Pattern Recognition

nanojath writes "The title of William Gibson's latest release, Pattern Recognition, seems particularly appropriate. While widely noted for its 'departure' from Gibson's usual genre in that it is set in the more-or-less present day, the themes, characters, and plot devices of Pattern Recognition are fully in line with the Gibson canon. Whether this is a good thing will depend greatly on the individual reader, Neil Gaiman's assertion that it's Gibson's best effort since Neuromancer notwithstanding. The short version: readers who enjoy Gibson's later work will probably find this typically fast-paced mystery to be a satisfying read, if not their favorite example among his post-Eighties efforts. Those who feel that Gibson's fire has been progressively dwindling as he navigates middle age will probably feel that Pattern Recognition is more of the same, the fast-forward technology of Neuromancer an increasingly muted backdrop to the main attraction of psychological and sociological themes." Read on for the rest of nanojath's review. Pattern Recognition author William Gibson pages 368 publisher Putnam rating 7 reviewer Jonathan Hamlow ISBN 0399149864 summary Gibson turns his trademark fast-forward speculative lens on the present with a compelling novel of a marketing savant's search for a mysterious artist. Despite its strengths, Gibson's latest novel has serious flaws.

Pattern Recognition's Cayce Pollard is very much a Gibson protagonist -- a somewhat hapless but sympathetic outsider with a unique sensitivity for a particular class of data. Cayce has what is termed an "allergic" sensitivity to the peculiar cultural ephemera of marketing and branding, and employs the sometimes-debility (she experiences something akin to a panic attack, for example, in the presence of too much Tommy Hilfiger) as a highly paid consultant in the survival-of-the-fittest ecology of the 21st century marketing industry.

She is also a "Footagehead," a member of an internet-based community which obsessively follows and theorizes about a series of enigmatic film clips, apparently components of a larger work, which surface anonymously and without announcement in the various uncharted archives of the internet.

Cayce is led by her current employer (a Millennial marketing savant who's Swiftian name, Hubertus Bigend, is easily the funniest thing in the book) into a search for the creator of the mysterious footage. At the same time, she is plagued by an apparent conspiracy of intimidation, involving the systematic invasion of her privacy and an exploitation of her "brand allergy" gift, and haunted by memories of her father, a security consultant who disappeared in New York in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center, and seems almost certainly, but not provably, dead. Her search leads her into the labyrinth depths of post-cold-war politics and economics -- depths it seems she may find increasingly difficult to navigate a path out of.

Comparisons to Gibson's earlier works are easy to find in Pattern Recognition. Its main character, with her savant informational talent, brings earlier characters like Case, Laney, and Silencio to mind. Her wealth-facilitated search for the artist of the Footage is strongly reminiscent of Marley's search for the boxmaker in Count Zero (and in fact Hubertus Bigend seems a more benevolent but still creepy combination of Virek and Cody Harwood). Certainly there seems to be a certain self-conscious recognition of these comparisons in the fact that Gibson gives his female protagonist a name phonetically equivalent to Case. Pattern Recognition is also Gibson's first novel since Neuromancer to follow a single point-of-view throughout the entire book. In this and many other respects it has a simpler and more direct story than any other Gibson novel, though it is driven by the mystery angle and contains no shortage of twists and turns.

I tend to like Gibson books better in multiple readings and I'm curious to see if this effect holds for Pattern Recognition. My first reading impression is that, while a well-written and enjoyable page-turner, this is Gibson's weakest work. The translation of his trademark savant talents, ubiquitous technology, idiosyncratic artists and post-modern robber barons to a recognizable present-day reality is hit-and-miss. Story elements that might pass easily enough in a world of the not-too-distant future ring false in this version of the present, where the comparison to what actually is is constantly invited. Likewise, the introduction of September 11th is forced and suspect. There is something slightly off in Gibson's portrayal here, something revealing that after decades as a Canadian expatriate, Gibson cannot fully align with the American viewpoint any longer. And it is perhaps to soon for this very real human tragedy, whatever its sociopolitical lessons and consequences, to be used as a plot device in a work of speculative fiction. I wasn't fully satisfied by the answer to the mystery of the Footage artist, which seemed contrived, and found the resolution of the story to contain altogether too much deus ex machina.

Gibson's facile prose and knack for telling a fast-paced and compelling story prevent these problems from derailing Pattern Recognition altogether. The book is readable, enjoyable, and not without satisfaction. Gibson is to be admired for risking a chance on a fairly radical direction in his genre and taking on the altogether less malleable present in favor of the endless possibilities of the future. The depths to which he mines his own material speaks, perhaps, to the strain of this effort. Fans will probably accept Pattern Recognition's addition to the Gibson canon, detractors of his latter works will no doubt see it as further evidence of his decline. I hope that it indicates a tentative but promising step into a larger world of narrative possibilities for Gibson, and that this promise will prove itself as our stranger-than-fiction present evolves continuously into the future.

You can purchase Pattern Recognition from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

Re:Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

I call bullshit. You do not currently, nor have you had for three years now, pattern recognotion software on Linux.

Linux?

[Amsterdam Vallon]

For any Linux or Bruce Sterling fans out their, I just bought this ``Pattern Reconigtion'' book that Slashdot just reviewed from WorldWideWeb://Amazon.com along with Bruce Sterlings' ``Tomorrow Now'' novel.

Many feel that ``Sterling's science fiction is characterized by a keen appreciation for social forces and the increasingly intimate realtionship between things seen and unseen", which really stokes me and I think is a key point.

The bundle costs $35.64 (retail bought both books would be $50.90 USD) and can be bought from here (scroll down a bit).

Hope u enjoy it as much as I have?!

Gee, one can only hope...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that this work is actually readable. I quit reading Necromancer with a few chapters to go. I just had no friggin idea what was going on anymore.

An author needs to supply enough context to terms so that you have a clue what they are talking about: Simstim, Deck, Jack-in, etc., etc.

Re:Gee, one can only hope...

[joshsisk]

I quit reading Necromancer with a few chapters to go. I just had no friggin idea what was going on anymore.

I read that book when I was eleven, and was able to follow it just fine.

Re:Gee, one can only hope...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hate to out geek you. But, I'm nine and it is the book that dad taught me and my brother to read by.

Re:Gee, one can only hope...

[froodishone]

You missed the whole point of the book and much of what the then emerging cyberpunk genre was all about.

This is the future, and we're not all wearing togas and lucite sandals. It's not paradise, it's a dangerous future. Things are continually changing and accelerating. If you need to have things explained to you, you're already lost and I don't have time to catch you up.

The relentless pace and lack of explanation was a conscious choice by Gibson and one I think is quite effective.

Re:Gee, one can only hope...

[joshsisk]

My mom, seriously, used to read Anne McCaffery (sp?) books to me before I could read.

Re:Gee, one can only hope...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I started to read it when I was like 13 or 14, and I had no idea what was going on. I put the book down for a few years, then read it again when I was 17 -- and enjoyed the hell out of it. I once read it three times back to back.

footagehead

[$$$$$exyGal]

Here's another good review

Or really, just do a search for "footagehead" at Google and you'll get several reviews and an excerpt or two.

--sex

Hard to beat Count Zero

[Mothra the III]

I have started reading Pattern Recognition after re-reading Count Zero and it definitely doesnt have the same immediate impact. The earlier book hits you hard in the first paragraph and does not let up. His works are interesting not just for the good writing, but also the creative ideas he has deaking with the future of technology.

Re:Hard to beat Count Zero

[dmorin]

Oh, good. Coincidentally I was away this weekend without a book and bought Count Zero used for $1. I opened to the first page and read "They set a slamhound on Turner's trail..." and was like, Wow. I don't have any idea what that means, and yet, I think I do.

That's gotta be up there with "A screaming comes across the sky" in terms of outstanding opening lines.

Duane, who must be geeking out because he just read his own preview, saw $1, and thought "Now, what variable goes there?"

Re:Hard to beat Count Zero

[erlando]

"The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel.". Still my favorite opening line.. :o)

Re:Hard to beat Count Zero

[Elwood P Dowd]

I couldn't disagree more. His writings about the future were for the sole purpose of illuminating the present. He has now achieved the skill to illuminate the present without employing artifice of any kind.

The reason that Gibson is good has nothing to do with his hard hitting plotlines. It is because he has a fantastic understanding of what is interesting. I'm a third of the way into Pattern Recognition, and I think it's his best book yet.

He's a very different person since he wrote about Molly. Watch "No Maps for These Territories." Please, please watch it.

Re:Hard to beat Count Zero

[cmpalmer]

I've always loved the first line of Neuromancer:

"The sky was the color of a television tuned to a dead channel."

The funny thing about this line is that it meant "TV snow", which is becoming very rare now that most tuners blank out the picture to a neon blue, so now most readers probably think the sky was unnaturally blue and blank.

This ranks up there with kids not knowing what "sounding like a broken record" means or the joke I ran across the other day on the rec.humor.funny "best of" lists where a stupid parent wants to buy her son a blank CD at the record store because she doesn't know what kind of music he likes. Boy, was she stupid. Imagine, a recordable CD :-)

Gibson, at his best, is a poet and his prose relies on free association of words, images, and technology. When we're lucky, there is a story in there, too. As a futurist, he gets the "feel" right quite often, but I don't know if he even tries to really research the science and technology behind what he writes.

Re:Hard to beat Count Zero

[Masem]

Count Zero wasn't bad, in the sense that he knows how to take several plot threads, seemingly disjointed, and slowly, but surely, weave them together, hinting at the events from the other threads, until the finale of the book. He did the same quite well in Neuro and Mona Lisa Overdrive.

But, one thing that annoys me with Gibson is that his writing style has gotten 'easier' to read since Neuromancer. It took me several times through Neuromancer to understand everything that is going on in the book in the grand sense of things thanks to unique verbal constructions and new terminology that only makes sense on multiple readings, and even then, there's probably small details that I'd catch on the next reading. I even remember having to reread some paragraphs just to make sure I understood what I could, that's how complex his language was then. Count Zero wasn't quite as deep with the text, though it did warrent a couple of rereads to catch all the details, and some of the complex verbage was still there. But Mona Lisa Overdrive, while requiring a few rereads to make sure you got all the details, lacked the deep structure in the writing, making it very easy (maybe too easy?) to read, and why some think this was his weakest work.

What I find interesting from this review and one elsewhere (Salon? Wired?) is that the plot sounds like a mirror of that in Count Zero with the art dealer looking for the maker of the shadow boxes. IMO, that part of the plot in CZ got the weakest treatment, despite being the darkest part of the entire story, and it did deserve another relook, maybe that's what happened here with Pattern Recognition.

Re:Hard to beat Count Zero

[bonaldi]

The funny thing about this line is that it meant "TV snow", which is becoming very rare now that most tuners blank out the picture to a neon blue, so now most readers probably think the sky was unnaturally blue and blank.

Er ... when was the last time you saw sky that was coloured anything like snow? The point was that the sky *WAS* blue. The phrase was forward-looking, because at the time that it was written TVs had only just begun to turn blue on no input. That was his sub-textual point, "hello, this is new-technology talking".

It's not hard to understand, either. Which one makes more sense to you? "The sky was the colour of snowing" or "The sky was the colour of something really astonishingly blue"?

Re:Hard to beat Count Zero

[Cirvam]

erm, snowing, kinda grayish and not exactly a cheerful day. Rather like a somber and overcast day, which would kinda fit the mood of the story I think (its been a while since I read the beginning of the book), rather then an astonishing blue and cheerful type day. Although it could then be argued that the astonishing blue was to contrast the depth of Case's dispair and life...or I could just be overanalizing it, damn english classes.

Re:Hard to beat Count Zero

[cmpalmer]

Hmm, a bit of Googling and I find most people agreeing with my interpretation -- a low, roiling, overcast sky, chaotically lit by city glow and flashing neon. Somehow, bright blue clear skies don't fit my vision of Neuromancer's world.

This is further supported by Neil Gaimon's deliberate and ironic updating of the line when he wrote (something like): "The sky was the unblemished blue of a television turned to a dead channel." Obviously, this line wasn't intended to be an updating of the famous opening line, but a jarring contrast using most of the same words.

Re:Hard to beat Count Zero

[Mr. Bad Example]

I opened to the first page and read "They set a slamhound on Turner's trail..." and was like, Wow. I don't have any idea what that means, and yet, I think I do.

I'm slightly offtopic here, but a lot of the best science fiction does this--gives you that "Wait a minute...what the fuck was that?" feeling. The example I always use is Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep . That one hurt my brain--not in the "This makes no sense" way, but in the "Gotta make room in my head for a new concept" way. I can't recommend it enough.

Re:Hard to beat Count Zero

[froodishone]

The opening sentence of CZ I agree is amazing, but my favorite part of CZ is the "Squirrel Ending".

Re:Hard to beat Count Zero

[Lemmy Caution]

Wow, you really didn't get it.

It was Tokyo. In the post-industrial future. I suspect that the sky would be a mixture of smog, "light pollution," and cloud cover.

Have you ever been to Tokyo? In 1984, when the book was written, it was immediately obvious that he was talking about an oppressive, unfocused grayness.

Re:Hard to beat Count Zero

[Mark4ST]

It took me several times through Neuromancer to understand everything that is going on in the book in the grand sense of things thanks to unique verbal constructions and new terminology that only makes sense on multiple readings, and even then, there's probably small details that I'd catch on the next reading

I had much the same problem. I'm sot sure why, but one solution to comprehending Gibson's rather dense, James Joyceish prose is to suck up the book in audio format. There happens to be an excellent audiobook available for Neuromancer. It's read by the author. It features amazing, but subtle background music by U2 (sans Bono, thank the Maker), amongst others. It's slightly abridged, yet not butchered.

It's also quite interesting to hear Gibson do a Jamaican accent, starting from his Western Canada surfer drawl. Definitely worth a day in court.

Re:Hard to beat Count Zero

[paulcammish]

Ahh... mine too.

Possibly the only good use of the horrible "Windows Marquee" screensaver.

Re:Hard to beat Count Zero

[Checkered Daemon]

"A screaming comes across the sky ..."

Come on. Gibson's good, and I really enjoy his books, but he ain't anywhere near even being in Pynchon's league.

Stephenson's getting close, though.

Re:Hard to beat Count Zero

[Lurgen]

I just posted my thoughts on this in my journal, if anybody is interested. It's a longish post, so I won't put it all here, but the basic point was that Gibson helped shape my perception of a world that doesn't really exist. I read his work, and honestly didn't "get it" the first time through. It probably took 3 or 4 reads before it really made sense to me, but the depth of it makes it worth coming back to. Not many authors can do that, and I have to say it really impressed me.

His other work, while not quite up to the standard of Neuromancer, were brilliant - if Pattern Recognition comes close, I'll be happy with my purchase.

His books *are* dwindling in quality..

[nurb432]

But that said, id still like to read it, is it on p2p yet :)

Re:His books *are* dwindling in quality..

[Anonymous Coward]

He's reached rock bottom, and has started digging.

Re:His books *are* dwindling in quality..

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope I'll be hitting rock bottom soon.

My alcoholism's getting worse each day.

Gibson on Prozac

[Parkudah]

I'm more then half-way through with this book and I can't help but feel that he has to be on anti-depressants. His other works are darker, although I think his writing has improved. Still a good read, but it's not Neuromancer.

Re:Gibson on Prozac

[Anonymous Coward]

That's good news (not being like Neuromancer).

Re:Gibson on Prozac

[Mr. Bad Example]

I can't help but feel that he has to be on anti-depressants.

Either that, or someone HAX0R3D T3H G1BS0N!

Sorry. I try to do that only once a year or so...

I hope...

[skermit]

I hope this book is better than Idoru which sucked total balls. Anybody who's read this book knows the book was a couple hundred pages of anticlimatic boredom. Nothing like Neuromancer (which I just read again to reaffirm my like in Gibson), or my favorite cyberpunk book, Snow Crash. I personally think Neal Stephenson has Gibson beat, with Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, and of course the behemoth of a book, Cryptonomicron.

Re:I hope...

[parc]

Stephenson has a very hard time actually finishing a book. Cryptonomicon never really ended, it seemed. Stephenson got 8 or 9 hundred pages in and realized he needed to start wrapping things up or people would never read the book, so he just "finished." Snowcrash had that same feeling -- "Time's up, gotta wrap up now." In that sense, Stephenson doesn't match up to Gibson.

That said, neither Gibson nor Sterling have had their best works lately. IMO, they both shone their brightest in The Difference Engine -- another long book, but one that combined the best of both Gibson and Sterling. Interestingly enough, the storyline is set in the past, not the future, with subtle changes that still make it a futurist-type book.

Re:I hope...

[swb]

Difference Engine was stupid. Glad I bought it on the "pay if you're honest" shoplifting table outside the bookstore.

Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive were all good, some of the best contemporary SciFi. I agree with a parent poster that Idoru was just plain stupid.

I don't get the cult of Stephenson. I thought Snow Crash was a bunch of idiotic, cartoon-like deus ex machinas rolled together. I finally sold my copy of Cryptonomicon as it kept putting me to sleep.

Maybe I'm not a scifi person, but I need character development and social environments in my books. BS about gadgets that save the day kind of loses me.

Re:I hope...

[kungfuBreaks]

Personally, I don't think Snow Crash is even remotely as good as Neuromancer. I must confess that I'm not exactly a huge sci-fi fan, let alone a cyberpunk devotee, but IMO Neuromancer is a well-written (or, at the very least, "interestingly-written") book with plenty of literary merit; I've re-read it a couple of times (something I rarely do) and it never fails to affect me emotionally. Snow Crash, on the other hand...Well, it's certainly entertaining enough, but hardly very deep or compelling (as far as I'm concerned, anyway). Maybe it's just me, but I didn't find any of the characters to be all that interesting (except maybe in a "he's a half-black half-Asian dreadlocked katana-wielding computer nerd, cool" kinda way), and the whole Sumerian angle seemed incredibly far-fetched to me. Also, while Molly is the sort of strong woman rarely found in contemporary sci-fi, Y.T. is...a glorified adolescent fantasy, basically. I find Stephenson's obsession with "funny" dialogue and "clever" plot twists frustrating; he is plainly capable of far more than that. As for the Cryptonomicon, I haven't read it myself but a friend of mine tried and gave up halfway through, largely for the reasons detailed above. Then again, another friend of mine loved it. There's no accounting for taste, I guess :)

Re:I hope...

[Keith Russell]

I hope this book is better than Idoru which sucked total balls. Anybody who's read this book knows the book was a couple hundred pages of anticlimatic boredom.

The problem with Idoru is that it was the middle book of a trilogy, but nobody knew it was a trilogy until All Tomorrow's Parties arrived, when Gibson tied Idoru back to Virtual Light. Gibson's problem is that he doesn't know how to write a cliffhanger. Idoru ended on its own terms, wrapped up well enough to suggest no sequel was forthcoming, but not well enough to give the reader a satisfactory resolution. As a result, many fans skipped ATP, figuring that Gibson's fading relevance finally went out-of-scale low. It's a shame. ATP's ending is as deus ex left field as Mona Lisa Overdrive's, (and Pattern Recognition's, apparently), but far more satisfying than Idoru's.

Re:I hope...

[Bicoid]

It's funny. A lot of people hate Idoru, but it's not really all that bad. Like Virtual Light before it, it ends on its own terms but it's not really complete. All Tomorrow's Parties really finishes both of them up.

Everyone also seems to hate The Difference Engine, which I don't quite understand either. I guess I have some personal attachment to it because I'm a paleontology student, but it did seem like a very good book to me. Yes, things went on...and on...and on. Yes, the language was difficult. But when was Gibson EVER easy to read? Yes, he makes you work for everything you get out of his books. But is that really so bad?

As for the difference between Gibson and Stephenson, Gibson writes collages and Stephenson writes comic books. Snow Crash was silly. It was a fun read, yes, but it was silly and impossible to take seriously. The plot was contrived, the atmosphere was so chaotic and often contradicted itself. Cryptonomicon went on and on, and The Diamond Age felt like reading The Difference Engine...but without anything interesting going on at all. He's funny, sure, but I find that Gibson's more subtle humor is far more satisfying.

That said, I liked Pattern Recognition. A lot. It's different from Neuromancer and Count Zero and Virtual Light, but that doesn't mean it sucks.

Re:I hope...

[psp]

Just for the record. Idoru did not suck total balls. It is a really good book with an incredibly interesting storyline and lots of subtle remarks about a development our own society are progressing towards.

Idoru is definately not Neuromancer, and it should not be. I appreciate Neuromancer mostly because its dark and futuristic setting which I have yet to find in the work of another author. Idoru is another story altogether and if Gibson had created four blueprints of Neuromancer up until Idoru I would have been greatly disappointed.

Re:I hope...

[MalachiConstant]

The way I see it Gibson is Thomas Pynchon and Stephenson is Kurt Vonnegut.

I think they come from very different schools of writing. Gibson believes in complex language and leaving lots of things unsaid, whereas Stephenson makes it very clear what's happening and what his characters are feeling.

Personally I think the Vonnegut style is more difficult to write in a "serious novel" (as opposed to thriller novels). I understand that lots of people like obfuscated stories, but that doesn't mean they're better (or worse), and calling Stephenson's novels comic books is rather condescending.

Crytonomicon did ramble on a bit, but it was interesting the whole way through. I haven't read Pattern Recognition, but I've read the rest of Gibson's books. I loved Neuromancer when I read it in high school, but as I got older and read the rest of his stuff I got annoyed at most of his style. I really miss the technical accuracy of Stephenson, Gibson leaves so much unsaid it seems like he knows the story but isn't telling us, and his endings always have some big event that's supposed to wrap things up but seems completely unrelated to the rest of the story and leaves you thinking "...well, ok. I guess that's the end."

You could obviously say that I'm too dumb to understand his style, and that's certainly possible, although I don't consider myself that dense. I read lots of books by lots of authors. I read all his books because I really wanted to like him, but it was so hard to. Then I read Stephenson and thought, "this is what I was looking for." Snow Crash was purposefully over the top ("Hiro Protagaonist"? Come on), but just because a novel has comedy in it doesn't mean it can't be taken seriously. Is Catch-22 just a silly comic novel? Breakfast of Champions? Huckleberry Finn?

I know I'm ranting, but I had a writing teacher in college who thought Pynchon-style stories were the ultimate in writing. I find that opinion quite arrogant. You can tell by my handle I'm a Vonnegut fan.

Re:I hope...

[feldsteins]

I read snow crash and through the whole thing I kept thinking "geez, this guy is ripping off Gibson!" Not just the style, but plot elements, too! I didn't think he showed nearly the insight and vision of the future that Gibson does. Next to Gibson Stephenson seemed like a cheap knock-off artist.

Re:I hope...

[Bicoid]

Snow Crash was originally written as a storyline for a comic/graphic novel. So yes, it is a comic book in novel form. Calling a spade a spade is not misplaced condescension. And as for Stephenson's other stuff, Diamond Age was similarly written (although the Neo-Victorian feel simply took that style and jumbled it up into a simple mess). Cryptonomicon went on forever with no intention of ever ending.

And you're complaining about Gibson having bad endings? Gibson endings are somewhat cryptic...something big and groundbreaking has happened...a paradigm shift, you could say. But the full effect of that shift simply hasn't been realized yet. But what's important is the idea that no matter how similar everything looks, everything has changed. Though cryptic, there IS an ending. Stephenson writes and writes and writes and then realizes he needs to end the story and wraps the whole plot up in about 10-20 pages leaves some loose ends out accidentally and says "and they lived happily ever after." I don't see that you have any room to complain here.

The difference isn't about language or how much the writer tells you...it's the writer's purpose for writing in the first place. Yes, Stephenson knows more about how thngs work. Big deal. If I intend to learn about cryptography, I'll read a cryptography text. Stephenson tries to write a novel for enjoyment and then crams in some satire and technology, but in the end, it's a story for fun. Gibson's writing is instead to make you think about ideas.

Also, as far as Vonnegut, Heller, etc. go, they wrote serious books. Catch-22 is a serious book. Player Piano, Cat's Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, Slaughterhouse-5....all serious books. Yes, they used humor to get points across, but they were SERIOUS books. Nothing I've read about by Stephenson is serious. It's humor for humor's sake, rather than for the sake of getting a point across.

I'm sure you disagree, but that's my take on it. For the record, I enjoyed Snow Crash a lot (I can't say the same for Diamond Age or Cryptonomicon) but I just don't think it's on the same level as Neuromancer or Count Zero. But that's just my opinion. I could always be wrong.

Re:I hope...

[MalachiConstant]

I repectfully disagree with some of your points here.

Snow Crash was originally written as a storyline for a comic/graphic novel.

You're right about that, I had forgotten. But it seemed your implication was that it was JUST a "comic book novel", which I disagree with.

And you're complaining about Gibson having bad endings? Gibson endings are somewhat cryptic...something big and groundbreaking has happened...a paradigm shift, you could say. But the full effect of that shift simply hasn't been realized yet. But what's important is the idea that no matter how similar everything looks, everything has changed. Though cryptic, there IS an ending.

Yes, I am complaining about Gibson's endings. I agree that Stephenson's endings can leave something to be desired (Diamond Age, The Big U), but that doesn't make Gibson's endings any better. It doesn't seem to me that a cryptic ending is any better than a hasty one. I guess I find Gibson's endings so frustrating because he seems to be leading up to something, bringing all the different stories together, then something random happens and the story's over.

Let's take All Tomorrow's Parties as an example. I think I'm remembering correctly that the ending had the holographic woman "faxing" herself to all the convienence stores that had just installed the "physical fax" machines or whatever they were called. Okay, ignoring the actual possilbility of this, how does this relate to the rest of the story? I admit my memory is fuzzy about the details of the book, but it seemed unrelated to the rest of the story despite being an event that would likely change the world.

Compare that with the ending of Snow Crash: Hiro prevents the distribution of the virus and makes a name for himself in computer security, solving the two major problems in the book (The spread of the virus and Hiro's unemployment). Sure it's handed to you on a plate, unlike Gibson's ending, but the story has an ending instead of just another event that could have happened in the middle of the book.

Yes, Stephenson knows more about how thngs work. Big deal. If I intend to learn about cryptography, I'll read a cryptography text.

I don't read Stephenson to learn about technology, I enjoy it because it's technically accurate. Watch a movie that involves something you know a lot about, whether it's WWII or computers or law, if they get the details wrong it's very hard to enjoy it or take it seriously. If Saving Private Ryan had all the soldiers armed with AK-47s it would be very distracting and downright painful for WWII buffs. There's a limit to how much inaccuracy you can take before it becomes annoying.

Stephenson tries to write a novel for enjoyment and then crams in some satire and technology, but in the end, it's a story for fun. Gibson's writing is instead to make you think about ideas.

I find quite the opposite. Stephenson writes about ideas and makes it fun, while Gibson writes about ideas and makes it (in my opinion) purposefully abstruse in order to seem more serious and possibly to hide is lack of understanding about real technology. This idea a novel must be difficult in order to be "serious" is one of the main things Vonnegut was fighting against.

Nothing I've read about by Stephenson is serious. It's humor for humor's sake, rather than for the sake of getting a point across.

There are a lot of very interesting serious ideas at the heart of Stephenson's books. Government control of cryptography, the implications of a true virtual reality, nanotechnology, electronic currency, etc. I think these are the reasons he writes the stories, then puts them in an entertaining setting.

I'm sure you disagree, but that's my take on it. For the record, I enjoyed Snow Crash a lot

I do disagree, but I can see your point of view. I don't know if this is a generational thing or just a difference of our outlook on life, but it's very easy for me to take absurdist stories seriously. That's one of the reasons I like Heller and Vonnegut. Catch-22 was completely ridiculous in the way characters behaved, and very fun to read but it's easy to understand what he's really talking about. I like Chuck Palahniuk for the same reason. I rank Fight Club with Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse 5.

I enjoyed Gibson's novels (to a degree) when I read them, but I wouldn't recommend them. But I certainly don't believe he's a bad author or that he's some kind of phony. I just didn't click with him. Same with Tolkien, I'm the kind of geek that likes sci-fi and fantasy, and the idea of a really deep fantasy series appeals to me, but I just find something lacking in the delivery, buit 50 million geeks can't be wrong and I'm not gonna say they are.

Re:I hope...

[Bicoid]

Let's take All Tomorrow's Parties as an example. I think I'm remembering correctly that the ending had the holographic woman "faxing" herself to all the convienence stores that had just installed the "physical fax" machines or whatever they were called. Okay, ignoring the actual possilbility of this, how does this relate to the rest of the story? I admit my memory is fuzzy about the details of the book, but it seemed unrelated to the rest of the story despite being an event that would likely change the world.

Actually, the ending isn't a random event. The core idea in ATP was that at certain moments everything changes (a central tenent of most Gibson stuff, I'd say). The fax machine was a nanotech device, but it was being used for very basic things. Rei (the AI "girl") changes that drastically and breaks down any barrier between computer code and the real world. The effects in the future aren't shown, but that's for you, the reader, to figure out yourself.

That's my view. I could always be wrong though...

But yes, I can definitely understand your point of view. I don't think Stephenson is a "bad" writer...I just think the typical slashdot perspective that he's part of the Holy Trinity (The Stephenson, the Mitnick, and the Holy Torvald) is a little...ummm...overboard, to say the least.

Re:I hope...

[Fenris Ulf]

Actually, the ending isn't a random event. The core idea in ATP was that at certain moments everything changes (a central tenent of most Gibson stuff, I'd say). The fax machine was a nanotech device, but it was being used for very basic things. Rei (the AI "girl") changes that drastically and breaks down any barrier between computer code and the real world. The effects in the future aren't shown, but that's for you, the reader, to figure out yourself.

I've always said that All Tomorrow's Parties is the book that comes between Snow Crash and The Diamond Age (and yes, I do realize I'm talking about two different authors here, thanks).

ATP ends with the shift from our modern society to a society of wish fulfillment and the solidification of dreams... represented by the creation of a living woman from dream-code.

Re:Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

[-1 Troll]

Just finished it...

[slashbofh]

I just finished reading this last night. Overall, I thought it was an average book.

Pros

• Main character is quirky and engaging
• Side characters are unusually unpredictable, but very human
• Last third of the book really moves

Cons

• The first 2/3rds of the book is pretty slow
• By putting the book in the current/very near future Gibson has enough technical things that are just a little off to annoy me
• It seemed very disjointed

Summary

I'd own this in trade paperback, and in hardcover I would borrow it from the library

Re:Just finished it...

[aphexddb]

Most of his other books build up a furious pace and just sort of stop, making me scream for another 50 pages. This one ended in a really satisfying way. Kudos to Gibson for figuring out how to put on the brakes. Plus the little technical things that are off make it that much more believeable- somehow it feels like a more comfortable place than reality.

I also wonder how long before "footage" starts showing up.

The book is already dated

[Ummon]

Gibson is so focused on microcultural events that the book was dated before it was even published. Which is really funny considering that the main character has a deep revulsion to trademarks. I really got tired of seeing trademarks in the text, especially that damned iBook. At least in the Neuromancer series the trademarks were made up.

Re:The book is already dated

[Jonathan]

Also, expect prices of vintage Curtas calculators to go up because of their mention in the book...

Gibson and technology

[mattdm]

You have to remember that Gibson doesn't actually know much about real technology -- I remember hearing that he doesn't even use a computer. He just thinks this cyber stuff is woah, cool man. This explains a lot -- remember the ridiculous X Files episode he wrote with the T1 line going to a trailer, and the brain-swapping and all that? The tech is just a cinematic device, and he never takes it seriously -- hence all the "psychological and sociological themes".

Now, there's nothing *wrong* with this. Lots of people who write westerns have never touched a horse, and cheap paperback romances don't bear much resemblance to real life.

It does, however, make Gibson less interesting to me as a real-life computer geek -- just as having a even hints of a real social life makes those paperback romances uninteresting.

Re:Gibson and technology

[spRed]

google for a recent interview with Gibson

He didn't use a computer back in the mid 80s when he wrote Neuromancer, but then not many people did. He now uses them as much as your average joe, though he is still no technophile. The idea that Mr Cyberpunk doesn't use a computer is so man-bites-dog, however, that it still gets reported as fact.

Re:Gibson and technology

[GrimSean]

The whole "Gibson only uses a typewriter" and "Gibson hates computers" thing is a bit of a urban legend. It was really only true for Neuromancer, and, if you think about how old that book is, most of the books at the time were probably still being written on typewriters (everyone just noticed it about him because of the Cyberpunk nature of Neuromancer.

Don't believe me? Check out his site, with his rather interesting blog here

Re:Gibson and technology

[(a*2) (ron)]

Hey, he must use a computer because he has a blog now.

Re:Gibson and technology

[teslatug]

I remember hearing that he doesn't even use a computer

hmmm, well I remember him talking on The Screen Savers about having a mac.

Re:Gibson and technology

[teslatug]

Here is the actual interview

Re:Gibson and technology

[mattdm]

He now uses them as much as your average joe, though he is still no technophile. The idea that Mr Cyberpunk doesn't use a computer is so man-bites-dog, however, that it still gets reported as fact.

It's the first part of this that I care about, not the second -- it doesn't surprise me that he's not actually a Luddite. But still:

To the "average joe" computer user, technology is basically magic, and that's the point of view Gibson is clearly writing from.

Re:Gibson and technology

[Nyarly]

On the flipside, my check out Richard Powers for tech and CS stuff worked subtly into really good fiction. Especially good was a scene in Plowing the Dark (which is a novel about real life virtual reality) in which Adventure suddenly comes up on all the coder's terminals, and they all play through it and recollect how they'd all played it as kids or in college, and compare notes. Really nice.

Re:Gibson and technology

[Ringwraith]

I'm guessing he uses a computer when he writes his Blog. You can find it at williamgibsonbooks.com. It's pretty interesting to read.

I actually saw him read last week, and he said that is one of the funniest things he hears about himself--that he doesn't use a computer. Like someone else noted, he didn't for Neuromancer, but hardly anyone else wrote on computers, either. And yes, he does use email; he just zealously guards his email address.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading the book.

Re:Gibson and technology

[mattdm]

Whether he actually touches computers is sorta beside the point, although everyone seems quite eager to bring me up to speed on that. :)

Re:Gibson and technology

[JoeBuck]

Oh, come on. He uses a computer, he has a blog.

He hadn't used a computer at the time he wrote Neuromancer, but that was long ago.

Re:Gibson and technology

[cpt kangarooski]

No, it's a typewriter blog. Having to type and mimeograph all that data is one of the things keeping him from writing more books.

Re:Gibson and technology

[Anonymous Coward]

You might be interested to know that Gibson has started keeping his own blog (as of this week)

Re:Gibson and technology

[Ringwraith]

Yeah, sorry. It reminds me of college when i would have to have a paper "peer reviewed." Forget a period and have 10 different people point it out to you ...

present tense

[chloroquine]

I ended up with a reviewers copy of this book from my local second hand bookstore. (yes, I'm aware that buying a proof is vaguely evil, but I never said I was a nice person) When I read it I couldn't help but notice that much of Gibson's appeal for me lies in his depiction of a wild and frighteningly believable future. Since this book is set approximately in the present, I was not as distracted by gadgets and modifications, but was forced instead to take a long hard look at his ability to create believable characters and plotlines.
The result is that I enjoyed the book, but was very aware of Gibson's limitations. I found it difficult to get lost in the world that he, the writer, creates. His ability to create atmosphere is very good, and that is definitely something I enjoyed.

So sad

[Anonymous Coward]

Gibson has been a big pile of sizzle in search of some steak for way too long. I loved his early work, and I still remember excitedly reading Burning Chrome in the original Omni Magazine publication, but he lost my interest a long time ago.

No. Re:Gibson and technology

[StefanJ]

Gibson wrote his early stories on a typewriter, but he got an Apple in the eighties and has been using them ever since.

Is he a UNIX head? No. Does he spend his spare time overclocking hardware? I don't think so. But he reads and surfs a hell of a lot, and carries around a wireless laptop.

GNU/Slashdot pattern recognition:

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm starting to recognize a pattern on slashdot (besides Taco reposting duplicate stories all the time): every Troll Tuesday, they only post crappy ass stories not even worth trolling!

Related Goodies

[Anonymous Coward]

Free Pattern Recognition sample chapter.

William Gibson home page.
A bot modeled on Gibson's take on AI.
The Aleph - all things Gibson.

Re:Related Goodies

[Kragg]

Does the real book have as many typos in it as that sample chapter? There are about 3 or 4 per page...
What the hell is a Califonian telephone?

Paperback romances

[Anonymous Coward]

"Out on the balcony, when Reginald kissed Diana lips, her knees went weak. Slowly, he pulled her top down exposing her soft, unyielding breasts." Oh, yeah! Now this is getting good!"

(takes a sip of booze and continues to dictate as he writes.)

"Just the sight of those breasts made Reginald's penis very hard. His penis was of considerable size, and now beads of sweat ran slowly down his penis, making it glisten like a strong swimmer fresh from out of the pool. It was a fantastic penis that seemed as strong as a horse's leg, yet as delecate as a flower wrapped in silk. What a grand, grand penis! Diana's nipples..."

(stops there.)

Uh, let's see! "Diana's nipples..." OH, WRITER'S BLOCK! WRITER'S BLOCK! Hm! CRAP! I'm stuck! (to Mr. Hat, his handpuppet.) Oh, well! Maybe that's enough writing for tonight, Mr. Hat!

Re:Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

lol... Exactly what are you rambling on about?

Cayce = Case

[ThulsaDoom]

Time for a dip in the old creative name bucket there Gibson?

Re:Cayce = Case

[netringer]

More likely, the name refers to Edgar Cayce a supposed psychic who predicted that California would fall into the ocean among other things.

Re:Cayce = Case

[Thud457]

"California would fall into the ocean "

That wasn't a prediction it is wishful thinking. Obviously Cayce tapped into the collective unconcious of society in the far future year of 2003!

Re:Cayce = Case

[Anonymous Coward]

cayce=case grandmother

Re:Cayce = Case

[Johnboi Waltune]

Cayce is pronounced 'Kay-See'

Re:Cayce = Case

[Anonymous Coward]

if you bothered to read the book you would know it is pronounced case.

Re:Cayce = Case

[Johnboi Waltune]

So? Eat a snow leopard's ass with whipped cream.

Gibson's Site & Blog

[StefanJ]

Lots of neat stuff here, plus a discussion group that Gibson reads but doesn't participate in:

http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com

I liked his entry about the Columbia (2/1/2003). I had one of the Space Taxi models he describes.

Stefan

How dare you write such a tantalizing review!

[Ayanami Rei]

You insensitive clod! You mock my horrible predictament; having many books to read for class leaving no time for consuming others for pleasure.

Is there some way this book could be shoehorned into a self-becoming philsophical angle? Because then I could justify reading it for a paper.

Otherwise I have to wait 3 months. ::sobs::

Re:How dare you write such a tantalizing review!

[Anonymous Coward]

It could be worse. You could be a java developer. They don't even give a syllabus for that, half the documentation is wrong, half is missing, and there are plenty of theoretical "examples" but no real world applications. I mean that in both the analytical geometry, and computer program sense.

Steven King's Wang.

[autopr0n]

Is the funniest thing in the book, not Bigend's name.

Re:Gibson's fire still burns...

[Anonymous Coward]

Gosh, can't make a literary reference to one of the best books of all time.

Pattern Recognize This: +1, Patriotic

[Anonymous Coward]

Moron

Cheers,
Woot

Darryl Musashi

[Anonymous Coward]

I just finished this. I enjoyed it. As the reviewer mentions, it's more in line with his later work than Neuromancer. I like that - you can see he's progressing with his writing style.

That said, for some reason he's reused one of the character names - Darryl Musashi, which you will recognize from the X-Files episode he wrote entitled "First Person Shooter" (the guy who got his hands chopped off and then his head by the "goddess").

Gibson long forgotten by me

[kid zeus]

As seminal as his first few novels were, I believe that Sterling lost any relevance well back with the likes of Virtual Light and Idoru. It became quickly obvious that he was writing screenplays clothed as novels, the real problem being that the screenplays weren't even good.

The science was unimpressive and, worse, uninteresting. The scrappy, plucky, aww-shucks main characters weren't remotely realistic or resonant, and the stock, two-dimensional villains almost as embarassing as his overreliance on deus ex machina.

The last few books of his that I would read I would approach as if they were bad scifi movies, and I would wait for the villain to vanish in 'death', and then I would wait and call to the page when he would 'mysteriously' return. Then I just gave up.

I have limited time in this world to read truly excellent work. Hell, there's better trash sci-fi being put out in comics these days if that's what floats your boat.

Neuromancer will always rank as something extremely special to me, but it was obviously time to move on from Gibson's lowered expectations a long time ago. Maybe if I hear that he's gone back to writing books instead of crappy screenplays (or horrificly cheezy and outdated X-Files episodes) I'll give him another shot. In the mean time, Im giving a pass on Pattern Recognition.

Re:Gibson long forgotten by me

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me, I'm confused. Are you critiquing William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, or Micheal Critchon?

Re:Gibson long forgotten by me

[Anonymous Coward]

Neuromancer was nice. But I'll always remember when I first read "Burning Chrome" in OMNI.

Candidate for Slashdot editor

[Xandar01]

Cayce Pollard could use here pattern recognizing abilities to reduce the amount of dupes.

Too bad she's not real, nothing's going to save /. now.

Re:Read books!

[H.G. Pennypacker]

Next step: throw out the computer.

At the very least, delete your games and delete your browser. Tune out. Tune into reality.

Discombombulating review

[dracken]

The translation of his trademark savant talents, ubiquitous technology, idiosyncratic artists and post-modern robber barons to a recognizable present-day reality is hit-and-miss. OMG!!!!

Suddenly I much more sympathetic towards the non-geeks writhing in pain when they hear something like "The remote X11 ssh-tunnels through the firewall and gets NATed to a xwin32 client"

DAMMIT!!! Just tell me if I should read the book or not!

Re:Discombombulating review

[nanojath]

DAMMIT!!! Just tell me if I should read the book or not!

Probably not.

I hated Neuromancer.

[BitwizeGHC]

I read Neuromancer not too long ago. It was crap. Gibson's prose is pretentious and obfuscatory, seemingly crafted to sound "gritty" but more likely written so as to hide the fact that he doesn't know what he's talking about.

If Neuromancer gave us one good thing, it was Neal Stephenson's surprisingly well-crafted response, Snow Crash.

Re:I hated Neuromancer.

[Anonymous Coward]

While I personally liked Snow Crash, I found it to be considerably slower than Neuromancer (having read Neuromancer first).

I think Neuromancer is still the seminal work, but Snow Crash definitely ranks right up there...

Re:I hated Neuromancer.

[n.wegner]

Gibson's grit is what makes the book work. He didn't know much of anything about the technology he was talking about (Snowcrash has the same problem), but he added backstory, and heaped it with detailed throwaway descriptions. The coffins, the drugs, the sprawl, it all fits because of the context. He hardly explicitely describes the interactions, and you're supposed to just get it anyways. Neil Stephenson is different. He explains everything clearly, and the characters and plot are the main focus rather than the crazy stuff happening in the background, but everything happens slowly and whatever crazy stuff is going on is deeply tied to the plot.

Re:I hated Neuromancer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hah! Beeing AC has it's advantages as you now never will know who it was beating you up for this comment in this dark -1 corner of slashdot *bang*.
Neuromancer Crap, hm, guess i'll also break your legs *crakcrak*

DAMNIT JIM!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a corpse not a doctor! -- Bones

I just finished the book this morning

[autopr0n]

And I was thinking of doing a review of the story and submitting it to slashdot. I wish I had, because this one is pretty bland.

The first 50 pages or so, when we get an introduction to Cayce and her world seem sort of devoid of life. I ended up setting down the book for a while, reading only a few pages at a time. Once the main plot thread really got going, however I was sucked instantly in.

In fact, what I found most lacking in the beginning, the texture that's so prevalent and so beautifully described in a lot of Gibson books really came out in full force, in the description of Japan and Russia. The characters also started to come out in a lot more depth, once we got to meet Darrin, Voytek and his sister, Parka boy, The whole Kieko project (which, despite my earlier post) Is truly the funniest part of the book.

One thing that was really kind of Jarring about the book was it's whole 'post-sept.11th' feel. Of course, we are still technically post-sept-11th. But now it seems we've moved on to a sort of 'insane war mongering' mode. Or at least our government has. The war on Iraq doesn't really feel connected to the attack just a year and a half ago. The whole culture changed on September 11th, but it's mostly back to the way it was. And PR book is set in that temporary culture.

(Gibson actually mentioned that on his blog, that the book was set last year, not this year)

Another thing that bothered me was the sort of technical errors in the book. Not minor mistakes, but rather an apparent misunderstanding of cryptography. A misunderstanding that forms a central pillar of the plot. If not the central pillar. And not only that, no one ever thinks to encrypt their email, even though they suspect people may be listening in.

And yeah, the ending was positively Stephensonian. IE, it sucked. We get to hear the whole story, but everything just works out much to well. I don't want to give anything away for those who haven't read it though, so I won't bitch to much, in particular. Not here. There's a nice section for spolier-filled discussion on Gibson's site, which I will now have to check out, having finished the book.

"A lovely cerulean blue"

[autopr0n]

Yup, it was a good opening line. To bad the world's TV manufactures have conspired to make it have the exact opposite meaning :P

Of course you do

[autopr0n]

I thought Pattern Recognition was his best work yet when I was a third of the way through, too. I was riveted. In fact, I thought it was better then anything he'd written by an order of magnitude.

But then I kept reading.

Re:Of course you do

[Elwood P Dowd]

Ack. I'm sorry to hear that. Seen No Maps?

Read *All Tommorow's Parties*

[autopr0n]

PR Is bland in the beginning, absolutely amazing in the middle, and bland again at the end. ATP is strong all the way through, and gives you a swift kick in the nuts at the end.

No!

[DAldredge]

The found a Katz clone. Someone please save us.

Re:No!

[nanojath]

Jeeze, man. That's cold.

Re:No!

[meehawl]

The found a Katz clone. Someone please save us.

That's not fair, but the average Katz-like sentence length does tend to indicate a sixth day violation.

Haha, irony

[Anonymous Coward]

Fahrenheight 451... Flamebait!

Sony was in Neuromancer.

[autopr0n]

But yeah, I thought it was pretty odd that a girl with a total aversion to brand could even stand to use a Mac. I mean, it kind of made sense that all these 'creative' types would use them, but Cayce? Granted, they did give it to her, but you'd think she'd ditch it for the most no-name PC clone laptop she could get her hands on.

Re:Sony was in Neuromancer.

[Ummon]

Yeah, but sony was not, at the time Neuromancer was written, the ubercompany they are now. That and the only only sony reference I can remember was the little robot that guided Case around at the end.

His new book seems saturated with brand name dropping. I couldn't stand it. He's trying to create an atmosphere with niche products (read iCube). And in a few years it is just going to look silly.

Neuromancer has really held up well considering it was written in the early '80s.

Re:Sony was in Neuromancer.

[Surlyboi]

Gotta disagree there. It wasn't every Trademark she
had a problem with, just certain ones that she found
derivative or just plain wrong. Exapmles of this
are seen in her revulsion to Tommy Hilfiger, (One I
share, and for much the same reasons she cited in
the narrative) and the original Michelin Man, not
the "more neutered" newer version.

She had no problems with using her friend's cube or
Boone's Tibook either, it seemed.

Re:Sony was in Neuromancer.

[Surlyboi]

His new book seems saturated with brand name dropping. I couldn't stand it.

Then, perhaps you missed part of the book's central
conceit. Cayce Pollard's life essentially revolved
around brand names and their applications.

He's trying to create an atmosphere with niche products (read iCube). And in a few years it is just going to look silly.

I don't follow your logic there, how does the use
of "niche products" predict how silly the book
will look in time? This is conjecture on your part
at best. Hell, there's a lot of things he mentions
in the book that go unbranded that are still very
useful to the small group of people that know
about them. (The Gyrotonic machine she uses in the
beginning, for instance, has worked wonders on
my ex)

Remember, just because a product is a "niche"
product, doesn't mean it lacks impact. The cube,
as do most Apple products has a bit of a devout
following, much like the footageheads themselves.
If anything, Gibson's using those "niche products"
to mirror some of the trends in the characters in
the book.

Re:Sony was in Neuromancer.

[autopr0n]

See for yourself. There are 9 instances of the word "Sony". 8 refering to monitors, one to a person named "Sony Mao".

Speaking of pattern recognition...

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a look at this posters history. How many "Linux?" troll posts have they made, 100?

If you mods had been paying attention you would have noticed that this troll already has a post here modded off topic.

Re:Speaking of pattern recognition...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you always put down "Linux"? I always enjoy his insightful and informative posts about my favorite operating system. It makes me feel food inside.

BTW, it's GNU/Linux, not Linux, asswipe (note my quotes above).

Derivative work?

[Snarfvs Maximvs]

I could've sworn I'd read a short story called "Coolhunting" or something similar in SF Age, Asimov, Analog....or one of those SF rags. Anyone out there remember it? Was this a Gibson short story?

Re:Derivative work?

[Snarfvs Maximvs]

Replying to my own post, how gauche.

Google seems to be my friend:

http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/ebook297.htm

Wonder how similar these stories/themes are?

Re:Derivative work?

[DonK]

There was an article several years ago in The New Yorker.

Re:Linux?

[lgalindo]

Are we looking the born of a "amazoned slashdot" comments?

Re:Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

There you go again, astroturfing for M$.

YOU BASTARD! You probrably work for them!!

Yeah

[autopr0n]

The morality of mimetic engineering, the destruction of the diffrent cultures of the world, replaced by an all-consuming monoculture.

Present-Day Cyberpunk

[carsont]

I remember a couple of years ago a friend and I were discussing all the various "pessimistic sci-fi" fantasies that were coming true: things like Palladium, TIA (with its interesting choice of emblems), biometric identification in airports, and so forth. He joked that in a few more years, we'd be living inside a cyberpunk novel.

And now, what do you know, William Gibson writing books set in the present day.

Joking aside, I'm looking forward to reading this, although I'm not sure it will be very good. I'm not sure if Gibson has enough computer knowledge to portray the real "cyberspace" convincingly; and I wonder if constraining himself to reality will dampen the dark, surreal imagery that, in my opinion, is the strongest point of his books.

Wow

[autopr0n]

If you have trouble with that simple vocab, you should definitely not read the book. Those are all every day words, not technical literary terms.

I'm still mixed over this one.

[Psyko]

I read this over last weekend, and I have to agree with some of the reviews here, the first 1/3 is pretty slow, but then it moves back into the old Gibson style breakneck speed where you can't stop until you put it down.

The only thing about this latest offering is that it seems to be moving in a trend away from sci-fi and they 'cyberpunk' related themes that really hooked me on Gibson's earlier writings (i.e. Neuromancer etc. etc.). I think that if instead of reading those more hard edge technology based stories I had read the later books first (Pattern Recognition/All tomorrow's parties) I'm not sure if I would have lumped him into the same category and not sure if I would have been anticipating his new releases as much as I usually do.

Why does everyone expect a Neuromancer redux?

[Jack William Bell]

Yeesh. Sometimes it seems like everyone expects Gibson to just write the same novel over and over and over. If what you want is a Neuromancer/Count Zero clone then write it yourself. Chances are you won't be able to sell it...

Besides Gibson tends to cover the same ground in his novels perhaps a little too much as it is. Personally I am happy to see him stretch a little, and applaud him for trying even if it isn't entirely successful. If you are going to critisize Pattern Recognition on its merits as a novel unconnected to the Sprawl trilogy, fine. But please don't bitch because it isn't Neuromancer v2.0!

Re:Why does everyone expect a Neuromancer redux?

[jacquesm]

hell no, they shouldn't write it themselves, just read it again :)

My theory about brontosaurs by Anne Elk

[Thud457]

Probably didn't like "A Clockwork Orange" too much either -- pure gibberish!

And don't get him started on H.P. Lovecraft! PURE DREK!

In my experience, it seems that the women I know have a particularly hard time with works like that. My theory is that it's all the detailed descriptions of things to the last minutae. The same people usually don't like Doc Smith because of his purple prose. Most of the men seem to fare better, possibly because they are more visually oriented. You have a lot of interminal words describing something, but it's directly translatable into concrete imagery.

You did know

[autopr0n]

That review editions of the book were being sold for $hundreds on ebay in January, right?

Re:You did know

[chloroquine]

No, of course I didn't know. That's pretty funny actually. I think I even got my copy before January. I generally pick up the reviewer's copies because I can't afford the hardback copy when it finally gets published.

I don't believe in buying books in hardback or for full price. I read a large enough volume of books that for me to pay more than USD15 per book is impossible on my graduate student's stipend.

Fortunately my university has a good library with a good fiction section. I'm working my way through Kim Stanley Robinson slowly, and have found a great collection of Tijuana bibles in the comic book section. Academia has its uses.

Re:You did know

[puto]

No way!

I got my ARC off of ebay in November for 25 bucks.

But I would have sold it for 100's. Well, probably not.

Puto

Idoru == Iboru

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a Gibson fan, I tried my hardest to read Idoru and did not get to the end. This was disappointing because I really liked Mona Lisa Overdrive, Neuromancer and Burning Chrome. It just went on and on and I never finished reading it. By the time I was more than 3/4 I couldn't picture an ending at all for it.

Footage and footageheads...the meme...

[Interrobang]

At least Gibson now seems to be at least sort of in touch with current or post-current computer technology, something he most emphatically wasn't in Neuromancer. So far, I'm enjoying it, but (truth in reporting) I haven't finished it yet. (My fiance gave it to me for my birthday, but decided to read it before he gave it to me, and I had a Tom Holt to finish.)

He pointed out something I find pretty hard to ignore now that I'm into the novel: Do any of you others out there think that the "footage" plot is memetically borrowed from a certain quasi-filmic endless joke around here? I'm sure you know the one I mean, gentlemen...all your memes are belong to William Gibson now. (One imagines that in the near future, digital tricksters can get up to mischief slightly more sophisticated than Photoshop and Flash animations.)

Re:Footage and footageheads...the meme...

[cheese_wallet]

At least Gibson now seems to be at least sort of in touch with current or post-current computer technology

post-current? What the hell does that mean? Is "future" too small a word for you?

something he most emphatically wasn't in Neuromancer

You do understand that Neuromancer was written in 1984, right?

(My fiance gave it to me for my birthday, but decided to read it before he gave it to me, and I had a Tom Holt to finish.)

Glad you could clear that up. I was very confused as to why, having received this book on your birthday, you hadn't finished yet.

Re:Footage and footageheads...the meme...

[Interrobang]

post-current? What the hell does that mean? Is "future" too small a word for you?

Uh, no. "Future" is just not an accurate word in this case. I'm not entirely sure if the novel is taking place in the future, per se, as the reviewer seems to think it's a "version of the present," but the cover copy says it's an "extrapolation," which sort of suggests otherwise. I'm sorry you can't parse a subtle rhetorical distinction like my hedging my bets, since Gibson is notoriously shy on dates.

You do understand that Neuromancer was written in 1984, right?

Yes, and I also understand that computers did exist in 1984, and I further understand that most technologically-oriented people who have looked at Gibson's work have said that his initial Neuromancer world was fantastical, and not really extrapolative, whereas his later works seem to be zeroing in on actual emerging trends and technology. His increase in factual knowledge from which to extrapolate might have something to do with the fact that Gibson wrote Neuromancer using a typewriter, and hadn't so much as even touched a computer in 1984, but he obviously has done so now.

I haven't yet finished the book, true. I only got it two days ago, and, all things considered, I don't read that fast. 900 wpm is peanuts when you haven't put much time into it.

Re:Footage and footageheads...the meme...

[87C751]

...I further understand that most technologically-oriented people who have looked at Gibson's work have said that his initial Neuromancer world was fantastical, and not really extrapolative, whereas his later works seem to be zeroing in on actual emerging trends and technology.

That initial world really came to being in the short stories, such as 'New Rose Hotel' and 'Johnny Mnemonic'. I started reading Gibson when 'Burning Chrome' was first published in Omni.

Yes, Gibson's universe was fantastical, but really only through 'Count Zero'. I ascribe the change to his actual introduction to computers. He's said to have written 'Mona Lisa Overdrive' on an Apple II, and to have remarked that he hadn't expected computers to make any noise.

In the world of 'Neuromancer' and CZ, the computer wasn't really literal. It was a talisman, channeling the magic of advancing technology and its effects on the human condition. But if you read MLO carefully, you see that, while computers start out with the same talismanic properties, by the end of the book their magic is largely gone and they have descended into applianceness (to coin a term). Then remember that while writing MLO, Gibson was learning the mundane, everyday usage of a real computer. He formatted disks and saved files and typed on a screen. And as he became familiar with how things really were going, his fictional computers began to lose their luster until, as MLO closed, even in his world they were mere appliances. Exposure to reality stole the fire of his vision.

It reminds me of a distantly remembered sci-fi short story about a boy who was kept isolated from the whole world while learning to play his musical instrument. Someone came along and slipped him recordings of Beethoven and Bach, and he reveled in them and began to emulate them. And then the cultural authorities busted him for being influenced and maimed him, that he may never play the instrument again. Not that I'm suggesting that fate for Gibson, but I see a parallel in his exposure to computer reality and the change in his creative output.

Re:Footage and footageheads...the meme...

[Phexro]

"It reminds me of a distantly remembered sci-fi short story about a boy who was kept isolated from the whole world while learning to play his musical instrument."

Aaugh. It was by Orson Scott Card, and I read it in "Maps In A Mirror," now sadly out of print. Can't remember the title. "Nightingale," perhaps?

I have two of the paperback volumes from MIAM, but don't have the huge hardback edition.

It's really a pity that MIAM is out of print. Some of Card's best work is in there.

Always liked Gibson's work.

[Samurai Cat!]

Met the man once, years ago, when he and Sterling were doing the Difference Engine book tour... he was completely hammered drunk. Classically funny. :)

Re:Always liked Gibson's work.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is "Classically funny" like "Classically beautiful?" You know, big schnozz, pot belly, pasty cottage cheese thighs and arms, droopy eyes, frizzy thinning hair?

Re:Linux?

[TheCrazyFinn]

no, we've had it closer to twenty years. WTF do you think sed & awk are? Regex's are patterns.

Anger and Scorn in Early GIbson

[Sw0rdfiche]

While I am looking forward to reading "Pattern Recognition," I am not surprised at the direction of Gibson's work. I always felt that Gibson grabbed the tiger by the tail with "Neuromancer" and he has been searching for that tiger ever since. What really powers "Neuromancer" is Gibson's rage and scorn. Those of you who happened to pick up the audio book version of "Neuromancer," narrated by Gibson himself know what I'm talking about. The audio book is a treat, almost making Gibson himself a character. As we get older, sustaining that kind of rage is not an easy thing to do. Gibson has more going for him than attitude. With his later books I think he has started to forsake the "Neuromancer" tiger and just go hunting for new game.

sparse pages -- a novelette, really

[rawdirt]

about page 96 I noticed the spacing between lines was a bit larger than normal. This effort is more like a novelette.

I guess that's pattern recogition...

Lots of throwaway lines. The UK as mirror world metaphor only on the surface... natch.

Geeks consistently get Gibson wrong...

[garagekubrick]

For the past three books the same criticisms have been levelled at Gibson's latest book by the geek cognescenti here at Slashdot. It gets pretty boring. I think the problem is Gibson's fustion of noir and attitude to computers gave socially inept people who did not generally have a badass bone in them some kind of feeling that they did; when that became less interesting to him, because it wasn't really even on the money for the most part, most geeks became bored.

Here's some rebuttal to some of those criticisms:

The usage of Sept. 11th makes perfect, absolute sense. I'd like to understand why a poster above refers to the book as speculative fiction. Although marketed as such there is nary a piece of technology nor a futuristic setting to suggest that P.R. is even a work of science fiction, despite being marketed as such by the publisher. If you've worked in filmmaking or advertising on a Transoceanic basis in the past year, this book reads more believable than anything out there.

I think it's obvious that Gibson has taken the central themes in all of his books and reformed them into this and set it in the present day because there's no longer a need to push it forward. The perception of time is a constant underlying theme in Gibson's work, and this one deals with the immediate and what's in fashion because it dominates our day to day living. September 11th is immediate and cannot be ignored, and ultimately the book is about any human search, no matter the time or place, for meaning in a sea of information that is incomprehensible due to its complexity. P.R. does not offer any easy answers or political commentary on Sept. 11th, only a raw sort of need to understand and contextualize something that horrific into a person's life.

That fits into the broader idea of the book, the old Gibson standby of someone trying to track down an artist. The footageheads who trawl the web and dissect and bisect the pieces of anonymous footage are really doing what humans have always done in culture; once again, searching for meaning where there is none.

If anyone can point me to a book which captures the sensation of what it's like to be part of an online community or to communicate with friends daily, globally and immediately; please offer suggestions. That's what P.R. nails.

Re:Geeks consistently get Gibson wrong...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you need a book? There are lots of online communities. See where the book fails now?

So Troll ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why don't you bitch and complain to your origional post?

You know what I am talking about. Why not try shouting at your own post here.

Yeah, the quotes imply its GNU/Linux. To that I say "you are right" and "you are not a bsing troll who is just throwing around Linux."

In conclusion, all I have to say is Linux, Linux, Linux, Linux, Linux, Linux, Linux, Linux, Linux, etc, and to stop shoving your hand up your ass to feel your food inside.

Cayce??

[kirn_malinus]

He named the main character Cayce?? Give me a freakin' break! Anybody else remember Neuromancer, where the main characters name was Case....?

Re:Linux?

[AoT]

magda?

Deja Vous all over again

[t0ny]

Was it just me, or did Gibson's Virtual Light seem to be a really crappy version of Stephenson's Snow Crash?

Both had a broke, once well employed, tough-guy male protagonist (Gibson's was a security guard, Stephenson's was a hacker/swordfighter/pizza driver). The both of the second protagonists were a tough young woman with a dysfunctional family situation.

Both had uber-hackers as good guys (or at least helping out), bizarre bad guys, and the city setting in both books was messed up by a natural disaster in the recent past.

I could go on with the similarities, but Gibson basically sawed down Snow Crash and rewrote it in his own words. That guy's a loser now.

Re:Deja Vous all over again

[Anonymous Coward]

A crappy version of Snow Crash? That's fucking harsh, man.

Re:I hated Neuromancer. You should re-read it.

[puto]

When you say Gibson is trying to hide the fact that he doesn't know what he is talking about? Just what doesn't he know? Tech? All his books are written in the future. Any tech that he writes about is his own creation. So really since it is a future I have not been to, I can judge the tech there.But as a techie, it is beleivable. And for a non tech person he does a damn fine job. And did a damn fine job as defining the genre. Do really know the cyberpunk thing, Gibson is a must.

When was the last time you read good sci fi tech book that had some real tech, and was interesting?

I will give you an example: "Nick Burns had spent the entire day running cat-5 through his new clients office. He was suprised to find some left over vampire taps from a previous network installation. Pocketing his Leatherman(the one with the expansion kit)he strolled over to the server room while pondering the schema of an LDAP configuration he had read on a /. thread. I had been an interesting day to the say the least for the young network engineer."

I get all the tech I need at work and at play. I dont need to be reading and thinking "FOOL use the crossover cable, THATS WHY IT WONT UPLINK TO THE SWITCH" I like Snow Crash, good book. I like Stephenson, he is a good read. But hardly a wordsmith. And he appeals to us techies cause he throws in some of our geekspeak.

Pot meet kettle?

"Gibson's prose is pretentious and obfuscatory, seemingly crafted to sound "gritty" but more likely written so as to hide the fact that he doesn't know what he's talking about." I am not attacking here but a writer writes like his favorite authors. You see their influnces. You can see Gibson is extremely well read and has a command on language that few do.

I can suggest a really good book for you. Walter Jon Williams. HardWired. Nueromancer like, but great characters and war story.

Puto

Burning Chrome

[iopha]

I always thought the short stories in 'Burning Chrome' contained some of his strongest work. Suprised noone has brought it up yet. I found 'dogfight' to be rather poignant, and 'red star, winter orbit' too. I agree that the later work is not as good, but I recommend reading 'Burning Chrome'. The stories take place in all kinds of weird settings-- only one of them is a traditional 'cyberpunk'-style story-- and they are crisp, short, and well-written.

iopha

Gibson book signing

[AntiFreeze]

Just a note:

Gibson will be signing books at the Union Square Barnes and Noble in New York City on Thursday (February 13th) at 7pm.

</psa>

Re:Gibson book signing

[Anonymous Coward]

The signing schedule is available at the Penguin/Putnam site.

http://www.penguinputnam.com/Events/EventSearchF ra me?0CS^isbn_0399149864

No

[autopr0n]

She was averse to all branding, with the only exception being Hello Kitty and other cutesy Japanese things. We're talking about a girl who sanded the logo off the button on her pants.

She reacted more to some brands then others, (including the 'new' Michelin man, not just the old one) but all brands bothered her.

Re:No

[Surlyboi]

She was averse to all branding, with the only exception being Hello Kitty and other cutesy Japanese things. We're talking about a girl who sanded the logo off the button on her pants.

She reacted more to some brands then others, (including the 'new' Michelin man, not just the old one) but all brands bothered her.

Beg to differ here, but re-read that first chapter
when she hits Tokyo. It's not so much the brand,
but the contextualization of the brand. "Whole
seas of Burberry have no effect on her, nor
Mont Blanc Nor even Gucci"

Other good authors?

[Anonymous Coward]

So I've read everything by Gibson, Sterling, and Stephenson. What else should I try (I like cyberpunk)?

Hubertus Bigend / Hubert Shrump

[Hubert_Shrump]

We are NOT amused.

neuromancer - c64

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice synchronicity this review of a gibson book. I just finished the C64 Game Neuromancer (playing it on VICE) once more. It's been the first game i ever bought and strange enough i didn't even knew the book at that time. By now i've read the book (and all other Gibson work) several times and while replaying the game i could now see all the references to it which were hidden throughout the messageboards of the game (one of my favorite was the text of a psychatric session for Molly).

William Gibson in Boulder last night

[GrendelAlex]

The Father of Cyberspace was at the Boulder Bookstore last night reading from this new book. He almost coughed up a lung in front of us after some water went down the wrong pipe. A cool guy and very modest in person given his fame and prestige. I asked him for some pearl of wisdom. He offered: "Don't eat anything bigger than your head!" Should have thought *a head* and gotten a few extra signed books for eBay... ;) - Alex

Gibson vs. Stephenson

[Sheriff Fatman]

I've read everything Neal Stephenson's published, and all Gibson's stuff except this latest one. I love them both dearly, but there's a contrast between their writing that always strikes me.

I think Gibson uses technology to tell his stories, whereas Stephenson creates his stories so he can talk about technology. Remove the gadgets and tech noir from Neuromancer, and I think it would still stand fairly well as a story because the narrative is driven by character interaction. Wintermute could just as easily be a mythical god, or even some mysterious gang boss in the roaring forties - there's really not a great deal that *requires* 'him' to be an AI. On the other hand, Cryptonomicon (which I consider one of the finest books ever written), Snow Crash and The Diamond Age are all basically stories about tech. Imagine Snow Crash without the eponymous virus, or Cryptonomicon without the Enigma ciphers. Stephenson goes into loving detail explaining the intricacies of his technology - the Cryptonomicon analogy between Turing's bicycle chain and the Enigma machines springs to mind - while Gibson will open a novel (Count Zero) with 'They set a slamhound on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the colour of his hair' and never once explains in the next 335 pages what a slamhound is or how you slot one. One can't help thinking that Stephenson created the Raft because It Would Be Cool, where Gibson created Freeside 'cos he needed somewhere to set the next few chapters and a space station seemed as good as anywhere.

Of course, if I had a fraction of either of their talent, I wouldn't be writing comments on Slashdot... :)

Can't write about 9/11 as he lives in Canada???

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of a narrowminded, dimwitted idiot would honestly believe that to have a concept about the impact of 9/11 requires one to be from the U.S.A? I guess it's the large geographic displacement separating the two countries that would lead one to believe that Canadians couldn't possibly have been affected as well.

One of the main criticisms the world has about Americans is that they are too wrapped up in themselves to have a clue about other cultures. This idiot pretty much proves that point, unfortunately.

Hey dumbass. Canada is right above the U.S.A. I've heard, (in passing, whispers only), that Canadians often walk among Americans, on American soil, undetected. It's almost as if only a border separates the two nations.

So what if Canadian football has one less down than American football. Both of them stole the name from the europeans.

When Canadians turn on the television, they don't watch CSI: Toronto. Nor do all Canadian movies get made on back lots in IglooWood.

I would assume it would probably be relatively easy for someone with the financial resources that William Gibson likely has to fund at least a bi-annual excursion from Vancouver, Canada to Seattle, Washington. (...all 150 miles or so... http://www.theslowlane.com/paths/route.html), if he needed to be refreshed of the long-forgotten American ideologies since being indoctrinated into the strange and alien Canadian ways.

Examples of the shocking and unruly patterns of behaviour Canadians often take part in:

-listening to the same music as Americans
-watching the same television shows as Americans do, often in the exact same language.
-downloading updated linux kernels, often from the same mirrors that Americans do.
-reading the same books that Americans do. This has the unexpected effect of Canadians often having access to the same information as Americans. Dangerous? Possibly.
-watching the same televised newscasts as Americans. They know what is happening in the U.S.A as soon as the Americans do. Shouldn't there be laws against that?
-playing the same sports as Americans, like basketball, football, hockey, golf, heck, even tennis.

Perhaps all Americans who unwittingly cross the border into Canada should first be given the proper vaccinations, to make reassimilation into the American culture easier. This would prevent them from foolishly assuming they could return to their motherland, escaping the insurmountable urge to live in an Igloo. ( in constant fear that the simple act of leaving the toaster on could melt their new dwelling)

Here's a thought, moron; perhaps some Canadians were actually __IN__ the World Trade Center when the tragedy occurred. And, there's also the possibility that some Canadians have American cousins, brothers, spouses, friends, who died in the tragedy. Learn some fucking manners, asshole. As a wise animated character once said..."they don't teach tact at the academy".

Good book without the bang!

[shiroi_kami]

I agree the book doesn't impact like Gibbies others, however, it's still not a bad read.