All Tomorrow's Parties - Hardcover

Gibson, William

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670875570 ISBN 13: 9780670875573

Publisher: Viking, 1999

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

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 story lines 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

Review:

"All Tomorrow's Parties is immensely engaging, alive on every page and as enjoyable a weekend entertainment as one could want."--The Washington Post Book World
"Gibson, one of science fiction's greatest literary stylists, is at his best [when] he offers visceral detail even when promising transcendent change--a moment in the near future when the fabric of daily life will twist profoundly."--Wired
"Moves at warp speed...[Gibson] is a witty and compelling storyteller."--Los Angeles Times
"[A] hard-edged and grimly beautiful piece of work."--Chicago Tribune
"Gibson has done it again."--Time Out New York
"A creepily plausible near-future of nanotechnology and virtual-reality pop idols, delineated in Gibson's customary diamond-sharp prose as the plot hurtles toward existential apocalypse."--Elle
"Ultra-cool cyberpunk...this familiar, vigorous, vividly realized scenario is set forth in the author's unique and astonishingly textured prose."--Kirkus Reviews
"Gibson's rich protopointillism coins a wireless future where reality is only proxy and proviso. Made all the more beautiful and frightening by its probability, and by characters who somehow tweeze hope from the polymer."--Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0670875570
• ISBN 13: 9780670875573
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288