A deep, fascinating look at the post-modern condition

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	• Pattern Recognition William Gibson Berkley Trade, 2004 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 270 reviews view larger image
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It's okay

It's a decent book, interesting themes, but the character is forgettable (though he tried to hack together an "interesting" character by giving her funny "quirks"). Not much happens, plotwise, either.

A decent read if you're a Gibson fan, but not something I'd recommend to a new reader.

Smart Mobs from the trenches

If Smart Mobs had been put down as a novel, this would probably be the result. There are Smart Mobs from the very beginning: viral distribution of the footage, guerrilla marketing to make it known to the general public, crowdsourcing for discovering stuff hidden within it... Cacey, the main character, is the person that flows with the Smart Mob and determines where it's moving.
Besides, it's a novel with a sci-fi/cyberpunk texture, but with mainstream appeal. Well written, well paced, well characterized, well *.

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Gibson's Endings STILL Disappoint

I'm a fan of Gibson's work, yet I still am amazed at how choppy and stilted his endings are compared to the rest of the work. This has got to be one of the worst examples, which is so frustrating given that the other 80% of the novel is incredible (thus I had to give it 3 stars rather than the 5 stars the rest of the novel deserves).

If you're a fan of Gibson, you'll enjoy the book, the last 3 or 4 chapters notwithstanding.

If you're on the fence about getting this book, [no spoiler here] the ending works, but barely - it could've benefited from another 4-6 chapters of better pacing and story. From his acknowledgment, I gather that Gibson struggled with this book and at least 3 of the last 4 chapters show it.

If you're new to Gibson, read some of his other works first...or stop at chapter 40 in this and skip to chapter 43.

J. Avellanet, Co-Founder of Cerulean Associates LLC

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A deep, fascinating look at the post-modern condition

If you've ever felt like the world around you, the world shaped by TV, brand-names and ad-campaigns, was missing something profoundly important, then you will be able to appreciate this book. In this book, Gibson takes a hard look at our media-obsessed world and the many insidious ways commercial culture separates us from meaningful experiences of our world and of the people around us. Throughout the book, Gibson provides an often funny, but always unflinching look at what it means to live in a world where appearance has replaced reality and you can never be certain of anything or anyone. Cayce's search for the footage can be read as the search for an authentic experience, a way of cutting through the cultural noise that literally sickens her.

Pattern Recognition is in many ways a departure from Gibson's cyberpunk roots, but even if we lament the lack of riveting action sequences and hardcore cyborg chicks (and as a diehard cyberpunk fan, I really do), the depth of artistic vision and character complexity in Pattern Recognition more than make up for their loss. Besides, as others have said, this novel works over many of the same issues as Gibson's earlier work. The complex and often threatening relationship between humanity and technology, the alienation of the individual and the all consuming power of corporations are all there in a subtler form. The world of Cayce Pollard isn't so different from the one Neuromancer's Case inhabits and anyone who enjoys good science-fiction or just good fiction will enjoy this book.

Pattern Recognition is both an exciting and thought provoking work, though it demands more of its audience than some of Gibson's earlier works. In focusing on the way real-life technology shapes the lives of present-day people, Gibson may (once again) have found the future of science-fiction. Only time will tell.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

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