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Loading... Pattern Recognitionby William Gibson
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. One of Gibson's "the future is now!" books. Not as good as classic cyberpunk Gibson, but an enjoyable and quick read. (  ) hilaritas | Oct 19, 2009 |  One of Gibson's "the future is now!" books. Not as good as classic cyberpunk Gibson, but an enjoyable and quick read. ( ) hilaritas | Oct 19, 2009 | despite interesting topics (apophenia, viral video, marketing/globalisation/capitalism/etc...) and a few great sentences, this book was weak. Definitely what I think of as a "plot novel" where the movement of the narrative is so primary to the author's concerns that he castrates all the characters and descriptions. In just the most obvious instance, there's a long exposition in dialogue of everything that's been secretly happening in the book in the 2nd-to-last chapter, and then the last chapter has a string of emails from virtually every character, like one of those cheesy movie endings where we're told what everyone is doing five years hence. Maneuvers like that are symptomatic of plot-premacy, but also the author's lazi/ineptness: a Joycean epiphany, on the contrary, retrospectively rearranges all the previous events according to an organically developed revelation. Which takes actual talent to execute. (  ) phette23 | Oct 19, 2009 | With 'Pattern Recognition', Gibson moved away from speculative fiction, or rather the world caught up to him. Proof that the future is here. (  ) cschack | Oct 5, 2009 | Err... this is from page 21 "Looks back as she's leaving and he is there, regarding her severely from the depths of black parentheses" What? He regarded her severely? Really? What on earth are black parentheses? (They're in a coffee shop.) This entire book is written in this way - like the author is experimenting with short sweet lines, made more complex by the addition of unexpected adverbs and metaphors. But all I really wanted is a story. Some action, some characterization... not this cold clinical book that was obviously written with a thesaurus close to hand; oh, and a book of brand names wasn't far off either - every second sentence drops another. Of course, this is the point of the book - name-branding - but I still sort of expected some plot or, at least, a chance to give a hoot about the main character. I'm left wondering if the main character is also a name brand - all marketing and words, no personality. ( ) crazybatcow | Sep 17, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
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| Book description |
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Pollard is among a cult-like group of Internet obsessives that strives to find meaning and patterns within a mysterious collection of video moments, merely called "the footage," let loose onto the Internet by an unknown source. Her hobby and work collide when a megalomaniac client hires her to track down whoever is behind the footage. Cayce's quest will take her in and out of harm's way in a high-stakes game that ultimately coincides with her desire to reconcile her father’s disappearance during the September 11 attacks in New York.
Although he forgoes his usual future-think tactics, this is very much a William Gibson novel, more so for fans who realize that Gibson's brilliance lies not in constructing new futures but in using astute observations of present-day cultural flotsam to create those futures. With Pattern Recognition, Gibson skips the extrapolation and focuses his acumen on our confusing contemporary world, using the precocious Pollard to personify and humanize the uncertain anxiety, optimistic hope, and downright fear many feel when looking to the future. The novel is filled with Gibson's lyric descriptions and astute observations of modern life, making it worth the read for both cool hunters and their prey. --Jeremy Pugh
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:18 -0400)
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