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

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