All Tomorrow's Parties Audiobook By William Gibson cover art

All Tomorrow's Parties

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All Tomorrow's Parties

By: William Gibson
Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
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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.

©1999 William Gibson (P)2009 Audible, Inc. Science Fiction Cyberpunk Dystopian Fiction Hard Science Fiction Virtual Light
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Beautiful Language • Poetic Descriptions • Excellent Vocal Characterizations • Believable World • Unique Style

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Thank you for the great narration, Jonathan Davis. I can't image how you accomplished such a great listen; is very enjoyable.
I ended up enjoying this book the most of the trilogy. I've read "All Tomorrow's Parties" a couple of times, but listening to this version is much better.
William Gibson has a great talent for describing the past, present and future (all at the same time) with a great tongue in cheek style.

Best production, great listening experience

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Gibson became a much better writer in the last ten years. This book is clunky and shows its age at times, but I share Gibsons interested in the interaction between tech and culture in the near future, and while this isn’t the best imagined or crafted cyber-punk story, it has some well done scenes and gets technically, thematically stronger in the final chapters. Recommended for any CP fan, but imperfect and not as good as later Gibson works IMO.

Interesting to Observe the Present as Imagined in the Past

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Had to think a lot about why I enjoyed this book so much. One reason was that Gibson has a habit of challenging his readers with the way he writes. He'll introduce something in a very off-hand way, e.g., the bridge, without explaining it at all, leaving it up to you to piece together what he's talking about in the course of the story. The first two books in this series are like that. They don't really have a lot going on - you could summarize their plots very simply, but you have to piece together what's going on, so your mind stays engaged with the prose. He doesn't do that in this book, maybe as a reward to the reader for making it this far (it certainly gave me a little endorphin hit to find the reading so easy), maybe just because he wanted to wrap things up without adding more books. or just maybe as a kind of parallel for the subject matter - obscure events that seem disconnected and unclear at first but end up clear and connected as the "nodal points" emerge. Also, the way he tells the story in this final book is just flat-out brilliant. Gibson is a master of what I think I would call an active description - he doesn't just tell you what something looks, sounds or feels like; he uses metaphors about how it seems to have come to be, how it's acting or what memories it conjures. Sometimes these hit me so perfectly that I have to smile. Inanimate objects become like characters in the story, with critical roles to play. And of course, that also parallel's a major part of the story - anthropomorphizing of technical constructs. Lastly, being a natural systems thinker, I have always been fascinated by the way events intersect and combine to cause other events, and how the observers of those events participate in them merely by observing, or in some cases by following "gut" feelings that just seem to direct us to the important ones. I may not "see" nodal points, but there have definitely been times when I've felt them. That's why the character I identify with most in this story with an ensemble of protagonists is definitely Laney. Chevette and Rydell act as more standard heroes. Chevette is a damsel in distress that doesn't need saving, Rydell is a reluctant warrior that can instinctively feel what he should do, but Laney can actually _see_ it. Absolutely fascinating. To me, this book is a masterpiece.

My favorite Gibson so far

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Colin Laney working from inside the inside of the inside of a Tokyo subway station finds the red thread that leads to our future. Pulling it ever so gently he contrives to manipulate the manipulator and find a way away from "rich powerful corrupt men" seducing us into a culturally homogonized nightmare.

Lucid prescience

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What would have made All Tomorrow's Parties better?

If you are sci fi fan, then this is for you. I am not a Sci Fi fan, but I was hoping the modern Sci Fi perhaps detective theme would be ok for me. Another reviewer could not get through this book. I am at ch 12 and giving up. J.D. has made the characters wonderful as usual, but I just can't seem to pick up the tread of this story.

What was most disappointing about William Gibson’s story?

This author/genre is not for me, so this is not the fault of the author. The other reviewers love this story, so buy if you are a fan.

Have you listened to any of Jonathan Davis’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I love Jonathan Davis's reading style. See Sandra Brown's Mean Streak. I try to buy as many of this readers' works as I can, but I am just suffering with some of the reads if I am not a fan of the author.
J.D. claim to fame is Sci Fi and anything latin based. He is terrific!

Any additional comments?

note: I use 1.25 x new speed as it helps match an author's intent of the story line.

You Must Love Sci Fi

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