All Tomorrow's Parties (Bridge, #3)

Mar 19, 2009 Kevin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Review – All Tomorrow’s Parties by William Gibson

Articles about William Gibson usually talk about his weird ability to predict the future. I’m going to stay true to that form here, because one of the joys of reading old science fiction – not that All Tomorrow’s Parties, published in 1999, is really that old yet – is picking out what it was right or wrong about.

Anyway, to the list of things Gibson has envisioned before they existed, we can now add the Facebook. The flight of two of the book’s pro...more Review – All Tomorrow’s Parties by William Gibson

Articles about William Gibson usually talk about his weird ability to predict the future. I’m going to stay true to that form here, because one of the joys of reading old science fiction – not that All Tomorrow’s Parties, published in 1999, is really that old yet – is picking out what it was right or wrong about.

Anyway, to the list of things Gibson has envisioned before they existed, we can now add the Facebook. The flight of two of the book’s protagonists from L.A. to San Francisco begins when one’s stalker ex-boyfriend shows up at her house. How did he arrive there? They speculate that he spotted her in pictures uploaded to the web after a recent house party. There you have it: William Gibson, architect of the 21st century.

This book also offers some cutting cultural analysis you’d be hard pressed to find elsewhere. Here’s an extended bit of dialogue on subcultures:

“Each one would have a dress code, characteristic forms of artistic expression, a substance or substances of choice, and a set of sexual values at odds with those of the culture at large. And they did, frequently, have locales with which they became associated. But they became extinct.”

“Extinct?”

“We started picking them before they could ripen. A certain crucial growing period was lost, as marketing evolved and the mechanisms of recommodification became quicker, more rapacious. Authentic subcultures required backwaters, and time, and there are no more backwaters.”

So in the future, American Apparel killed the hipster.

In addition to all this clever subversiveness, All Tomorrow’s Parties tells its story at a pace quite suitable to a drug-fueled cyberpunk manhunt, and the more poetic cyber parts juxtapose neatly with the gritty, punkness of it all. The near-future in this book is a bit closer to reality than many of the techno-horizons that have been imagined.

As to the baffling title, attached to a book that contains no parties whatsoever – the one I mentioned above takes place before the start of the novel - I can only assume it was meant to dupe unsuspecting Velvet Underground fans into reading this book.(less)

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Mar 09, 2013 Nigel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a Gibson novel that doesn't seem to register much, and I know I read it the year it came out, 1999 - the year I got married, yay! - and I don't remember much about it. Perhaps because it doesn't really add anything new to the world of Virtual Light or Idoru, but synthesizes the ideas in those books into an impending millenarian global paradigm shift. Anyway, it's this nodal point in the flow of digital information that haunts poor Laney, living in a cardboard box in a Tokyo subway statio...more

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Jan 19, 2013 Bjorn rated it 4 of 5 stars

wow, what is this? and still it all feels very familiar.

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Sep 07, 2012 Krzysztof rated it 2 of 5 stars

After a good, if a bit inconsequential start with Virtual Light, and a much more inconsequential, but promising, Idoru, the Bridge Trilogy finishes with All Tomorrow's Parties... and what seemed like it's going somewhere - and going somewhere big - failed to meet my expectations...

If somebody wants to see the worst things about Gibson's writing, this book is where to look for them. Tens of characters, many of them feeling like useless, pointless filler (Creedmore or Boomzilla, anyone?). Recurrin...more After a good, if a bit inconsequential start with Virtual Light, and a much more inconsequential, but promising, Idoru, the Bridge Trilogy finishes with All Tomorrow's Parties... and what seemed like it's going somewhere - and going somewhere big - failed to meet my expectations...

If somebody wants to see the worst things about Gibson's writing, this book is where to look for them. Tens of characters, many of them feeling like useless, pointless filler (Creedmore or Boomzilla, anyone?). Recurring characters which get almost nothing to do (Yamazaki, and, to a much greater degree, Maryalice). Confusing style which makes it very hard to understand what's going on (I actually managed to think that two characters were one... and then was very surprised when I saw them both in different places). An ending which feels very underwhelming and unsatysfying, not to mention unexplained. Seemingly important characters with convoluted motivations. Descriptions of cyberspace which give you no idea whatsoever of how its supposed to look like and work. All that, and more, in concentrated form, to be found in All Tomorrow's Parties. The good things also show, like the realized, interesting setting, interesting characters, and novel concepts, but they are overshadowed by all of Gibson's faults.

Really, for an ending of a trilogy of books, which consisted of one solo book and a follow-up which simply doesn't work very well on its own (Idoru), this is as underwhelming as it gets. At least in the Neuromancer trilogy the change made in the first book actually influences the world in an important way - and it's not even foreshadowed a lot. 3/4 of All Tomorrow's Parties is about how what's going to happen is going to CHANGE EVERYTHING. And when it does, all it amount to is a weird, almost comical event which sounds important, to be sure, but isn't built upon in the slightest and just doesn't live up to the hype.

If you'd like to read something by Gibson - reach for the Neuromancer trilogy first. The Bridge Trilogy as a whole gets a lukewarm 3/5 stars - and I won't deny that All Tomorrow's Parties was a primary reason for barring the Trilogy from reaching a higher rating. If it was different, the whole thing could leave the reader with a sense of Awe. But as it is, it's just another of Gibson's "great setting, interesting characters, lackluster plot" deals.(less)

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Jun 29, 2012 Joey Brockert rated it 4 of 5 stars

“All Tomorrow's Parties” by William Gibson, © 1999

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 t...more “All Tomorrow's Parties” by William Gibson, © 1999

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.(less)

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Jan 29, 2012 Rhodes Hileman rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is 'Future Noir'. That's what he does. Seems like he invented it. A crashing good read, but I came out wondering what happened.

Nice short chapters read as prose poems. Good book for waiting. For anything.

Leading the chapters with pronouns, without reference, keeps me puzzling for a while - "who's he talking about?" - sometimes I figure it out; sometimes I don't.

Colorful, greasy, mechy-techy, always a lower class view of world changing, and unclear, events. Cultural textures are true and...more

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May 05, 2010 Fred Warren rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

Inside a cardboard box in a Tokyo subway station, Colin Laney sees the end of the world.

Or, perhaps, the beginning.

What do a down-on-his-luck rent-a-cop, a sentient Artificial Intelligence construct, a wealthy power broker, a global chain of convenience stores, and a faceless assassin have in common? Not even Colin Laney knows for sure, but somehow, they’re all intimately connected to a turning point in human history–a massive paradigm shift that’s going to begin in San Francisco, and after it h...more

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Apr 29, 2010 Saskia Marijke Niehorster-Cook rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

A sci-fi story about future homeless living on a now defunct Golden Gate Bridge and their survival skills. One of the bridge's inhabitants comes back home with a friend to shoot a documentary at the same time that a time conglomerate world-wide event that will shift life as we know it, is about to take place. This is being predicted by a mental man hiding in a cardboard box in the subways of Japan because as an orphaned boy he was chemically experimented on and the side effects give him powers t...more

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Jun 09, 2012 Selena rated it 3 of 5 stars

i don't know why, but i found 'All tomorrow's parties' a bit of a slog to get through. could be my fault. it's been years since I read 'Idoru', the second book of the Gibson's Bridge trilogy, and I haven't read the first, 'Virtual Light'. Though it's not essential, I would suggest reading the predecessors before undertaking the final.

There are many POV's. I'm not sure if the pacing would have gone a little quicker had they been trimmed to a core few. I like the hard-boiled tone that is not with...more

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Nov 23, 2008 Krom rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: People who enjoy cyberpunk novels.

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This review contains spoilers.

The conclusion of "The Bridge Trilogy" was bittersweet for me. I very much enjoyed watching Rydell, the down-on-his-luck failed cop cum security guard, stumble his way through Gibson's world and continue to land on his feet while playing pivotal roles in events too large for him to really comprehend. That ability to land on his feet is what prevents Rydell from attaining his goal of being on the reality-show "Cops in Trouble". I also enjoyed Chevette, the street-wi...more This review contains spoilers.

The conclusion of "The Bridge Trilogy" was bittersweet for me. I very much enjoyed watching Rydell, the down-on-his-luck failed cop cum security guard, stumble his way through Gibson's world and continue to land on his feet while playing pivotal roles in events too large for him to really comprehend. That ability to land on his feet is what prevents Rydell from attaining his goal of being on the reality-show "Cops in Trouble". I also enjoyed Chevette, the street-wise bike courier originating from the Bridge whose street smarts let her see what Rydell consistently misses. Some of the most piercing insights of the book are delivered through her. I'm sad to be leaving this character and others. I enjoyed the ride, yet found the climax missed the mark.

In this final installment, Rydell finds himself the custodian of Rei Torei, the Japanese media icon who has never been anything but an media construct, self aware and emergent, and also iconic. Perhaps this character was meant to represent how our own perceptions of celebrity are unattainable even for celebrities. Both Rydell and Rei are guided from cyberspace by Laney, the lens through which Gibson focuses his critical eye on the media and our mass-produced culture. Laney is cursed by the ability to aggregate data on the Net and perceive inflection points both in people's personal lives and in the course of society. Laney calls them nodal points, and he perceives a nodal point only once equaled in history is in the process of forming, the epicenter of which is on perhaps the most intriguing character of the trilogy, The Bridge.

The Bridge is what we know as the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, and in the novel it was condemned after earth-quake damage rendered it unsafe for vehicular traffic. Eventually it was settled by squatters, becoming a fairly autonomous subculture, and a refuge from the corporatized monoculture of the rest of the city. Gibson did a nice job painting this environment with rich textures. So much so that the discovery of a Lucky Dragon convenience store (think 7-11) at the entrance to the bridge in this third novel jarred me as much as it did the characters.

Guiding events, even shaping them and causing the nodal point to come to fruition, is the villain of the series, Cody Hargrove. Unfortunately, the climax loses some of its punch due to the fact that the outcome Hargrove seeks to manifest is ambiguous even by his own admission. Hargrove seeks not to eliminate an enemy, or reap a fortune. Rather, he is attempting to manifest pivotal change while maintaining his position on the other side of that change. In that way, Hargrove's intentions aren't personal, they are corporate, and perhaps he is simply meant to be a human face for the ambitions of corporate greed. The desire for corporations to suppress threats (change) yet survive and profit from the change that does happen fits perfectly.

The paradigm shifting change in this book is a disruptive technology - nanoreplicators that are installed into every Lucky Dragon to enable a new service - the nanofax. Buy an object, fax a copy to a Lucky Dragon near you. In the world of overnight delivery that struck me as a bit odd, though Hargrove's assertion "it's too stupid to fail" rings true too. During an interview between Hargrove and a reporter the issue of copyright is touched upon indirectly, and in my mind would have been the perfect motive for yet another corporate alliance to oppose Hargrove, not to mention a fine soap box for yet more social commentary. Yet Hargrove (and Gibson) dismiss this issue immediately as not important.

Those who who read Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy may recall how many of those characters were humans obsessed with "crossing over" into immortality, into cyberspace, into emergent systems? In light of that observation, what the nanofaxes at the lucky dragons portend for Rei Torei hint at one of the outcomes of the novel, and given Rei Torei was created by corporations as a media construct, it manifests the issue of copyright on a completely different level. Yet the significance of this moment is hard to grasp within the story that is told. Hargrove is defeated, but it doesn't seem to matter. Circumstances force Rydell and Chevette to cross paths and come together again, yet it's not clear why their future as a couple, or the world they live in, is brighter. Rei Torei is made manifest a thousand times over, yet Hargrove doesn't seem to have ever been trying to thwart that outcome - probably because Rei Torei never indicated she was trying to achieve that outcome.

Many more colorful characters decorate the pages as dazzling gems, and for those characters and how their observations about the world they live in relate to ours, the book is worth reading. Just don't be surprised if you're scratching your head a little. If you're not, call me and tell me what I missed.
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Aug 29, 2011 Martin Fossum rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was the first Gibson book I've read, and I realized, late, that I've been reading the "bridge trilogy" out of sequence. This helped to explain why I was having such a difficulty in following the narrative. To be honest, I think I'm done with the "bridge trilogy" for now. After finishing this, the final book in the sequence, I don't have the energy to go back to the beginning. Now, hold on... I'm not done with Gibson, if that's what you were thinking. I'm merely done with this series. I have...more This was the first Gibson book I've read, and I realized, late, that I've been reading the "bridge trilogy" out of sequence. This helped to explain why I was having such a difficulty in following the narrative. To be honest, I think I'm done with the "bridge trilogy" for now. After finishing this, the final book in the sequence, I don't have the energy to go back to the beginning. Now, hold on... I'm not done with Gibson, if that's what you were thinking. I'm merely done with this series. I have had my fill of this future place for the time being.

My critique: What a dirty, dingy, existential world Gibson inhabits here! Everyone is on some kind of drug, or, if not, is aware of the drugs around them. Everything sharp is a deadly instrument and one wrong move could be your last, whether its from plunging into the sea beneath the bridge, or from winding up on the wrong end of some assassin's bad intentions. Everyone in these books seemed in some way to me imprisoned... like they were all fighting it out in a cell block to see who would get out alive. Even Gibson's "cyberspace" denizens seemed to be suffocating in their electronic ether. There is no hope!, Gibson laughs throughout this tale. You are all pawns and you are all doomed to a dismal and hopeless existence. (Ok, this is a bit extreme on my part, but I grew weary of Gibson's bleak universe.)

...All of which makes this book (these books) hard for me to like. I prefer at least one or two breaths of fresh air when I contemplate a distant civilization. My soul necessitates it! I want one or two operatives that stir in clarity and positivity. A character list, all of whom are wallowing in the mud, drags me to wallow in the mud with them. I want out! I guess I've read enough of Soviet anti-utopian lit. to want to put up with it in this kind of new iteration. Also, I had a very difficult time feeling for any of Gibson's characters. His protagonists seemed fated, in some way, like Grecian heros bound for tragic endings with little or no redemption or enlightenment. Gibson seems to be saying that by granting his characters survival, this is resolution enough, although still muddy and forsaken. Gibson's tragedy is Aristotelean except for the ending... he clips off the last bit and lets the reader muse over whether or not there was any return to order. Will the "nodes" shift? Will the universe reorder itself? "Everything will be different." Well, I doubt it. Gibson's grim view of human potential is sure to corrupt any chance of that happening. But, then again, this may be what Gibson is after.

No doubt, Gibson is a master of his form. There is a poison cloud hanging over the lives of all his characters, and this may delight the pessimists who consume the pages of this dingy futuristic world. We're all headed for this ugly mess, one may argue, and Gibson's interpretations in this trilogy are closer than most writers dare to tread. But if the only thing to look forward to in the future is to wear trench coats and eat hamburgers with oil-stained fingers sticking through cut-off wool gloves, I think I'll take a pass. I want a space ship!

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Jan 29, 2012 Allan Dyen-shapiro rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is the book that inspired me to try writing science fiction myself. At the time I read this, my expertise was seeing patterns in disparate data types (I was a scientist at the time). The way in which Gibson captured this sort of thinking and then made it into science fiction through postulating a drug that enhances these abilities but ultimately leads to psychosis was brilliant. The major question in the book--is something major about to happen in the world or is the protagonist insane, was...more

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May 22, 2010 Joe Robles rated it 4 of 5 stars

Love this book! William Gibson writes some beautiful prose. The world he creates is utterly realistic. The book takes place in a near future world with technology that is easily recognizable. What I've always loved about Gibson is that his future worlds aren't crazy departures from reality, but, rather, take reality and go to logical evolutions. This book was written over a decade ago, and still seems like a vision of the future.

The tech that exists in this book, but not in reality, are things t...more

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Jul 30, 2011 Jake Mcconnell rated it 4 of 5 stars

I wasn't sure I'd like this one. I had originally wanted to pick up a copy of Gibson's The Difference Engine, but the public library here didn't have it, and instead I elected to try All Tomorrow's Parties. Glad I did in hindsight. Pretty decent read. Gibson does a good job forging an engaging narrative of a future wrought with communities of disenfranchised, impoverished people living outside of societal norms in situations equivalent to Brazilian favelas, a modularization of the rest of societ...more

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Jun 02, 2012 jennifer rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: kindle

Just fell into this one. Probably 2 1/2, but I'm rounding up today. First William Gibson. Why yes, he is a bit uncanny in some of his cultural forecasting... but then again, we are simple, foolish beings and I don't think stuff like Facebook was ever so hard to "predict." I am not a sci-fi person, really, so I appreciate the lack of strange creatures and beasts and random locales that authors of this type like to describe physically for pages and pages and pages... even the "nodal" stuff was pre...more

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Aug 30, 2009 Christopher rated it 2 of 5 stars

A long time ago I tried to read Neuromancer and, I think, The Difference Engine and I couldn't figure out what was happening. I guess I faded out of those books and never finished them. Or else, I finished them but they had so little impact on me that I can't remember finishing them. This time I thought "I'm going to read this whole book no matter what." Well I finally finished All Tomorrow's Parties and I don't really have any idea what it was about. I was more than 3/4 of the way through it be...more

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Nov 30, 2011 Javier Maldonado rated it 4 of 5 stars

I just finished the Bridge Trilogy, and these books reminded me why I like William Gibson's novels so much. The book is about a cast of characters that are affected by "nodal points", theoretical tipping points in history that are visible through the analysis of large amounts of data. Gibson's prose makes the story flow very well, with the characters moving through the plot in a very realistic way. The anachronisms of these books remind you that the author has predicted most of the technology in...more

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Dec 28, 2009 Graham rated it 3 of 5 stars

I normally hate sci-fi oriented material, but I'll stand by William Gibson (and Philip Dick) for any futuristic fix I might need.

While there were interesting ideas put forth in this (the idea of the death of bohemia due to the ubiquity of communications technology was interesting), I didn't realize when I dove in that this was the last book of a trilogy, and therefore not the easiest thing in the world to follow without the proper background information. Not bad by any stretch of the imagination...more

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May 24, 2011 Andreas rated it 3 of 5 stars

The Bridge trilogy consists of:

Virtual Light
Idoru
All Tomorrow’s Parties

This series of three books is very loosely connected through some of the central characters. Although Gibson’s prose stands out as always, I felt that these novels were more an exercise in writing in a cool fashion than actual attemts at storytelling. The writing is even more florid and pared back than in the Sprawl Trilogy, and the books are not terribly interesting in their own right. It is Gibson, and worth reading, eve...more

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Jan 08, 2009 Chris rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I don't have a whole lot to say about this book. I read it about three years ago, and I probably wouldn't have read it again except that I needed a book for a flight and it was the best option immediately available in the used bookstore I stopped at. It's a perfectly competent piece of work but it doesn't grab my attention the way my favorite Gibson novels, Neuromancer and Pattern Recognition, do. It feels like a retread of the former, sharing many of the same elements without quite the same pan...more

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Nov 09, 2009 Laurie rated it 1 of 5 stars

This is one of those books where you keep reading, hoping it will all finally click, and you will understand what the f$%& is going on. But at 80 pages in, I'm not hopeful this will come to be. There are moments of pure literary talent as Gibsons' astute eye captures the tastes and smells of his characters' spaces in time (or times in space) like no other. But however much I really feel like I'm there, it's like being somewhere but being really, really high--so I have no idea what is going o...more

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Jan 16, 2013 Matthew rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

It's been a while since I picked up a Gibson book. I go through phases where certain themes get my attention and eventually my attention falls back to Gibson.

When I picked up All Tomorrow's Parties, I didn't realize it was in the same world as Idoru. And I'll have to dust off a bookshelf to find Virtual Light somewhere. Like most, if not all (I'm going on memory here), of his work, there's a handful of threads that rotate focus per each chapter. Where in other books I seem to remember those thre...more

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Feb 07, 2012 Kat Hooper rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: audiobook

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

When he was a child in an orphanage in Florida, Colin Laney participated in a research study in which he was given a drug that allows him to visualize and extract meaningful information from endless streams of internet data. Laney now has the ability to see nodal points in history — times and places where important changes are occurring. Even though he doesn’t recognize what the change will be, he “sees the shapes from which history emerges.”

Laney is now a...more ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

When he was a child in an orphanage in Florida, Colin Laney participated in a research study in which he was given a drug that allows him to visualize and extract meaningful information from endless streams of internet data. Laney now has the ability to see nodal points in history — times and places where important changes are occurring. Even though he doesn’t recognize what the change will be, he “sees the shapes from which history emerges.”

Laney is now an adult who’s sick and living in a cardboard box in a Tokyo subway station. He’s convinced that something big is about to happen in San Francisco. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen, but he knows it will change the world. Unable to get there himself, Laney hires Rydell, a California rent-a-cop, to investigate.

Rydell is pleased to be leaving his lowly night job at the Lucky Dragon convenience store, but his new assignment is not as easy as it first seems to be. First of all, he’s being followed by a bunch of thugs. Then there’s the mysterious silent killer who’s lurking around San Francisco. Not to mention Rydell’s ex-girlfriend Chevette and her video-camera-toting friend, a drunk and stimulant-addicted country singer named Buell Creedmore, a computer-generated Asian girl, and a black man named Fontaine who has two wives and sells watches and faux Japanese babies. Rydell has no idea what’s going on... And neither does the unfortunate reader who might be expecting an easy-to-follow plot with a beginning, middle, and end.

But Gibson’s fans know that you don’t read his books for a fast-paced straight-forward plot. Gibson’s brilliance is in creating ideas, settings, technologies, and especially, vivid characters you can’t easily forget. Even minor characters are memorable when he gives them extensive backstories and names like Silencio, Boomzilla, Playboy, and my favorite, Praisegod Satansbane.

Gibson’s “post-post-industrial” settings are fascinating. All Tomorrow’s Parties, and its two related BRIDGE trilogy books, Virtual Light and Idoru, take place in a future ruined California which has been divided into Northern (NoCal) and Southern (SoCal) states. Much of All Tomorrow’s Parties is set on and around the decaying San Francisco Bay bridge which is now stacked with ramshackle plywood dwellings and vendor stalls. That’s an unforgettable image.

Cool tech is also to be expected in Gibson’s novels, and you’ll definitely find some in All Tomorrow’s Parties. My favorites here were the graffiti-eating paint, the quake-proof polymer building materials that engulf whatever’s thrown at them, the global interactive video screens on the pylons outside the Lucky Dragon stores all over the world, and the world-changing piece of technology that appears at the end of the novel.

Those who’ve read the first two BRIDGE trilogy books (which are not required since All Tomorrow’s Parties can stand alone) may want to know what happened to the characters they met there, and there are some answers here, but as with Mona Lisa Overdrive, the sequel to Gibson’s Neuromancer and Count Zero, these characters’ stories don’t so much resolve as just kind of leave us guessing at what might have happened next. Is it the end of the world as we know it, as Laney fears?

But Gibson doesn’t leave us completely empty-handed. He gives us interesting things to think about, and perhaps a warning. He makes us wonder how emergent technologies will change us. Will we destroy ourselves with our cleverness? Could we fall in love with people who only exist in virtual reality? Can we become aware enough of the “shape of history” to predict what will happen in the future? Can we change the future? Can we thwart God? Can we become gods?

I listened to Brilliance Audio’s version of All Tomorrow’s Parties, read by Jonathan Davis. His strong sonorous voice makes him one of my favorite readers. I just like listening to him anyway, but he’s especially brilliant when he’s performing William Gibson’s characters. (less)

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Dec 08, 2011 Isabel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Laney reaches up and removes the bulky, old-fashioned eyephones. Yamazaki cannot see what outputs to them, but the shifting light from the display reveals Laney's hollowed eyes. "It's all going to change, Yamazaki. We're coming up on the mother of all nodal points. I can see it, now. It's all going to change."
"I don't understand."
"Know what the joke is? It didn't change when they thought it would. Millennium was a Christian holiday. I've been looking at history, Yamazaki. I can see the nodal p...more

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Mar 06, 2012 Tfitoby rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

A fabulously satisfying end to Gibson's Bridge trilogy and of the four Gibson novels I've read to date, the most enjoyable to read.

I think I knew the moment we are introduced to the character of Silencio that between the publication of Virtual Light (a book I found difficult and stilted) and this third instalment William Gibson had stepped his game up to a new level, that the readability of Idoru wasn't just a fluke.

As I mentioned in my review of Virtual Light, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash made...more

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Apr 05, 2010 Jim Pfluecke rated it 3 of 5 stars

My friends have been telling me for years how great Gibson is and, when I came across a free copy of this book, I let it sit on my shelf for 5 years before diving in a few weeks ago.

I was surpised by the low ratings on this site, but after 60 pages, I too was let down. Seemed to be a by the numbers sci-fi/cyberpunk book, even though it was written in 1999 and some of the ideas were certainly ahead of their time (although some seem antiquated or at least very familiar in 2010, such as wireless Ip...more

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Apr 05, 2010 James rated it 3 of 5 stars

My friends have been telling me for years how great Gibson is and, when I came across a free copy of this book, I let it sit on my shelf for 5 years before diving in a few weeks ago.

I was surpised by the low ratings on this site, but after 60 pages, I too was let down. Seemed to be a by the numbers sci-fi/cyberpunk book, even though it was written in 1999 and some of the ideas were certainly ahead of their time (although some seem antiquated or at least very familiar in 2010, such as wireless Ip...more

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Mar 26, 2010 Mike rated it 3 of 5 stars

It's been a while since I read any Gibson. I'd always meant to finish this trilogy but could never find the last book. I picked it up to take a break from something else I'm reading. I've always enjoyed Gibson's narrative style, the neat visuals (what he calls 'eye pops') and his "big ideas" that many good SF stories have. The Bridge trilogy, and this book in particular, reads like good detective fiction in a lot of ways. It's fast paced and only slows down enough to give you enough details to g...more

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Feb 25, 2009 Johnny rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

Ah, cyberpunk! Norman Spinrad declared the genre to be dead in one of his Isaac Asimov’s Magazine of Science Fiction rants of the early 90s. To be sure, other authors have tried to go different directions as with the retro-subgenres known as “steampunk” and “dieselpunk.” Neither has reached any critical mass of acceptance, though both are still interesting to me as an individual reader. Indeed, even though the “noble Norman” hath said that cyberpunk is dead, one can still savor the Neal Stephens...more Ah, cyberpunk! Norman Spinrad declared the genre to be dead in one of his Isaac Asimov’s Magazine of Science Fiction rants of the early 90s. To be sure, other authors have tried to go different directions as with the retro-subgenres known as “steampunk” and “dieselpunk.” Neither has reached any critical mass of acceptance, though both are still interesting to me as an individual reader. Indeed, even though the “noble Norman” hath said that cyberpunk is dead, one can still savor the Neal Stephenson sagas since Snow Crash , Spinrad’s own Deus X story of a pope’s soul stored in a mainframe, Bruce Sterling’s Holy Fire, and the conclusions of George Alec Effinger’s and Rudy Rucker’s trilogies. And, while the film based on Gibson’s work may have been an abysmal failure, the concept of cyberpunk lives on in The Matrix Trilogy and the rumored live-action Ghost in the Shell.
So, is it any wonder that, as an admirer of Gibson, I finally got around to reading the “sequel” to The Idoru? Complete with its dark imagery of interstitial communities on the Oakland Bay Bridge (revisiting a setting in Virtual Light), its Tokyo subway station ghetto of homeless living in cardboard boxes, its scathing satire of convenience store consumption with the Lucky Dragon chain, and its self-parody with the Japanese craftsman creating a miniature of one of Gibson’s cyber-cowboys, this little romp has some of the pure invention and joy of his original foray into cyberpunk, Neuromancer.

In this episode, the key to the novel is keeping the Idoru out of the wrong hands. Doing so requires recruiting an ex-cop with ambition of becoming a reality television star and the unsettling episodes of a woman who wants to photograph a documentary on the interstitial community via her mini-blimp-mounted camera platform. Perhaps, though, the most memorable new character in this novel is the young boy who is slow of speech but well in touch with the datastream. As he uses an old pair of goggles and a laptop to sift through tons of data about antique watches, matters get very interesting.

Frankly, this novel approaches the thrill of the original novel. Though there is nothing of the thrill of the chase through cyberspace in this one that we enjoyed in Neuromancer, there is plenty of action and the sense that one is lurking in a shadow world of anarchy and anomie that is far better to read about than to experience.

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Dec 12, 2008 Hannah rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: scifi

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I finished All Tomorrow's Parties, and now I have more questions than answers. I think I will go read some Amazon comments and see if things start making more sense. His books are so rich with ideas, that there seems an endless number of essays you could write on them. But, I'm having trouble so far finding good in-depth essays on these books. Just reviews. Maybe they are being written and just not being published on the web. I figured I'd easily find 8 years worth of lively discussion.

My questi...more I finished All Tomorrow's Parties, and now I have more questions than answers. I think I will go read some Amazon comments and see if things start making more sense. His books are so rich with ideas, that there seems an endless number of essays you could write on them. But, I'm having trouble so far finding good in-depth essays on these books. Just reviews. Maybe they are being written and just not being published on the web. I figured I'd easily find 8 years worth of lively discussion.

My questions/thoughts so far:

1. When Rei Toi replicated herself: Did she keep one central consciousness with multiple physical presences? Or, is she now split into separate consciousnesses that immediately started diverging? If the later, can the clones access each other's memories?

2. When Gibson has Harwood burn the Bridge: Is he trying to say that it really is impossible for interstitials/autonomous zones/bohemias to survive as Harwood believes? Or, is it just that Harwood is consciously/unconsciously fulfilling his own prophecy?

3. What is "that business around Curie's husband"? [Note to self: try to figure this out.]

4. Within the books there is high prevalence of drugs that have psychological effects, and people with obvious psychological diseases, and yet, I can think of no true paranoia in the trilogy. People sense themselves being watched -- and they are being watched. People sense danger -- and they are in real danger. Is this discrepancy intentional? Is Gibson trying to say something here that I'm missing?

5A. Why does Gibson kill off both Laney and Harwood? Is the ability to recognize nodal points supposed to be detrimental by definition? Or, does taking 5-SB seal your fate somehow dooming you to death by suicide or murder? Or, was it just their obsession to influence the future so profoundly that sealed their fates? Is there some type of force out-there that is supposed to stop us from being able to see nodal points?

5B. As the knowledge spreads, will more and more people decide to willingly take 5-SB, to sacrifice themselves for some potential greater good? I can envision a future reality in which some evil corporation or government forcing slaves to take 5-SB to identify nodal points. I think I remember something sort of similar in that weird tv show John Doe. And also something vaguely similar in A Scanner Darkly. [Note to self: look into other examples of this theme further, could be interesting comparisons to be made.](less)

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All Tomorrow's Parties (Bridge #3)

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