All Tomorrow's Parties - William Gibson

I have been consuming Gibson in a strange and disjointed fashion over the past 3 years, picking up random books in his trilogies and reading them out of order. Maybe because I never stop thinking about Gibson's universe (!), this has not reduced my enjoyment of them in the slightest.

ATP follows Laney in the final stages of his drug-induced transformation, in which his uncanny nodal apprehension is perfected even as his body completely degenerates. Laney has sensed that a pivotal change is poised to occur in the universe, with the node centered around the enigmatic celebrity Harwood and idoru Rei Toei, and the new nanotechnology "fax machines" entering all Lucky Dragon convenience stores. As usual, a synopsis is unsatisfying for Gibson's stories, which sound absurd when summarized in this fashion, yet are immensely, masterfully believable.

I truly believe that Gibson has his finger on the pulse of our own history, much like Laney, and this is why his "future" is so powerfully present.

Highly, highly recommend.

Gibson's 3 Trilogies:

The Sprawl Trilogy:

• Neuromancer
• Count Zero
• Mona Lisa Overdrive

The Bridge Trilogy:

• Virtual Light
• Idoru
• All Tomorrow's Parties

The Bigend Books:

• Pattern Recognition
• Spook Country
• Zero History

Anathem - Neal Stephenson

Today I finished my 6th book of 2014, Stephenson's Anathem. WOW!

The book is set on the planet Arbre, quite similar to our own, but divided in the present time (and for the past several thousand years) into the Saecular and Mathic worlds. Inside the "maths", or cloisters, live the Avout, non-religious men (fraas) and women (suurs) who have devoted their lives to intense scholarship and medieval asceticism, almost wholly without advanced praxis (technology). They live secluded from the outside world, except for a 10-day holiday called Apert during which the gates are opened, when the "extras" are free to come into the math, and the Avout are free to leave and explore extramuros. Depending on whether an Avout is a Unitarian, Tenner, Hundreder, or Thousander, his or her order will have the chance to celebrate Apert only once a year, decade, century, or millenium. In the mean time, all knowledge of the Saecular world is strictly avoided.

The book opens as Fraa Erasmas, a Tenner, is about to celebrate his first Apert since joining his math, the Concent of Saunt Edhar, as a young boy. Over the course of this holiday, however, he and his fraas and suurs discover that something very serious and shocking has been happening extramuros. Dun dun dun!

Of course I won't give away more, but suffice to say, this book is pure Stephenson genius. A beautifully rich world filled with highly likable characters (especially Fraa Jad!) engaged in a gripping and meaningful quest.

Recommended if you enjoyed: The Name of the Rose, Reamde

Stephenson's Novels

• The Big U (1984)
• Zodiac (1988)
• Snow Crash (1992)
• Interface (1994) 
• The Diamond Age: or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (1995)
• The Cobweb (1996) 
• Cryptonomicon (1999)
• The Baroque Cycle
• Quicksilver (2003), volume I
• The Confusion (2004), volume II
• The System of the World (2004), volume III
• Anathem (2008)
• The Mongoliad (2010–2012)
• Reamde + Colin's review (2011)

William Gibson's Idoru

In this utterly wild and brilliant book by William Gibson, two characters' narratives intersect to reveal the story of a famous rockstar - Rez of the band Lo/Rez - who is determined to marry an idoru, or virtual celebrity, despite the objections of his P.R. team and devoted, massive, scarred bodyguard Blackwell. Set in the near (but technologically greatly advanced) future, the intersecting narratives are from the perspectives of Chia, a fourteen-year-old Lo/Rez fan and skilled hacker from Seattle, and Laney, a hacker with an uncanny ability to detect "nodal points" in data. The theme of emergence is evidenced at the meta- as well as macro-level, wherein the individual stories interact to create a totality which far exceeds the sum of its parts. The tale is a true page-turner, and rife with crazy characters and novel ideas. Definitely worth reading!!

**Update**

Helpful info from Colin: Gibson's 3 Trilogies (turns out this is book 2 of one of them - oops)

Gibson's 3 Trilogies:

The Sprawl Trilogy:

• Neuromancer
• Count Zero
• Mona Lisa Overdrive

The Bridge Trilogy:

• Virtual Light
• Idoru
• All Tomorrow's Parties

The Bigend Books:

• Pattern Recognition
• Spook Country
• Zero History