This is our time, this is our culture -- can you recognize it? Gibson can.

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	• Pattern Recognition William Gibson Berkley Trade, 2004 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 274 reviews view larger image
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This is our time, this is our culture -- can you recognize it? Gibson can.

William Gibson is known as a talented science fiction writer, whose works --most notably "Neuromance" -- describe a near future. Until his latest, "Pattern Recognition". His books and short stories deal with human beings and society facing the changes brought up by technology. In his texts he has exploited the effects of the computer and the Internet -- much before it was as wide popular as it is -- in our lives.

The differential between what he had wrote and "Patter Recognition" is that this one analyzes the effects of the Internet culture in our daily lives in the dawn of the XXI Century -- a.k.a. right here, right now. It is still the so-called science fiction, however this doesn't deal with the near --or far -- future. The novel deals with our contemporary society, and this fact brings it closer to us than any of his novels.

Hardly has any other writer had the talent and sensibility to seriously exploit what is going on with our media and communication like Gibson does here. What does it feel like to know someone whose face one had never seen? How can we meet each other even though we are in our houses and the `guest' in his/her house? Are these new devices blessing in disguise, or what? Answers to questions like this --notoriously to the last one -- aren't easy and can be theme to a whole thesis. Knowing that, Gibson never attempts to bring up answers, he is more interested in exploiting, dissecting the effect of the texture of this new culture in our daily lives, rather than explaining reasons.

For that he creates one of best protagonists of contemporary literature. Cayce Pollard is a young woman who works as a `coolhunter' -- an expert advising people on logos, advertisements etc. Thanks to her job -- or as a cause to have such a job -- she has an allergy to logos, advertisements and all the stuff like that (remember Julianne Moore in "Safe"? more or less like it).

Cayce is asked to investigate a film that has been popping up on the Internet. Nobody knows where from and who is making it, but there are a dozen of websites devoted to the discussion of these video clips. As she digs the origins of these short movies, it becomes a good excuse for Gibson investigates to where our culture has lead us. At this point, contemporary moviemaking becomes one of the main issues of the novel -- although it is never clear it is really what he wants to discuss.

"Pattern Recognition" is at its surface a thriller but is has more thrills and food for thought than most novels released in the last few years. It is high time that critics and readers as well stop looking down at thrillers and science fiction novels. Books like Gibson's latest are what make contemporary literature survive. And however its genre is we should look for novels and short stories that make us think of our social and human condition and what we have became.

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Here, there, and everywhere: a sci-fi travelogue

I picked up Pattern Recognition almost entirely due to the recommendation of David, who read the book last year and insisted that the main character, Cayce, reminded him of me. It's the kind of ego-stroking endorsement no girl can resist. I am the heroine of a William Gibson novel. How could I resist that?

One of the first things that struck me about the book was just how difficult it was to get into. I'm not exactly the kind of girl who digs third-person prose, a small hurdle compounded by the present-tense writing style Gibson employed to give a sense of urgency and momentum to the story. It works well as a device for setting the pace of a story, but on the other hand, when you're more of a Chuck Palahniuk/David Sedaris/first person sort of girl, it's not the most comfortable reading you can do.

The story itself is intriguing, though frustrating in the length of time it takes for Gibson to set up the novel itself. Cayce is a "cool hunter", someone who goes around in clubs, bars, cafes, etc. checking out what the kids are wearing, finding the trends that are going to go mainstream in six months and reporting this to various design agencies. She has a particular talent for this, compounded by a peculiar allergy to logos, that makes her invaluable to any designer trying to jumpstart The Next Big Thing.

It's this job, evaluating the coolness potential of a designer's new logo, that introduces Cayce to Bigend, an over-blown cowboy in London's urban jungle who talks big, dreams big, and just can't be explained, let alone trusted. After work, away from cool hunting and design evaluation, Cayce is a "footage-head", an obsessive fan of an unknown Creator of small clips of a film leaked onto the Internet and debated fanatically at a message board called F:F:F. It is on meeting Bigend that work and leisure combine, worlds collide, and Cayce finds herself working for a strange man she doesn't trust to get the means to find the Creator of the Footage.

All in all, Pattern Recognition is an interesting book, at times strange and unsettling for the prominence September 11, 2001 plays in the story, which was quite unexpected. I haven't read any of the Post 9/11 literature, and the ways the story interacts with the history is both intriguing and off-putting, especially at first when it seems that the story of Cayce's moments on that day are simply red herrings.

But there are no red herrings in Pattern Recognition, though there are unanswered questions and unresolved issues to boot. Still, unlike other novels I've read recently, the small threads left dangling are not damaging to the over-all story of the book, to one's enjoyment of the story, and to the author's world at large. While historic events have a place within the story, the many cities Cayce floats into - London, Paris, Tokyo, Moscow - are as fanciful as they are foreign, and though the story drags in places, the set up gives it enough momentum to keep the story going until the final page.

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Merely good

Mr. Gibson is an excellent observer of culture and paints a fascinating future. Plotting and characterization are very good, and he can turn a phrase. However, the novel ends on a whimper, without much of a payoff.

Excellent writing; thoughtful to the nth degree

Here is a contemporary writer of "pop" novels who writes as well as Tom Wolfe and is far more thoughtful. Many sci fi writers get lost in an autistic love of gadgets for their own sake. Gibson does not do that. This novel takes place in a world full of high tech but populated by recognizable human beings. This novel entranced me on many levels: the high quality of the writing, the plot, the ideas and commentary on the current world, the lead character's troubles. I was so excited by this novel that I will be exploring Gibson's other books.

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A wonderful book

William Gibson's Pattern Recognition is probably the most well crafted exposee on the less admirable side of contemporary business culture since Bonfire of the Vanities. Although this isn't really what the novel is "about" per se, anyone with a disdain for consumer culture will enjoy Gibson's treatment of free market entrepeneurship, and the cutthroat competitiveness of career professionals. The 9/11 references resonate well without being too overbearing. Gibson seems to remind the reader of how he or she felt at that point in time, without making a statement that is too personal too identify with. His depiction of internet culture, and specifically how it interacts with the "real world" is equally well executed. All in all, a good book with themes that are familiar to most of us in our day to day lives, but have never really been touched upon by a novelist of Gibson's talent. Definitely deserving of its praise as the first great novel of the 21st century.

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reviews: 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, page 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20

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