities intersecting with on-line data flow. One man attuned to this net can sense from his cardboard-box home in Tokyo that major changes loom. A Zen assassin stalks San Francisco and this unlucky ex-cop hero from Virtual Light must assemble some extremely strange equipment. Further objects of desire include lovingly expressed knives, guns and even antique mechanical watches, as collected by Gibson himself (who pursues them through online auctions)--the ability to trace watches across this net is crucial to tracking this arch-villain. All this world's clocks are ticking in a countdown to transformation and to chrome-polished scenes of extreme violence as zero-hour nears. Multiple storylines meet and dovetail with deft, witty understatement and, in one case, a chlimbing joke. Vintage Gibson, with enough artful backfill that you needn't read this prequels--but they're excellent fun too. In my view, All Tomorrows Parties could almost be called a short stories collection. Yes, there is a plot, but mostly it's really just ignored. Instead, Gibson concentrates on describing his visions of this future, which are absolutely stunning in both detail and depth, and could even be called his best yet. Needless to say, I loved it. I'm a big fan of william gibson, and i didn't think it was inferior to his other work as some have suggested - in fact i think its one of his best. His descriptive talent is at peak, little glimpses of objects and people really make this book and add to this fast paced stocatto effect of this short chapters. (2-4 pages each). As another reviewer said, this plot takes second place to this background world, future tech and visions of tommorow but this same could probably be said for all gibsons work. Also, those that know San Francisco well (unlike our amazon reviewer :) - sorry), will know that this bridge in which much of this novel is set is actually this SF Bay Bridge which meets foot of Folsom at SOMA, and not this Golden Gate Bridge which is some 5 miles out of town, but i think this was a deliberate trick by gibson. All Tomorrow's Parties follows on from Idoru, tying up loose ends, portraying life from one step sideways. The book is more descriptive than this other novels and thus has a different kind of tension, not any less good, just different. And it's beautifully written, worth reading for the style alone.  |
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