Perfectly modern, perfectly unnerving.

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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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Perfectly modern, perfectly unnerving.

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

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marketing treasure hunt

This is only the 2nd Gibson novel I've read after Nueromancer, but I was blown away by how different, yet still how great this book is. It's a great "treasure hunting" novel unlike any you've read before. Complete with suspense, action, surprises, but also well-developed characters in great settings. The protagonist is a marketing guru, who is touched by something she finds on the internet. She and a few others must discover the source and the meaning of this mysterious video. This will take her around the world, but also deep within herself. I definitely need to read more Gibson.

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How broad is your umbrella?

Are you a Gibson fan?
Why do you love him?
Do you love him for super sexy leatherette dystopias set in a fairly inevitable future?
Do you love him for his artful turns of phrase, similes and metaphors that scintillate like some isotope of art, digging deep into your brain and lodging there until you look up 10 years later and think "wow! The sky above Buffalo *is* the color of a television turned to a dead channel!"
Do you love him for both?
If you're looking for Molly Millions, this is not the book you're looking for, move along. (And as you move along, Mr. Stormtrooper, pick up some of Richard Morgan's very sexy novels...oh, yes indeed!)If, however, you've ever sat and just read a line of Gibson over and over because the words described reality in a way that was mind-blowingly perfect, pick this work up.

This book will turn some people right off of Gibson-it is a completely different genre than that most of us expect from the master.
This book will have the added benefit, however, of cluing the neophyte into a branch of SciFi that is not only recovering from the loss of many elders but spawning all new ones...If you never read SciFi, and LIKED this book, go directly to Neuromancer, do not pass Burning Chrome, do not collect that awful Difference Engine.

Do not read it expecting Neuromancer. It is no more like Neuromancer than MacBeth is like Twelfth Night...same artistry, but DIFFERENT GENRE.

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Yin and Yang

Asian culture plays such a large role in William Gibson's, "Pattern Recognition," (and other novels) that I started to think about the yin and the yang of the book. What complementary, opposing forces underlie the story? The insightful, brooding heroine, Cayce Pollard, stands for yin. Her namesake is Edgar Cayce, the famous mystic, seer, and psychic diagnostician. Like Edgar Cayce, she is psychic, a "dowser in the world of global marketing," reacts "to the semiotics of the marketplace," and senses instinctively whether a corporate logo or icon will work, will sell such products as, for example, athletic shoes. She can move from the common images of everyday life to their emotional analogs in the unconscious. A worn-out logo can make her sick, but perhaps also bemused - one sports logo appears to be a syncopated sperm cell.

Cayce hangs out at an internet footage fetish forum. The footage refers to digitized fragments of a film, anonymously posted to sites on the internet. The fragments have inspired a devoted cult following that threatens to spill over into mainstream culture. An attachment to an email from a forum friend is footage fragment #135. Cayce reflects. "Light and shadow. Lovers' cheekbones in the prelude to embrace. ... Above them, somewhere something flares, white, casting a claw of Caligarian shadow, and then the screen is black" ... "And here ... watching their lips meet, she knows that she knows nothing, but wants nothing more than to see the film of which this must be a part." The yang, the fire, that complements Cayce, the mystery that drives her, is not a person, it is the footage. The reference to the classic horror film, "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," is significant. Gibson's book expresses similar contrasts of light and shadow, of psychic states and the external world.

The power of a logo or a slogan is not found in the literal surface appearance or message. The image provokes deeper feelings, the cover message conceals a subliminal meaning. The familiar athletic shoe icon suggests agility, speed, power, sex, and membership in an exclusive club. Likewise, there is a meaning beneath the surface of the footage that is felt but not seen. The digital images in the fragments are a cover for a deeper message that is hidden in the bits defining the pixels. It is as if each frame is a watercolor picture where the first nearly transparent color wash spells out a word. Additional layers of color form the image and obscure the word.

Gibson's book is the story of Cayce's effort to understand the hidden message in the fragments and to find their source. I was torn between reading quickly to the end versus reading slowly to savor Gibson's fresh insights, descriptions, and ironic commentary on consumer culture. Although it is fine airport entertainment, the intricate detail, sharp wit, and careful layering of observation make it a book to savor and read slowly.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, page 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17

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