Pattern Recognition - William Gibson
Published Tuesday, December 06, 2005 by Leah | E-mail this post
I've been meaning to read this since it came out... and I should have picked it up earlier. The copy I bought was a $5 paperback in a bin at the Bay, of all places, which tells you how long I've been really meaning to pick this up.
Gibson's Virtual Light was my favourite book at 14/15. There's something about the female leads in his novels - they are the kinds of women I would want to be. That goes for Cayce Pollard, the lead in Pattern Recognition, as well. Who wouldn't want to be Cayce, with her all black outfits and her ability to determine what will be cool? Even her allergy to brandnames and trademarks is cool.
Gibson's look into an extreme, technological world of marketing is dead on - it's advanced, but based in reality and very possible. The solution to who makes the footage, and how one person could possibly be the source is both brilliant and eerily plausible. Even the 9/11 references, which are key to the plot and character development, are beyond plausible - they are necessary to the story. Gibson has managed to capture what most of the world has been feeling about the tragic events, without playing them out for the tragedy.
Gibson references the real world, from brand names and trademarks to real world figures (as pointed out early on, Cayce is so named for Edgar Cayce, the famous early 20th century psychic, which is a gift from her mother, who believes the voices of the dead appear on sound recordings) in a way that isn't intrusive. Don't think American Psycho - though the brands are necessary to the story, and knowing Hello Kitty and Prada would be helpful to having a mental picture of the places amd people Cayce sees (and why she reacts as she does), it isn't the same level of brand recognition and worship. It's more disdain and contempt, in a subtle acknowledgement that brands will become more global as the Internet takes over.
Because in the end, it's really a novel about how the Internet has changed the world. Gibson was the first to really get the Internet into literature, and he will always be the guru of how it affects life, even in the 21st Century.
Gibson's Virtual Light was my favourite book at 14/15. There's something about the female leads in his novels - they are the kinds of women I would want to be. That goes for Cayce Pollard, the lead in Pattern Recognition, as well. Who wouldn't want to be Cayce, with her all black outfits and her ability to determine what will be cool? Even her allergy to brandnames and trademarks is cool.
Gibson's look into an extreme, technological world of marketing is dead on - it's advanced, but based in reality and very possible. The solution to who makes the footage, and how one person could possibly be the source is both brilliant and eerily plausible. Even the 9/11 references, which are key to the plot and character development, are beyond plausible - they are necessary to the story. Gibson has managed to capture what most of the world has been feeling about the tragic events, without playing them out for the tragedy.
Gibson references the real world, from brand names and trademarks to real world figures (as pointed out early on, Cayce is so named for Edgar Cayce, the famous early 20th century psychic, which is a gift from her mother, who believes the voices of the dead appear on sound recordings) in a way that isn't intrusive. Don't think American Psycho - though the brands are necessary to the story, and knowing Hello Kitty and Prada would be helpful to having a mental picture of the places amd people Cayce sees (and why she reacts as she does), it isn't the same level of brand recognition and worship. It's more disdain and contempt, in a subtle acknowledgement that brands will become more global as the Internet takes over.
Because in the end, it's really a novel about how the Internet has changed the world. Gibson was the first to really get the Internet into literature, and he will always be the guru of how it affects life, even in the 21st Century.
0 Responses to “Pattern Recognition - William Gibson”
Leave a Reply