Slashdot Mirror
All Tomorrow's Parties
Gibson's new book, All Tomorrow's Parties, is a capstone to both Idoru and Virtual Light, forming a trilogy of sorts out of books not explicitly tied together beforehand. The process of re-introducing characters who had reached reasonably satisfying closure feels a little forced though the minor characters from the previous two books who are brought back slip in easily and are played a little differently. There are a number of new characters but, as a whole, the cast seems older and wiser. They have dreamed and had their dreams broken or, perhaps worse, had their dreams come true.
There is a soundtrack to this novel and, to my mind, it is by Nick Cave - with an emphasis on his more recent material. There is a similar feeling of having come out of youth, where all nightmares and delights are still possible, into a maturity where having one breath followed by another is a kind of victory and where hope is balanced by experience. Nick Cave's mental landscape has changed over the years, as has Gibson's. This novelist no longer writes cyberpunk but this novel could not exist without its pure cyberpunk antecedents. The shock of the new is largely replaced by a nostalgia for the past. Whilst there are phases of sharp action these are seen as deadly interruptions to normality rather than desirable states. Death is the end, not a means.
Superficially there is very little actual plot in this book. Both character and idea are at the service of a fascinating surface rather than the constructors of genuine depth. It is a novel of style, which is not a common mode in science fiction. Gibson is often criticised for this approach but it is a natural development of the New Wave emphasis on pure literary values in science fiction. As a novel of style it is a great success: the phrasing and terminology glows, particularly in chapter titles - such as "Mariachi Static" - and the way these are incorporated into the text of the chapter; location and action are minimally but completely defined; some characters are kept as shadowy ciphers whilst others are clearly delineated through glimpses of their mental states.
What may underlie the polished surface of Gibson's writing is very difficult to determine. This has often been the case and it may be easier to simply accept that what would be central in most science fiction simply is not so important in this writer's work. In All Tomorrow's Parties however, it is plausible to suggest that Gibson is displaying how unlikely it is that anyone recognises the world-changing event even if they see it. The most significant moment of the novel is observed by an exceedingly minor character. He has no idea what it means and all the characters who might recognise it are too busy attempting to survive catastrophe elsewhere. This is a cool book (in more ways than one) verging on bleakness but saved by it's human values.
Purchase this book at fatbrain.
Nick Cave
All Tomorrow's Parties Website
William Gibson - too many to mention!
The book was great, funny enough I actually submitted a review of it on Epinions a week or so ago.
It leaves you with the normal "What the hell just happened" kind of mental state when you are done. It's a great book, and like the review said, it is very weak on plot, but is written in pretty much normal Gibson style (over-description and a lot of detail).
The bad guy wasn't very bad. Laney kept talking about the end of the world as we know it, and when the book was over, nothing apparently was different 'cept a minor event, and Gibson leaves you confused as to what exactly happened, but I've come to accept that from him...
Those who talk do not know.
Those who know do not talk.
Keep your mouth closed.
Those who talk do not know.
Those who know do not talk.
Keep your mouth closed.
The soundtrack to the novel was indeed Nick Cave, it seems. I heard William Gibson on the BBC Radio 4 program "Desert Island Discs" this morning, in which he chose the 8 records he would get to have with him if stranded on a desert island. One was Nick Cave's "Are You the One I've Been Looking For", which was also his top choice if he had to narrow it down to one disc only.
Another of the songs was an early demo of "All Tomorrow's Parties" by Velvet Underground. He also picked another John Cale song, performed by someone else. The remaining 5 tracks were by Doc Boggs, Steely Dan, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits and Taj Mahal. It was a great program, and I even looked around to see if it was archived on the web but had no luck. Anyone know if the Beeb has RealAudio archives of programs like this somewhere?
"I believe that the cult of the particular brings only death - for it bases order on likeness." St.-Exupery
I don't know how to explain it better than that. I finished _All Tomorrow's Parties_, and I just sort of sat back and said "wow." His books have less of a linear flow; but when you are done with them, a full picture has been created in your head that makes you think.
His stories also have a depth that is lacking in many other stories. I have read _Neuromancer_ many times and after every read I have picked up another facet of the story I didn't understand before.
Gibson is truely a talented writer and I look forward to rereading _All Tomorrow's Parties_ again and the details I know I missed the first time.
I sorry to say that I was disappointed with All Tomorrows Parties. I
suppose it's unfair to compare this work to previous books by Gibson,
but there was nothing new there. Nothing to hold on to.
I found myself constantly hoping for a character I could enjoy as much
as I enjoyed Molly, or Case, or Automatic Jack. These were characters I
cared about and who filled my imagination with ideas.
I've heard it said that Gibson never liked the term "CyberPunk". If
that's the case, he's certainly gotten as far away from that original
idea as he could. Nothing here inspires like Cyberspace, nothing evokes
the shear awe of vat grown street ronin. It's a shame really, because I
enjoyed the high/low fantasy of those books more than this near future
that has been vision corrected for the new millennium.
Although I've never been pleased with the final story arcs from Gibson,
this series was particularly disappointing. It was predictable beyond
the scope of even the last book, with heavy foreshadowing back in Idoru.
I didn't like the way the Neuromancer/Count Zero/Monalisa Overdrive series
ended, but at least I didn't see it coming.
I still enjoy the turn of a phrase and intense detail Gibson brings to the
table, but I fell in love with Neuromancer and this pales by comparison.
Neo -
... Wouldn't Mr. Gibson be a perfect candidate for a /. interview? Please?
--
I strongly believe that trying to be clever is detrimental to your health. -- Linus Torvalds
Maybe it's just me, but I never felt that ATP was lacking in plot. The plot was merely...subtle, as was the denouement. Subtle and oddly satisfying, to me.
However, the consensus is right in one respect: Gibson has never really been about plot, nor, certainly, about theme. Gibson has always been about the characters; the plot is sort of window-dressing for that, Gibson's illustration of the things that people do to themselves, and each other.
That, in my humble opinion, is where his genius lies, and it is very evident in ATP. Rei Todei is in the book for an almost indescribably short time, and yet she is more fully realized than many writers could have made her had they spent five hundred pages trying to do it.
Chevette and Rydell, then, get more time, and by the end, you start reading things into them; they're familiar enough, real enough, that you start to infer and induct things things about them, making art imitate life.
I think William Gibson would be a super-kickass interview, as would Neal Stephenson or Douglas Adams or...
Also, I must diagree with the reviewer. The soundtrack for this album is Vanessa-Mae's Storm. A compulsive blend of the old with the new. It's funky, but it works. "Bach Street Prelude" for the final 10 pages. And I'm not even a classical music fan.
-k. ^-^ ^D
Say *what*? I love getting moderated down for doing nothing wrong. Apparently some people don't understand how the karma system works. It's not my fault that I'm +2, and I should not be penalized for this.
Like everyone else in this discussion (it seems) I just finnished All Tomorrows Parties, but I was only moderately impressed with it. To me this book did not offer much more than its predecessor Iduro, which I thought was rather disapointing.
The character of Laney, with his ability to spot patterns in the data flows of society, is very fascinating, but Gibson doesn't build on him at all in this book, leaving just a more insane version of what we saw in Iduro. I have always enjoyed the depth and variation of Gibsons characters, but lately he has been falling into some pretty bad stereotypes. In Iduro he had the girl who tells people she is a street fighter in Mexico City on the Internet and turns out to be an invalid, and in this one he has crypto-cracking street kid (if Bruce Willis beat you to it, you know you're not quite original). Which is a shame because the Silencio is otherwise a pretty cool character (though Alex Garland wrote the part a lot better in his recent _The Tesseract_ (a must-read)).
I also never hooked onto the idea of the Iduro. While liking the idea of a fictionous idol attaining an identity, I feel Gibson treats her like just another Pinnochio figure. And what is the meaning (spoiler ahead) with making a great event out of the emergent system making herself human in a Lucky Dragon nanofax system? Isn't the great event of the future rather the opposite, that man is gaining ever greater ability to turn itself into the immortal iduro?
Finally, while I don't mind (in fact, I like) a book that doesn't tie all the ends together, I sort of feel that a book tagged as the conclusion to a triology should. While fun reading, as always with Gibson, this book really left me more with a feeling of "what now?" than "wow".
-
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
I was quite startled by this book. I thought prior Gibson novels got a little sloppy in the writing and plot. Lots of great ideas, interesting characters but far too much was crammed into the book detracting from the appreciation of language and individuals. This book is in a completely different style. This is a work of real precision writing - exact use of the language to communicate. In my opinion this was easily the best written book Gibson has done to date, and a finely polished gem. The only other science fiction author I have seen write on this level is Ursula LeGuin. Bravo!
I read ATP, and it was worth every penny (though the local bookstore has an *autographed* copy that might be worth a few more pennies)...
And I would just like to say one thing: Chapter 68 of ATP was probably one of the most unique, fun, scientific and enthralling chapters I've ever read. If you haven't read ATP, just wait until you get to Chapter 68... all one and a half pages of it. Pure Gibson pleasure!
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
You have an option of clicking the box that says "no score +1 bonus" when posting a comment that isn't quite so insightful. If you read /.'s moderation faq, you'd find that Rob wants moderation to happen this way.
;)
Of course, you have better things to do, so I'll step out of your way now.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes