Orion Reads
a diary of books etc.

Friday, April 08, 2005

All Tomorrow's Parties

I forgot that i finished All Tomorrow's Parties by William Gibson recently. Basically it was kind of a let down after Pattern Recognition set me on a Gibson spree. It's a fine book, and Gibson's cyberpunk is as usual well done, but really it's only fairly well done. The technology and characters are pretty archetypical and familiar. Also there's sort of a blank spot where the climax is supposed to be. Something happened, i know, i think, but i have no idea what it was. "Everything Changed" was an often repeated phrase, the characters seeing some sort of entire paradigm shift in the world, but i frankly missed it even 'tho i was looking. - Was it just the Pinoccio machine-made-flesh of the virtual girl ? I suppose so, but Gibson sort of left it as a crumb at the edge of the table after eating a large meal of definitely weird but basically random and unrelated characters and plot elements. So, worth reading if you like cyber punk, but probably not otherwise.

I also read a small 1960s book of short stories from Weird Stories magazine. Some of them were pretty good, some weren't. Weird Stories published Lovecraft in his day and as such is a pillar of horror & science-fiction genesis. Highly recommended, 'tho mostly for its pre-1960 charm.

Am winding up We Wish To Inform You. Summary to come.

1 Comments:

  • I'm going to treat myself soon and read "Pattern Recognition" AGAIN! Which is really a booksellergirl no-no. If you work somewhere where every day you are reminded of how many books you haven't read YET, it is a rare treat to waste time by re-reading. But it is worth it with this book. Yay i can't wait!

    By Blogger The Sensualist, at 1:18 PM  

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