Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Berkley Trade
Manufacturer: Berkley Trade
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 368
Printing Date: February 03, 2004
Publishing house: Berkley Trade
Sale Popularity Level: 254267
Studio: Berkley Trade
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Product Description:
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 hacked, she realizes there's more to this project than she had expected.
Still, Cayce is her father's daughter, and the danger makes her stubborn. Win Pollard, ex-security expert, probably ex-CIA, took a taxi in the direction of the World Trade Center on September 11 one year ago, and is presumed dead. Win taught Cayce a bit about the way agents work. She is still numb at his loss, and, as much for him as for any other reason, she refuses to give up this newly weird job, which will take her to Tokyo and on to Russia. With help and betrayal from equally unlikely quarters, Cayce will follow the trail of the mysterious film to its source, and in the process will learn something about her father's life and death.
Amazon.com Review:
The very first of William Gibson's usually futuristic novels to be set in the present, Pattern Recognition is a masterful snapshot of modern consumer culture and hipster esoterica. Set in London, Tokyo, and Moscow, Pattern Recognition takes the reader on a tour of a global village inhabited by power-hungry marketeers, industrial saboteurs, high-end hackers, Russian mob bosses, Internet fan-boys, techno archeologists, washed-out spies, cultural documentarians, and our heroine Cayce Pollard--a soothsaying 'cool hunter' with an allergy to brand names.
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
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Rated by buyers 
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You walk with the protagonist as she tries to figure out who her mysterious employer is and what her real assignment might be; you are variously helped and threatened--sometimes by the same people--and things are rarely only what they appear to be.
More than that, this young woman has a personality, some history, and definite "emotional baggage"--this last prominently figuring in one of the most moving 9/11 commentaries I have read (and totally unexpected, though utterly appropriate, in this book).
I regard this as a mystery novel, though it is written in the science-fiction genre. I thoroughly enjoyed the story as it was carried along by Gibson's fluent and fluid writing. Excellent work, moving and ingenious.
Rated by buyers 
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Gibson has a sharp eye for hipster culture; that gets a through work out in Pattern Recognition. His penchant for vivid descriptions of the places were the latest opinion makers hang out is a key part of this book too. Cayce Pollard, the main character has an allergy to brands, or at least fashion brands, it is referenced frequently. It is key to the particular talent that the main character has. She is a "cool-hunter" or trend spotter, so her sensitivity to brands is important. Gibson devotes a lot of time to brands and Cayce's reactions to them. In the end the story does not revolve around products but a mysterious movie being released on the Internet in fragments, with out any attribution.
The story is how Cayce hunts down the origin of those fragments. We learn who was behind the mysterious movies and we learn why they were released. However the effort put into the distribution and the convoluted way Cayce was brought into it does not really add up. I still don't know why anyone cares about the movie fragments. Much of the story is left unresolved, or if it was resolved I could not follow it.
The business that hires Cayce to find the fragments is a sort of mysterious distributed business. Though what their real role is, and the role of the Russian mafia who appear at the end is not really cleared up.
In the end Cayce makes peace with family, but that is hardly related to the story. Gibson provides vivid descriptions of brands and styles and their role as tribal markings. In the end I was left disappointed, I am not sure what Gibson was getting at.
Rated by buyers -
In the midst of other deadlines, I read this book in a little over 24 hours. Gibson shows such great sensitivity to contemporary cultures and technologies, and the implications for personality and human consciousness. I've spent several years in Tokyo, and quite a bit of time in London and NY, and now I want to go to Moscow, so I can verify that his picture of that city is as illuminating as of the cities I know. And all the stuff about fashion, and its great power, and viral phenomena on the Net (Rick Astley, anyone?). It's not exactly realistic, but extremely authentic.
Rated by buyers 
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This is the very first book I read by William Gibson and I thought it was entertaining, gripping, but light. And disappointingly not science fiction in any possible use of the term. Then I read Neuromancer, which as advertised is a great creative prediction of a cyberworld that doesn't entirely hang together but is immensely enjoyable. Pattern Recognition, set beside Neuromancer, is a fine airport book.
Rated by buyers 
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This book has been around my office, and not in a good way. One person in the office bought it because he is a fan of William Gibson's other works. He wasn't able to finish the very first 20 pages. Feeling he might have been bias for some reason, he passed it on to a co-worker, not revealing any of his feelings for the book in an endeavor to get an untainted reaction. That co-worker finished 21 pages before giving up. It was then passed on to me. I finished three. This book is horrific for anyone who has any sense of grammar at all. The fragmented sentences, insane use of commas, and mundane detail destroy any interest I could have possibly developed for the characters themselves. I see reviews critiquing the plot, but I must admit, I could not see the plot through all of the horrible writing. How this book made it past a publisher, I have no idea.
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