| Pattern Recognition is a science fiction book by William Gibson that’s not science fiction. Everything in the story is current, deployed technology, but Gibson describes it a way that we see how different our culture is becoming because of technology. The main character, Cayce Pollard, is a brand specialist; she’s a contractor that helps corporations determine if their brands will work or not. She also has a very different way of observing the world, and although it took me a while to appreciate it, Gibson’s style of describing everyday occurences through Cayce’s eyes really grew on me. Cayce starts the book out working on a contract in London and is soon traveling around the world to solve the mystery of the “footage”. The “footage” is a series of film clips being released on the web that has gathered a following, almost a cult, that is obsessed with figuring out if the footage is from one film, if the film is finished or not, and who is the producer. It’s a good mystery as well. I enjoyed this book immensely both as a mystery and as a not-so-science-fiction book. |