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All Tomorrow's Parties
by William Gibson
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Ace Trade (2000-08-01)
ISBN: 0441007554
EAN: 9780441007554
Dewy Decimal #: 813.54
Paperback: 277 pages
Release Date: 2000-08-08
SKU: 06691
Condition: Used: Good
Comments: Some pages are dog-eared, otherwise in good condition
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Editorial Reviews
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Amazon.com Review
Although Colin Laney (from Gibson's earlier novel Idoru) lives in a cardboard box, he has the power to change the world. Thanks to an experimental drug that he received during his youth, Colin can see "nodal points" in the vast streams of data that make up the worldwide computer network. Nodal points are rare but significant events in history that forever change society, even though they might not be recognizable as such when they occur. Colin isn't quite sure what's going to happen when society reaches this latest nodal point, but he knows it's going to be big. And he knows it's going to occur on the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, which has been home to a sort of SoHo-esque shantytown since an earthquake rendered it structurally unsound to carry traffic. Colin sends Barry Rydell (last seen in Gibson's novel Virtual Light) to the bridge to find a mysterious killer who reveals himself only by his lack of presence on the Net. Barry is also entrusted with a strange package that seems to be the home of Rei Toi, the computer-generated "idol singer" who once tried to "marry" a human rock star (she's also from Idoru). Barry and Rei Toi are eventually joined by Barry's old girlfriend Chevette (from Virtual Light) and a young boy named Silencio who has an unnatural fascination with watches. Together this motley assortment of characters holds the key to stopping billionaire Cody Harwood from doing whatever it is that will make sure he still holds the reigns of power after the nodal point takes place. Although All Tomorrow's Parties includes characters from two of Gibson's earlier novels, it's not a direct sequel to either. It's a stand-alone book that is possibly Gibson's best solo work since Neuromancer. In the past, Gibson has let his brilliant prose overwhelm what were often lackluster (or nonexistent) story lines, but this book has it all: a good story, electric writing, and a group of likable and believable characters who are out to save the world ... kind of. The ending is not quite as supercharged as the rest of the novel and so comes off a bit flat, but overall this is definitely a winner. --Craig E. Engler
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Product Description
"William Gibson's rich protopointillism coins a wireless future where reality is only proxy and proviso. Made all the more beautiful and frightening by its probability, and by characters who somehow tweeze hope from the polymer." --Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files
"One of science fiction's greatest literary stylists...Gibson wouldn't be Gibson if he spelled it out, if he eliminated all the ambiguity. His specialty is hanging on to that fractal edge without ever going over the brink." --Wired Magazine
"All Tomorrow's Parties hits on all cylinders." --Seattle Times
"More ultra-cool cyberpunk... This familiar, vigorous, vividly realized scenario is set forth in the author's unique and astonishingly textured prose." --Kirkus Reviews
"The post modern gospel according to Gibson, the patron saint of cyberpunk literature." --Entertainment Weekly
"It's as if Raymond Chandler had written a novel in which Philip Marlowe drops acid, learns Microsoft Word 98 and winds up eating Thai food at a funky San Francisco dive...the most delicious of reads: genre with real literary spunk." --New York Daily News
"All Tomorrow's Parties is immensely engaging, alive on every page and as enjoyable a weekend entertainment as one could want."--The Washington Post Book World
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Customer Reviews
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How the mighty have fallen...
Rating  (2)
Date: 2008-09-27
First of all, don't get me wrong: the "Sprawl Trilogy" (Neuromancer/Count Zero/Mona Lisa Overdrive) is 5-star stuff and still holds up 25 years after it was written. That said, I can't believe this is the same author, because All Tomorrows Parties is a mess on multiple levels.
I read this one cold and with no context, not realizing it was the third part of its own trilogy. Apparently several of the characters in this are also in the other two, but the book gives enough hints of their back-story that I wasn't at (too much) of a loss. **Maybe** I would have liked this book more if I had been more familiar with them, but I honestly doubt it -- my major problems were the plot and prose.
Plot-wise, the first half of this book was, quite simply, uninteresting. Nothing really happens. There are actually three or four sub-plots interwoven, only one or two of which even approach being interesting. When things start coming together in the final third of the book, it's too little, too late... and grinds to a halt almost as abruptly as it starts. I didn't FULLY understand the ending -- which may be because I'm unfamiliar with the first two books -- but even then I suspect the "um, what just happened!?!?" ambiguity/confusion is intentional on the author's part. I don't mind things like that if they are well-executed, but this one just wasn't.
My biggest complaint about this book, though, is the writing style. Other reviewers have called it "almost poetic" or even "Hemmingway-esque" but I think both descriptions are either incorrect or at best generous stretches. This book is a collection of sentence fragments, and it's exceedingly awkward to read. I have a hunch this was a style experiment, but it's one that just doesn't work.
I actually gave up on this about half way through, but ended up going back to it out of desperation (not having anything else handy that I'd rather read.) By that point, I was consciously aware I was finishing it just to finish it, which is NEVER a good sign. Admittedly, it does pick up a bit in the last act, but not enough to redeem itself.
Recommended for die-hard Gibson fans only. Casual fans (such as myself) or initiates who're unfamiliar with his work will be frustrated and/or disappointed.
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"And what shall she do with Thursday's rags / When Monday comes around"
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-07-20
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
Flash back to 1911, the last time there was a nodal point in history, when the world ended as people knew it. What happened in 1911? "I'm still not sure," the plugged-in beadsman Laney admits. "Madame Curie's husband was run over by a horse-drawn wagon in Paris, in 1906. It seems to start there." Four years later, of course, Curie isolated radium, and in 1911 she received her second Nobel Prize.
Just as the world transitioned--quietly--from the Industrial Age to the Nuclear Age, so too will arrive the next era, that of nanotechnology, whose nodal point the cyberprophet Gibson sets in the third decade of this new millennium, changing "human history is some entirely new way." Whether for good or evil provides the thriller-like plot for "All Tomorrow's Parties."
The final installment of Gibson's Bridge Trilogy features many of the characters of the first two ("Virtual Light" and "Idoru"). It probably helps to have read them first (I hadn't), but the work does stand on its own. Still, several of the major characters cannot occupy the reader's imagination as effectively as they probably would have if I had been more fully introduced to them--particularly Laney, the hacker who hunts for evidence of the nodal point, and Rei, the Japanese cyber-superstar who exists only as code and hologram.
Gibson excels at weaving several fast-paced plots that converge on the Bay Bridge, spanning between San Francisco and Oakland, closed to traffic after the "Big One," and piled deep with shops and dwellings like the London bridges of old. There are at least a dozen memorable characters, both heroes and villains, although none strikes me quite as prescient and visionary as Silencio, the child savant whose ability to absorb the data-stream makes Laney look like an old Commodore 64.
But--in the same way the import of Madame Curie's discovery leaves Laney befuddled--the chase scene, melodramatic contrivances, and fiery conflagration that conclude the novel (and that resemble, more than anything, a Michael Bay-directed extravaganza) will leave one wondering, "What just happened?" Neither scientists nor society a century ago fully understood the earth-shattering significance of radioactivity, and--perhaps fittingly--Gibson leaves to the reader's imagination this trilogy's sequel, the Nanotech Age.
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It's the Bay bridge, not the Golden Gate bridge.
Rating  (3)
Date: 2008-05-08
All through the novel, with its references to Terminal Island, Bryant Street, Oakland, and a second level, I never pictured the Golden Gate, even though it is on the cover. Gibson is depicting the Bay Bridge between Oakland and San Francisco. Look on a map.Not that this means much to the story, which felt like just a ride to me--a milk run with scenery through the not-to-distant future.
Although I could not follow all of the story, the metaphors, it seemed to me to be a story about two orphans with special gifts--one trying to use it for the common good, the other for himself with others as collatoral damage. I don't believe the mysterious node means much. It's about how they dealt with this upcoming crisis that was the story, and who they were aligned with, along with a view of the local dystopian scenery.
Because of the love Laney had shown Rei Toi, & Rydell's love, she chose to be loyal to their cause. She even mystified the most mystical character, the assassin, whose willingness to work for Harwood mystified me. She was the only one to truly move him. He loved who she represented to him. I wonder who he was searching for. Did he think Harwood knew where his dream girl was?
An intriguing book, but not one I'll read twice as I have some of Gibson's others. I've always been lost in his work, but enjoy it nevertheless.
I think love has something to do with this story. Love conquers all. Or being humane. I know this sounds corny, but look at how Silencio responded to the first gift he ever got from someone, that being the watch from the assassin.
Love, or true caring, true humaneness, saved Rydell and Chevette from certain death, when Fontaine was humane enough to let them in. The assassin--humane in some way to protect them all.
Laney and Harwood were marginally effective in their separate aims in spite of help from their helpers. Did the bridge people save themselves? City govt finally kicked in, sort of, with water to the fire. The bridge people were a motley community of caring neighbors. Is that love? Companionship? Humaneness? Harwood failed in his attempts to take control as well.The orphans both lost their lives, I assume.
Good vs evil and both are vanquished? What's left? Love, community, nanotechnology. I thought the nano stuff would be used for ill will, and though it has that potential, we see in the end that it depends on the user, as with anything else. It can actually be used for good--like rejuvenating antique watches and making non-humans human.
Love Gibson's writing though this was not a favorite for me. I still value the first three of his books--mona lisa overdrive, countzero and the other one I forget right now.
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Oddly Interesting Story
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-03-13
A very odd story. There are shifts of location that sort of take you by surprise and then there are the trips through a computer land. Eventually you understand that this is a future world. It is an odd jumble of events that create the interest.
At first there is the odd character, Laney, who talks crazy and lives in a cardboard box near a commuter train station, yet is believed by Yamazaki, for some unknown reason, and you find yourself wanting to believe him also. Then there is Rydell, a loser in Los Angeles, who is marked by Laney as some one special. Lord only knows how Laney gets to know what he is talking about. He is a computer genius who was given drugs to enhance his ability and now he says he sees the future.
There are other characters introduced in subsequent chapters. You begin to wonder how they all will mesh in the end. Laney travels through a cyberspace as if it was a place anyone could go to. Rydell travels there some as well. I begin to wonder about what cyber trips would be like. Computers are just machines with code to work with. The output is more code. There is no 'place' a person could go to. I could see sitting there being all involved with the input and output, but seeing or acting like you are somewhere else, is beyond my comprehension. But for the sake of the story, I am willing to let the characters act and do as they will.
It is interesting that there is a self aware computer personality that becomes a bit of a star player in the story. Nothing is made of this situation, as if it was not really there, or was not understood for what it was.
There is also a fellow who follows the Tao. He is a killer extraordinaire. It is fascinating that the next book I read was "The Wandering Taoist." The culture of the Chinese Taoist's is martial arts as well as healing and finding their place in the Universe. But killing is not all that far from what all Taoists do.
The ending is awfully surprising and basically happy.
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Not Free SF Reader
Rating (3)
Date: 2007-12-07
Bringing them together and shaking them all about.
Or that is possibly what is going to happen according to the nodal point expert from a previous novel.
Also appearing are the down and out cop, the bike messenger, and more as whatever nodal man seems to see might be coming, he reckons it is big.
Throw in a Tao warrior for the hell of it, and no, this book doesn't necessarily make a whole heap of sense.
2.5 out of 5
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