if i were to read All Tomorrow's Parties on my own and not for any course i probably would not pick up on half the messages or underlying ideas of this book. i would read it on the surface and walk away mildly entertained. however, after going to lecture and listening to Professor Ogden, i have taken so much away from this book. Gibson's satire on today's society really hits home, i think. he makes so many soft, indirect criticisms on today's society, that i think everyone should hear. if we keep on going the way we are, we very well could end up in a future similar to the one painted by Gibson. and that is scary. i for one wouldn't want to live in that world. the sad thing is though, that in today's society people aren't taking the time to read works such as this. or if they do, they could just do what i said i would have done if not in this course and read it for pure entertainment. this causes the message of the satire to get lost. and what i think is especially sad about this is if a high-budget movie were to be made of this movie, millions of people would see it and instantly pick up on the satire (people are always searching for hidden meanings in movies. more so than books i think). i hate that we are so technologically oriented today that a movie would be able to affect more people than a book...but that is the reality of fiction today.

Prophetic Fiction

The idea of prophecy in fiction was mentioned in lecture and there are examples of it in a few of our assigned readings. Vancouver Short Stories begins with The Prophetess which introduces the idea of the possibility of prophecy in regards to an Indian wild woman/oracle who predicted the Vancouver fire. The real teen violence that is escalating in the Vancouver area that was mentioned on the course fictionandreality blog and as was pointed out by Dr. Ogden in lecture, matches Coupland's vision in Hey Nostradamus!. All Tomorrows Parties is also presenting a prophetic vision of the future in regards to the technocratic consumer society model that the majority of the planet is emulating. The three English writers consisting of Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and H.G. Wells are also extremely prophetic in regards to both the utopic and dystopic descriptions of the future. These writers all posited visions of the future that have all manifested themselves in a number of ways and frames the idea of the various prophetic truths that can be found in a work of fiction.

Color in Fiction

Margaret Avison uses a lot of color is her poems. Pauline Johnson also introduces color to describe the landscape of Vancouver. Color evokes emotions, feelings and imagery. Color has a subjective perspective. There are different shades of each color and each person sees color in a different light. The popular colors people can easily identity like red, blue, yellow, green, but when the colors start to blend together, more complex colors are formed and people have different opinions on what they are called. To one person it could be turquoise but to another it could be aqua-marine. But is it the name of the color or the color itself that provokes an image. If so how do you show a color is writing? What about a person who is color blind. How does color look to them? Some colors will look right but other colors will all blend together. Color is a great way to describe something and connect the reader to imagery, but I think all the senses should be used to truly convey the full image.

for some reason, the part of Hey Nostradamus! that just sticks in my mind is the part in which Reg tells his son Jason that he is a murderer, even though as the reader percieves it, Jason is a hero. Upon reading this the reader flares up against Reg, because it appears so obvious that Jason didn't kill the shooter out of malice or a will to kill some one, he did it to protect all of his innocent classmates. i completely agree with that, i don't believe Jason is a 'murderer,' but if you stop to think, as far as everything that Reg believes, and what he holds to be true, he is correct in the way in which he labels his son. to me this goes back to the discussion we had in tutorial about what truth is. in both different sets of views or ideals (those of the reader/Jason vs. those of Reg) there is a truth to each respective side. the problem is that those two truths are in conflict and that there is no way to say whose truth has more validity. does this make all truth subjective? there obviously are some subjective truths in the world, actual facts, but a lot of the content of this course have led me to believe that the big truths out there, the moral truths,have to be looked at subjectively and relatively. but when you start looking at truths relatively, everything sort of starts to lose meaning. you need to have some basis of comparison if everything is relative, but if everything is defined in it's relation to other things you can't do that. ahhhh. i don't think i'm even talking about what i started talking about anymore. basically what i was going for was that if truth and thereby reality are subjective can there be a point in searching out truth and separating from fiction?

reminder

i really feel like All Tomorrow's Parties encapsulates the theme of this blog. the whole book is full of things that cross the border between what is real and what isn't. stuff like Rei Toei, you can't really ever be sure whether or not she is is real or not. it forces the reader to step back and reanalyze his or her world. what things are really real? things that we take to be true often times are not, and vice versa. a lot of ideas and information that we are fed are things that are fabricated, while at the same time we don't receive a lot of information we should. like stuff about wars and genocides. they are often given minimal news coverage and when they are reported pictures and descriptions of the actual horror are omitted. i feel like lots of times we don't even think about this, despite the fact that it is so pervasive in today's technological society. books like this are such a good reminder that we should be scrutinizing our surroundings and the information that we are given.

"All Tomorrow's [Simulations]"

Rei Toei, a character from William Gibson's novel, "All Tomorrow's Parties", can be described as a simulation. She is something that pretends to be or represents something else, which is a beautiful woman. Unfortunately, Rei Toei is completely false and only represented through a simulation, for example the silver canister Laney gives to Rydell creates this depiction of Rei Toei. Simulations are also a construct that can be recognized throughout the novel. Silencio, with his headset that connects him to a field of data, allows him to enter a simulation of an individual’s safety deposit box and its inner contents. Also, the Lucky Dragon, with its mass of television screens that connect it to Lucky Dragons world wide, creates a simulation of a different place/country, just by watching these screens. Another representation of a simulation would be when Rydell and Laney enter the field of code and visit abstract beings, such as the Rooster. They are actually conversing with simulations of code that represent the real, not an actual real human form.

"All Tomorrow's Parties", really emphasized the combination of the real with the false. Since technology has taken over, and everyone in this novel is driven by it, they have lost site of what is true and replaced it with false simulations of things that used to be real. Basically, truth is lost in a sea of endless data that produces simulations that are false representations of the truth. As you can see, this is how Gibson combines fiction, or false simulations, and truth.

Nodes

The concept of nodes is well known. For example, the nodal system of the people you know continuously grows and becomes more complex. Firstly you have your family, then the people you meet in elementary school, high school, and then university. Then you met your friend’s friends and so on. The number of nodes continuously increases with no end in sight.
In lecture, Professor Ogden described how William Gibson uses a complex nodal system with his characters in his novel. Each chapter starts out fragmented with a set of characters, but as the plot develops the characters interact with each other and connections between the characters are made. In the end all the characters are linked together through one another.