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''All Tomorrow's Parties'' is a 1999 novel by Creator/WilliamGibson and the third volume of the ''Literature/BridgeTrilogy''.

A few years after ''Literature/{{Idoru}}'', its protagonist, the data analyst Colin Laney, remotely hires the protagonist of ''Literature/VirtualLight'', the ex-cop Berry Rydell, to travel to San Francisco on a yet-unspecified assignment. Laney's SuperSenses have detected the [[EndOfAnAge "mother of all nodal points"]] in the near future, as well as that a CorruptCorporateExecutive named Cody Harwood (who has the same powers) will try to twist it for his own gain. Now he needs Laney to be his eyes and hands at the ground zero of the upcoming nodal point -- on the SF-Oakland Bay Bridge.

Meanwhile, ''VL''[='=]s {{deuteragonist}} and Rydell's ex-girlfriend Chevette Washington also travels to the Bridge to hide from an abusive ex and to confront her own past. And in [[TwoLinesNoWaiting yet another storyline]], a mysterious Taoist assassin Konrad is hired by Harwood to be ''his'' agent on the Bridge and gets to know the locals, like the mute urchin Silencio and the pawn-broker Fontaine. Oh, and the AI known as "Rei Toei", the title character of ''Idoru'', who has been missing for months, is firmly wrapped in this whole mess, as well.
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!!This novel contains examples of:

* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: The trilogy, written in the 1990s, is set in and after 2006, after a massive earthquake has resulted in the abandonment of the Oakland Bay Bridge, which has since been resettled as a sort of squatters' shantytown.
* BackForTheFinale: Pretty much every important character from the previous two books returns (or is at least mentioned) in this one, with the only notable exception being Chia Pet [=McKenzie=] from ''Idoru''.
* BladeEnthusiast:
** The Taoist assassin Konrad, who takes meticulous care of his tanto, practices an Argentine school of knife fighting considered mythical within the setting, and is ridiculously deadly with his blade.
** While not knife nuts per se, Rydell and Chevette wind up carrying a ceramic switchblade and a knife with a pattern-welded blade made from the drive chain of a 1952 [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Black_Lightning Vincent Black Lightning]], respectively. Both are used at crucial points in the plot.
* ContinuityCameo: Blackwell, an important character in ''Literature/{{Idoru}}'', makes a brief appearance near the end of ''All Tomorrow's Parties'' when he and Yamazaki recover [[spoiler:Laney's corpse]]. The book doesn't identify him by name, but rather by a description of his disfigured ear.
* ChekhovsGun: The knife given to Chevette by Fontaine ends up important when [[spoiler:she uses it to slash the scarf-wearing assassins glider wing, sending him plummeting to his death]]. For added symbolism, the knife was commissioned for her by her late father figure Skinner from ''Literature/VirtualLight'', and the aforementioned scuffle takes place in the elevated shack Skinner used to share with Chevette.
* {{Cyberpunk}}: Or PostCyberpunk, depending on who you ask.
* DistantFinale: In the final chapter of the novel, we see [[spoiler:a much older and talkative Silencio, who has apparently taken over Fontaine's store on the Bridge, repair a broken watch using nanotech while the customer, a young boy not unlike Silencio himself when he had first met Fontaine, watches the process in awe]].
* DomesticAbuse: Chevette left Carson after he hit her. While Chevette pretends to Tessa like it was no big deal for her, it is later revealed that she has been at least mildly traumatized by it, [[spoiler:experiencing vivid flashbacks of the previous beating when Carson catches up with her and hits her again]].
* DowntimeDowngrade: We knew that Chevette and Rydell parted ways already in ''Idoru'', but it is in this book that we learn what happened from Chevette's perspective. [[spoiler:At the end of the novel, they are implied to get back together again.]]
* DroppedABridgeOnHim: [[spoiler:Carson is set up as the big villain of Chevette's storyline, but almost as soon as he catches up with her, he is unceremoniously shot in the head by the Scarf for getting between the assassins and Rydell (who protects Chevette from Carson).]]
* FiringOneHanded: Fontaine does target shooting with a small calibre revolver, holding in it one hand.
* HandyCuffs: Mystical assassin Konrad is bought in wearing handcuffs. It is implied that the rush to bring him in is the end for his captors -- because his hands are cuffed in front of him.
* HitmanWithAHeart: Konrad is a weird case. He is not so much a compassionate man as a man of firm principles, which happen to be closely aligned with Taoist philosophy of non-action and living in the present.
* MatterReplicator: The Nanofax machine, which transmits copies of ''anything''.
* NakedOnArrival: Whenever her projector is activated, Rei Toei appears stark naked for a split second, before copying the first set of clothes she sees as her own (in order: Rydell's, Maryalice's, and finally, Chevette's). In each case, everyone has to acknowledge that Rei wears them better.
* TheSingularity: The novel ends with [[spoiler:an AI becoming flesh by means of cheap atomic assembly, emerging from "every 7-Eleven in Christendom", when Rei Toei hijacks Cody Harwood's plan to install Nanofaxes in each Lucky Dragon store to produce a physical copy of ''herself'' in every last one of said stores across the world]].
* UncertainDoom: In the final chapters, it is heavily implied that [[spoiler:Laney has finally succumbed to his illness and malnutrition, as well as that Konrad kills Harwood, but neither death is described outright]].
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