Pattern Recognition
by William Gibson
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Book Summary Information
Author: William GibsonEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-02-01
ISBN: 0425198685
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: Berkley
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780425198681
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Pattern Recognition
Book Review: Perfectly modern, perfectly unnerving.
Summary: 5 Stars
I've known about William Gibson since the movie "Johnny Knemonic," of which he wrote the book and the screenplay for the film. It was a cheesy film but it looked into a future that had too much information as well as a virtual reality internet that's even futuristic by our standards today. Face it, most sci-fi doesn't look futuristic after it's been out for a while because we finally have a technology that's better than what the films show. Why do you think their all set in the far future?
This book isn't like that. It's a very modern, 21st century book. It looks at the dissconnectedness that technology creates, Cayce Pollard seems more often to feel safe when she's online in the message board or on the telephone than when she's talking with other people in person. She somehow feels she knows them better when in reality she only knows what they've "told" her through what they've "posted." I've felt that way before and it's a very unerving experience, as she says in the book, it's like, "having a conversation in a darkened basement at a distance of fifteen feet."
The novel is written in a very message board feel to it. It's all written in present tense, except for the flashbacks of course, and although it's richly described, he does leave a lot of details to the imagination. The characters are very realistic, even Cayce whose allergic reaction to product brands is something I wish I could inflict are large segments of the population sometimes. As George Carlin wrote, "Companies have turned us into walking billboards."
Cayce is looking for the source of this "footage" that's created a buzz on the internet and therefore with people all over the world. Her fascination with it seems to come from pure curiousity as well as her profession. She's a "coolhunter," which is an actual job. Corporations hire these people to find trends and what the next big thing will be. In a world that is ever evolving and where nothing seems to last anymore, this profession is the best metaphor for the mass-ADD in our culture.
It surprises her whose interested in the footage and for what reasons. Her boss, Bigend, thinks that this is an untapped marketing genius. Parkaboy, one of her Message Board cohorts, shares her views, but has more of a "fanboy" approach to the footage. In short, every kind of internet surfer is represented throughout the story.
This is one of my favorite books in a long time. It took a while to absorb the details, but that's the first sign of a good book to me. It's not slow, it's not fast. It's a perfectly even page turner. You see what Cayce sees, you feel what she feels. It's that good!
By the way, name dropping products in public situations, something that is mentioned in the book, is something that people are hired to do. It's called undercover marketing and was featured in the documentary THE CORPORATION. Just another example of Gibson's astutness.
"Technology...the knack of so arranging life that we need not experience it." - Bertolt Brecht
Summary of Pattern Recognition
The accolades and acclaim are endless for William Gibson's coast-to-coast bestseller. Set in the post-9/11 present, Pattern Recognition is the story of one woman's never-ending search for the now.
The first of William Gibson's usually futuristic novels to be set in the present, Pattern Recognition is a masterful snapshot of modern consumer culture and hipster esoterica. Set in London, Tokyo, and Moscow, Pattern Recognition takes the reader on a tour of a global village inhabited by power-hungry marketeers, industrial saboteurs, high-end hackers, Russian mob bosses, Internet fan-boys, techno archeologists, washed-out spies, cultural documentarians, and our heroine Cayce Pollard--a soothsaying "cool hunter" with an allergy to brand names.
Pollard is among a cult-like group of Internet obsessives that strives to find meaning and patterns within a mysterious collection of video moments, merely called "the footage," let loose onto the Internet by an unknown source. Her hobby and work collide when a megalomaniac client hires her to track down whoever is behind the footage. Cayce's quest will take her in and out of harm's way in a high-stakes game that ultimately coincides with her desire to reconcile her father?s disappearance during the September 11 attacks in New York.
Although he forgoes his usual future-think tactics, this is very much a William Gibson novel, more so for fans who realize that Gibson's brilliance lies not in constructing new futures but in using astute observations of present-day cultural flotsam to create those futures. With Pattern Recognition, Gibson skips the extrapolation and focuses his acumen on our confusing contemporary world, using the precocious Pollard to personify and humanize the uncertain anxiety, optimistic hope, and downright fear many feel when looking to the future. The novel is filled with Gibson's lyric descriptions and astute observations of modern life, making it worth the read for both cool hunters and their prey. --Jeremy Pugh
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