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Pattern Recognition
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.
Or really, just do a search for "footagehead" at Google and you'll get several reviews and an excerpt or two.
--sex
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
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.
Worst. Sig. Ever.
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.
-Christopher Wu
http://www.christopherwu.net/
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
SummaryI'd own this in trade paperback, and in hardcover I would borrow it from the library
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.
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.
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.
Free Pattern Recognition sample chapter.
William Gibson home page.
A bot modeled on Gibson's take on AI.
The Aleph - all things Gibson.
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
You insensitive clod! You mock my horrible predictament; having many books to read for class leaving no time for consuming others for pleasure.
::sobs::
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.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
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.
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!
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.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
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.
** http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/ ** Human rights in North Korea. 1 million estimated dead from starvation.