All Tomorrow's Parties
by William Gibson
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Book Summary Information
Author: William GibsonEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2003-02-04
ISBN: 0425190447
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Berkley
Book Reviews of All Tomorrow's Parties
Book Review: "And what shall she do with Thursday's rags / When Monday comes around"
Summary: 4 Stars
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.
Summary of All Tomorrow's Parties
William Gibson, who predicted the Internet with Neuromancer, takes us into the millennium with a brilliant new novel about the moments in history when futures are born."Gibson remains, like Raymond Chandler, an intoxicating stylist."--The New York Times Book Review
All Tomorrow's Parties is the perfect novel to publish at the end of 1999. It brings back Colin Laney, one of the most popular characters from Idoru, the man whose special sensitivities about people and events let him predict certain aspects of the future. Laney has realized that the disruptions everyone expected to happen at the beginning of the year 2000, which in fact did not happen, are still to come. Though down-and-out in Tokyo, his sense of what is to come tells him that the big event, whatever it is, will happen in San Francisco. He decides to head back to the United States--to San Francisco--to meet the future.
The Washington Post praised Idoru as "beautifully written, dense with metaphors that open the eyes to the new, dreamlike, intensely imagined, deeply plausible." A bestseller across the country (it reached #1 in Los Angeles and San Francisco), and a major critical success, it confirmed William Gibson's position as "the premier visionary working in SF today" (Publishers Weekly). All Tomorrow's Parties is his next brilliant achievement.
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
Gibson, William Books
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