Pattern Recognition

by William Gibson

Book Overview

Cayce Pollard is an expensive, spookily intuitive market-research consultant. In London on a job, she is offered a secret assignment: to investigate some intriguing snippets of video that have been appearing on the Internet. An entire subculture of people is obsessed with these bits of footage, and anybody who can create that kind of brand loyalty would be a gold mine for Cayce's client. But when her borrowed apartment is burgled and her computer...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0399149864
• ISBN13: 9780399149863
• Release Date: February 2003
• Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons
• Length: 357 Pages
• Weight: 1.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.3" x 9.3"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Lies and deception

Pretty good book it was a little hard for me to get into initially. Good pacing that kept me interested but not a whole lot happened.

A SF Novel of the Past?

Pattern Recognition (2003) is the eighth novel by William Gibson. Although all the novels seem to share a common universe, this work does not include any characters from the previous stories and, indeed, is set in the very near future, which might now be the past. In this novel, Cayce Pollard is a design consultant who has the ability to recognize which logos and other designs will be successful, but does not have a conscious understanding of how she makes such judgments. The ability is probably connected in some way with her strong reaction to certain commercial logos and symbols, an aversion that developed during childhood and which has been highly resistant to therapy. Cayce also has an unusual avocation: collecting and analyzing "footage" found on various network servers. This "footage" seems to be segments of a visual presentation involving a man and a woman in unidentifiable locations. Cayce is a member of a chat group @ Fetish:Footage:Forum which is also dedicated to the discovery of the origin and purpose of this "footage". Cayce is based in New York, but travels to London to meet with Blue Ant, a client who wants an opinion on a new logo. Cayce stays at the new home of a friend, Damien, who is on a shoot in Russia. Cayce sees London as the mirror world, so alike yet so different. In contrast, she would probably see Canada as being so similar to the USA that it is much like another state. On the other hand, Tokyo is so wildly different that it can't possibly mirror the USA. The following day, Cayce attends the meeting with her client and finds Dorotea Benedetti, representative of the design group that produced the logo, strangely hostile, even to the point of covertly burning a hole in Cayce's reproduced bomber jacket. When she returns to her Damien's place, Cayce discovers that someone has gotten in, despite the door lock and dead bolt, and has accessed Damien's computer system. She pushes redial on the phone and gets Dorotea's answering machine. Later, Hubertus Bigend, owner of Blue Ant, asks Cayce to track down the origin of the "footage" for him. As she travels to various locations, including Tokyo, Cayce encounters other strange and hostile events. Cayce is the daughter of a security consultant, Win Pollard, who was apparently last seen taking a cab in the direction of the World Trade Center on 9/11/01. Although Win is presumed dead in the terrorist attack or its aftermath, Cayce and her mother are having a hard time getting the insurance company to settle their claims. Since there was no body, Cayce still hasn't been able to grieve for her father. As misfortune and malice dog her footsteps, however, Cayce remembers more and more of the knowledge imparted by Win and manages to outwit her persecutors. At the end of the book, she still isn't certain whether her father is alive or dead, but is able to accept the possibility of his death with both sadness and pride. This novel has a surreal ambiance, much like Bl

A probing look at our present society

I decided to read "Pattern Recognition" after I thoroughly enjoyed reading "Conquest of Paradise: An End-Times Nano-Thriller", another novel based on nanotechnology. That book totally blew me away, and I heard William Gibson was the type of author that focused on future technologies and societies. Like "Conquest of Paradise", "Pattern Recognition" is set in the present. The heroine is a fast-living edge of society figure named Cayce Pollard. Pollard is among a group of Internet junkies who strive to find meaningful patterns within a mysterious collection of video moments, merely called "the footage," and let loose onto the Internet by an unknown source. At first, Cayce only follows the footage as a hobby, but when a client hires her to track down the true source, her life becomes intertwined with this obsession. The novel is rife with pertinent observations of modern day society and focuses on some of the more hollow and meaningless aspects of our consumer driven culture. A great book.For those who enjoy the intellectually challenging ideas and candid observations of our present society, "Pattern Recognition" is a good read. I highly recommend "Conquest of Paradise" as supplemental entertainment. Although different in many ways, the two books are quite thought provoking.

Superb, thought-provoking novel

I feel I should start of by stating that this is my first William Gibson novel, so if you're looking for an evaluation of "Pattern Recognition" within the context of his other books, there's no point in reading further. That said, I found "Pattern Recognition" to be a remarkable, moving novel that was a joy to read. Specifically, it is a fascinating look at the paranoia and hope of the post 9/11 world. Gibson deftly considers the difference between crass consumer culture and genuine art, and then swirls them together via our information saturated culture. As his protagonist, Gibson creates Cayce Pollard, something of a marketing prodigy whose claim to fame is that she can unerringly determine whether or not a brand logo will be successful on first sight. It is therefore intensely ironic that she has a phobia of all commercial branding that manifests itself through something that is akin to a cross between a panic attack and a migraine. Her revulsion to consumer culture is so intense, she goes so far as to remove labels from everything she owns, and dresses in the most stripped down manner possible. Wrapped inside this duality is the additional one that Cayce, despite her odd phobias, who seems to be an inherently trusting and positive person, is grappling with the death, or more accurately the disappearance of her father in the events surrounding 9/11. Thus her vision of the future is touched by the background, but pervasive, fear that seems to have become part and parcel to our new century. Cayce's escape from these twin phantoms is an oddly alluring film that is being released piece by piece on the internet (those familiar with Mark Danielewski's "House of Leaves" may see an echo here). The "footage", as it is known, enjoys a grass roots fascination globally that borders on cultish, except that the reaction is overwhelmingly positive, and disconnected from pop culture. The footage is apparently being released out of sequence, and seems to take place out of time and in some undefined location. As chatroom battles rage over whether it is a work in progress or a completed film, there seems to be no argument that the footage is a thing of shocking, pure beauty, totally untainted by popular culture. However, it is when Cayce is asked by her enigmatic and enormously influential colleague to track the footage to the source that things get weird. It would be impossible to recount the plot here without spoiling it, but the dualities mentioned above, art and pop-culture, past and future, act, react and interact in fascinating ways. Gibson argues eloquently that the future is informed by the past, but not determined by it. Moreover, he seems to be arguing that there is no such thing as consumer-culture or art, but rather that they are all part of one increasingly global CULTURE. This blurring of the lines is neither good nor bad, but instead a consequence of the Information Age. As such, the definitions and boundaries of art are shiftin

William Gibson's Satisfying, Lyrical Look at the Present

"Pattern Recognition" is William Gibson's best novel since "Virtual Light" and the first set in a present that seems uncannily like the world described in his "Cyberspace" trilogy of novels ("Neuromancer", "Count Zero" and "Mona Lisa Overdrive"). Yet stylistically it owes more to his sparse lyrical prose style that he used so adroitly in his last two novels, "Idoru" and "All Tomorrow's Parties" than any of his previous work. Although set in the present, William Gibson's latest tale owes much to his cyberpunk science fiction, especially with regards to the vast visual sweep of the tale and how his protagonist interacts with contemporary internet society (Speaking of which I doubt I have read a more realistic, genuine appreciation of internet culture elsewhere; Gibson's portrayal is unquestionably the Real McCoy.)."Pattern Recognition" has yet another uncanny William Gibson plot that seems short on substance and is just as unresolvable, yet somehow he manages to bring this relentless tale to a satisfying conclusion. "Coolhunter" Cayce Pollard is hired by a megalomanic tycoon to search out the source of invisible video snippets posted to the Web which have caught not only his attention, but also Cayce's and that of her small band of internet friends too. Meanwhile she must cope with her father's mysterious disappearance in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001 at the time of the World Trade Center terrorist attack. Cayce's quest will take her from London to Tokyo and finally, Moscow, where she finds the unexpected source of these video snippets and some clues which may help resolve what did happen to her father - a former American intelligence agent - on that fateful morning.Without question, William Gibson is one of the most interesting literary stylists currently working in fiction. Those who have ignored his earlier work because it is science fiction are missing the splendid work of one of the finest writers of our time. "Pattern Recogntion" is the quintessential novel of our time, deserving to be read by all interested in understanding not only contemporary Internet culture, but indeed, contemporary Western culture.

Gibson Gets Real

Dropped into a new local bookstore Fri evening, wanting something to read, rather than reread, over the weekend. Ended up picking Gibson's latest, Pattern Recognition. First off...I liked this book - a lot; thinking it over I think it's my favorite of all Gibson's books - possibly because there's an underlying element of "sweetness" in the book's mood that keeps the pervasive vision of social anomie and paranoia at delicate bay. The protagonist, Cayce Pollard is a "cool hunter" - an (expensive) trendspotter for hire. She's also an internet "footage" buff - footage being seemingly random snips of a movie (complete or work in progress ?) that's being released by an anonymous auteur (sp) to the obsessive interest of a growing clique of footage heads all over the world. She's also the daughter of an (ex) CIA honcho who seemingly disappeared in 9/11 & has a mother who tries to communicate w/ the dead (her Cayce's named after the Va. "clairvoyant"). Pattern Recognition operates explicitly in several arenas at once: 1. Cayce trying out new "brand" ids - seeing if they'll work or not; 2. attempting to find a pattern in the "footage" - where does it come from, what does it mean, who's responsible; 3. what's going on w/ the global economic system; 4. what happened to her dad. Being a responsible author, Gibson naturally ties all these threads together in a novel fraught w/ betrayal, dubious relationship, virtual friendships which solidify in the "real" world and hope.anyway..i liked it.bob"the poundin' of the drums, our pride & disgrace" barry mcguire/ pf sloane(?)