All Tomorrow's Parties - Softcover

Gibson, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140266135 ISBN 13: 9780140266139

Publisher: Penguin, 2000

Synopsis

Rydell is on his way back to near-future San Francisco. A stint as a security man in an all-night Los Angeles convenience store has convinced him his career is going nowhere, but his friend Laney, phoning from Tokyo, says there's more interesting work for him in Northern California. And there is, although it will eventually involve his former girlfriend, a Taoist assassin, the secrets Laney has been hacking out of the depths of DatAmerica, the CEO of the PR firm that secretly runs the world and the apocalyptic technological transformation of, well, everything. William Gibson's new novel, set in the soon-to-be-fact world of VIRTUAL LIGHT and IDORU, completes a stunning, brilliantly imagined trilogy about the post-Net world.

About this title

Product Description:

Penguin trade edition paperback fine condition as new In stock shipped from our UK warehouse

Review:

William Gibson's seventh glossy, neon-lit novel is a stylishly complex sequel to his previous two, Virtual Light and Idoru. From Virtual Light there's the potent image of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge transformed into a vertically stacked shanty-town with its own bohemian autonomy, outside the law. Idoru provides the magical Japanese media idol ("idoru") Rei Toei, a gorgeous lady existing only in software--as yet. Gibson links these worlds with his usual glowing, plausible vision of deadly streetwise realities intersecting with on-line data flow. One man attuned to the net can sense from his cardboard-box home in Tokyo that major changes loom. A Zen assassin stalks San Francisco and the unlucky ex-cop hero from Virtual Light must assemble some very strange equipment. Further objects of desire include lovingly described knives, guns and even antique mechanical watches, as collected by Gibson himself (who pursues them through online auctions)--the ability to trace watches across the net is crucial to tracking the arch-villain. All the world's clocks are ticking in a countdown to transformation and to chrome-polished scenes of extreme violence as zero-hour nears. Multiple storylines meet and dovetail with deft, witty understatement and, in one case, a charming joke. Vintage Gibson, with enough artful backfill that you needn't read the prequels--but they're great fun too. --David Langford

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0140266135
• ISBN 13: 9780140266139
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288