All Tomorrow's Parties

Duncan Lawie, our premier reviewer of fiction has sent us his take on William Gibson's latest effort All Tomorrow's Parties. There was a lot of press surrounding the release of this book - click below to find out more about it, or dicuss your impressions of it. All Tomorrow's Parties author William Gibson pages 277 publisher Putnam Publishing Group rating 7/10 reviewer Duncan Lawie ISBN 0399145796 summary A stylish novel, so highly polished that the surface is almost impossible to see through. William Gibson is surely an author who needs no introduction in this forum but he may need some context. Neuromancer was the first science fiction novel I ever read which had the word 'fuck' in it. This may seem insignificant but it was one tiny element of what made cyberpunk such a revelation. Whilst cyberspace, Gibson's gift to science fiction, was compiled on a typewriter, it is still the dominant public image of what the wired world is like or will become as it matures. His subsequent expansion of that world, with Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, was affected by the incredible advances in the world of computers through the intervening years. With this rate of change it is hardly surprising that Gibson chose to step back from the sharp near-future edge where even the wildest speculation can be overtaken in the time it takes to bring a book to publication. This withdrawal resulted, in Virtual Light, in the presentation of a society where computers are part of the backdrop rather than being of direct interest in the same way that atomic power underlies the science fiction of an earlier age. In Idoru, new technologies come to the fore again and were presented in a more global context.

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!