Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson

After I read Neuromancer, somewhere in the late 80s, I started stocking up on William Gibson books. The insanely complex, well-constructed world of Neuromancer and its fast paced geeky action had left a big impression on me, but, for some strange reason, I never got around to reading the books that I collected. In part, I think it was because Gibson's style is to hit the ground running and hope that you'll catch up with him somehow. He throws you into the story and it is up to you to figure out what his terminology means and what the context of the story is. It's a literary device that worked mysteriously well in Neuromancer, but one with which it took me a while to get comfortable. Even though I had enjoyed the ride immensely, it seemed that I was hesitant to do it again. Then again, there was also a strange feeling that I had read someone magnum opus and reading something else by the author smacked of a heresy of some king.

Pattern Recognition was plucked out of a bargain bin somewhere and sat in my shelf for several years until I decided to take the plunge. When I started to read it, I had a nearly physiological reaction to the writing style that I had enjoyed so much the first time. My heart would start racing as I felt excited to be reading Gibson again. Like the character in this story, who recited a mantra to get over moments of irrational reaction to something seemingly common place, I almost started saying "he took a duck in the face..." under my breath. I got head first into the story set in present day and couldn't wait to finish.

A mysterious series of short film segments, which is distributed on the web by a social network, is the heart of the story. Cayce Pollard, a woman with a talent to predict how products and logos are accepted by the market, is a enthusiast of these films, a "footage head". Spurred by her money hungry magnate, Hubertus Bigend, Cayce sets out to investigate who creates the footage and why. In the process, she visits London, Tokyo, and Moskow, attempting to unveil a sequence of small mysteries that leave the reader guessing at the turn of every page. The action is fast and rife with intrigue. The writing is peppered with socio-cultural evaluation and criticism. Ultimately, this is a fun book that sometimes feel like thrill ride and sometimes slows down to let you breathe and to reason out the pieces of the puzzle you are fed. Gibson is still the man.