Paperback
Spanish language
Published Sept. 29, 2004 by Minotauro.
One of the most influential and imaginative writers of the past twenty years turns his attention to London - with dazzling results.Cayce Pollard owes her living to her pathological sensitivity to logos. In London to consult for the world's coolest ad agency, she finds herself catapulted, via her addiction to a mysterious body of fragmentary film footage, uploaded to the Web by a shadowy auteur, into a global quest for this unknown 'garage Kubrick'. Cayce becomes involved with an eccentric hacker, a vengeful ad executive, a defrocked mathematician, a Tokyo Otaku-coven known as Eye of the Dragon and, eventually, the elusive 'Kubrick' himself. William Gibson's new novel is about the eternal mystery of London, the coolest sneakers in the world, and life in (the former) USSR.
Gibson is great at interpreting near-future/timely trends into well-blended characters and experiences, in this case of pervasive marketing, surveillance, internet affinity groups, and coming to terms with 9/11. But I don't think he can write endings.
This was the second time reading this, almost 10 years later. Probably due to the age difference I enjoyed it much, much more the second time around. Hence the upgrade in stars.
Gibson has patterned a world of cascading dualities, a world of "mirror-worlds" as the protagonist calls them. Mirror-Things that look similar (but not quite) to Real-Things, and sometimes end up looking more real, more substantial, more meaningful and connected. There are patterns of lateral similarity becoming visible every time the protagonist moves her point of view. From city to city, from the online to the offline, from the personal to the ritualistic communal.
Pattern Recognition is his most current work I've read, and leaving aside the 9/11 attacks as a temporal point of reference, the most timeless. It's not SciFi, nor cyberpunk, the events could have indeed happened when published in '02, or they could have happened in β¦
This was the second time reading this, almost 10 years later. Probably due to the age difference I enjoyed it much, much more the second time around. Hence the upgrade in stars.
Gibson has patterned a world of cascading dualities, a world of "mirror-worlds" as the protagonist calls them. Mirror-Things that look similar (but not quite) to Real-Things, and sometimes end up looking more real, more substantial, more meaningful and connected. There are patterns of lateral similarity becoming visible every time the protagonist moves her point of view. From city to city, from the online to the offline, from the personal to the ritualistic communal.
Pattern Recognition is his most current work I've read, and leaving aside the 9/11 attacks as a temporal point of reference, the most timeless. It's not SciFi, nor cyberpunk, the events could have indeed happened when published in '02, or they could have happened in '14 as well.
Bits and pieces:
- I knew WG was a fashion nerd, but damn he went overboard in PR. Every single character is described mainly through detailed depictions of their garments. Lots and lots of fashion all somehow playing an actual role in picturing the characters with further connections to other parts of the story
- 3 years before YouTube was created and the online video craze took off, WG portraited the mystic power of anonymous user generated viral content, so powerful that the Advertisers will like to usurp it at any cost
Okay, I gave up on this book in the first 2 chapters, at the same time I replaced my mp3 player. 7 months later my 'new' mp3 player needs its battery charged and I am desperate to be listening to something, so I dig the old mp3 player out and this book starts where I left off. A couple of paragraphs in the book gets better and I listened to the end.
The heroine is not the shallow self centered person I did not like in the first 2 chapters, By the end of the book she is likable.
This was amazing. Best read in a loooong time. Ever felt like there are a few puppet masters of "public" opinion? This thriller/detective story (untraditionally non-sci-fi for William Gibson) will take you for a ride and make you wonder what opinions are your own. Follow Cayce Pollard, the hunter of tomorrow's "cool" on her quest to uncover maker(s?) of intricate video footage appearing randomly on the Internet and you will "take a duck in your face".
I'm re-reading this so I that can read the rest of the trilogy. I was lucky enough to find "spook country" second-hand and I'll have to get hold of his latest somehow.
An excellent book with an amazingly well-drawn main character. The ending itself seemed kind of sudden, but so much of the book up to that point was so excellent, it is easy to overlook this minor fault.
