BOOK
All the heroes in All Tomorrow's Parties wield knives. Chevette, the onetime bike messenger and second-best thing in William Gibson's 1993 Virtual Light, has one hammered from a motorcycle drive chain. Rydell, former cop, night watchman, and now convenience store security guy, sports a lightweight ceramic knife, although he doesn't much like its balance. And the mysterious Konrad, the man who kills without fuss or muss, brandishes the deadliest blade, the one "that sleeps head down, like a vampire bat."
So many sharp knives slice elegantly through the virtual realities and nanotechnological macguffins that populate Gibson's latest novel. And appropriately so. When Gibson, one of science fiction's greatest literary stylists, is at his best, he offers visceral detail ("helicopters swarming like dragonflies") even when promising transcendent change ("the mother of all nodal points" - a moment in the near future when the fabric of daily life will twist profoundly). Gibson has always been obsessed with mind-body dichotomies - what could present a better counterpoint to jacked-in virtuality than a knife in the gut?
As usual, Gibson is strong on atmosphere and lean on plot. A Singaporean chain of convenience stores and 3-D nanotech fax machines are crucial, but readers are never certain why, even at the end. All we know for sure is that those fax machines are the catalyst for that mother of all nodal points. Like the character Laney, readers can see patterns in the data flow - and thus comprehend the significance of the nodal points - but are "never quite able to grasp the nature of this reality." Gibson wouldn't be Gibson if he spelled it out, if he eliminated all the ambiguity. His specialty is hanging on to that fractal edge without ever going over the brink.
Suddenly, with All Tomorrow's Parties, we have a trilogy. Where Virtual Light and Idoru, his most recent novels, were linked only incidentally - Rydell appeared in both - All Tomorrow's Parties brings the skeins of both novels together. There are very few new characters - or even new settings. Most of the action takes place on the autonomously chaotic community that has grown up around and over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge - that marvelously rich place that was the first-best thing about Virtual Light.
Viewed as a trilogy, Gibson's works make his evolving obsessions translucently clear. Once, it was Japanese transnational corporations and run-amok artificial intelligences that provided the villains. Now, it is out-of-control media - tabloid TV, celebrity handlers - that pose the threat. In this dangerous future, the most dangerous man is, naturally, a public relations executive. What could be scarier?
All Tomorrow's Parties by William Gibson: $24.95. G. P. Putnam's Sons: www.penguinputnam.com.
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