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Mark and Gerry's Sci-Fi Reviews Continue........
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William Gibson makes his house Payment in All Tomorrow's Parties
Review by Mark
William Gibson is famous among Sci-Fi writers and high brow sci-fi readers. Gibson is credited with coining the term "cyberspace" and providing a fully realized view of the potential of the internet. Furthermore, the influence of Gibson's writing, particulalry Neuromancer is the seed for a lot of modern science fiction including the great movie "The Matrix". So Gibson is indeed a famous writer... but is he a good writer?, For this reader a good writer does not place himself between the reader and the story. The best writers (Asimov, Clarke, Turner) are merely windows through which the reader sees a reality as the writer does. In the case of William Gibson, he can't seem to get his past his desire to leave his personal watermark on every page of his stories. As a result Neuromancer is nearly incomprehensible, and the current (1999) novel All Tomorrow's Parties, is merely confusing and pointless.
All Tomorrow's Parties tracks the movements of a group of characters. What are they acually doing? It's not really clear. Their movements are directed by two other characters who have some vague ability to perceive the future. Not that they see exactly what will happen, but instead a Hari Seldon-like ability to see the direction society and history are going. These two prophets are in competition to try and control a certain point in space and time that they perceive to be particularly crucial. The nodal point of activities is the Bay Bridge between Oakland and San Francisco. The Bay Bridge is no longer used for traffic, but is now a place of residence for people who like to live in shanties and cardboard boxes. As you can imagine, in such an environment there is likely to be action and violence. Gibson writes action and violence pretty well. In fact, of Gibson's novels, this is the best written:
"People don't know what they want, not before they see it. Every object of desire is a found object"
"That which is overdesigned, too highly specific, anticipates outcome; the anticipation of outcome guarantees if not failure, the absence of grace"
Despite All Tomorrow's Parties relative readability, this novel is really about six characters in search of a story. Let me pose several questions that are left unanswered at the last page
1) By what mechanism did the two characters acquire prescience? The novel hints at some kind of chemical connection, but come on, it make no sense except to Dune fans.
2) What is the change that is going to happen and when will we know it has happened?
3) what is the relationship of the change that is going to happen and what the characters are doing?
4) How did the bridge become a public housing project, and how do people now get across the Bay. Anyone who has ever lived in the Bay area knows this is important!
Obviously it will be hard for me to recommend this book to other sci-fi aficionados. It just seems as though the novel was written because the author needed the money.
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