Pattern Recognition: A gripping spy thriller from the bestselling author of Neuromancer (Blue Ant) - Softcover

Gibson, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241953537 ISBN 13: 9780241953532

Publisher: Penguin, 2011

Synopsis

Pattern Recognition - a pulsating techno-thriller by William Gibson, bestselling author of Neuromancer

Cayce Pollard has been flown to London. She's a 'coolhunter' - her services for hire to global corporations desperate for certainty in a capricious and uncertain world. Now she's been offered a special project: track down the makers of the addictive online film that's lighting up the 'net. Hunting the source will take her to Tokyo and Moscow and put her in the sights of Japanese computer crazies and Russian Mafia men. She's up against those who want to control the film, to own it - who figure breaking the law is just another business strategy.

The kind of people who relish turning the hunter into the hunted . . .

William Gibson is a prophet and a satirist, a black comedian and an outstanding architect of cool. Readers of Neal Stephenson, Ray Bradbury and Iain M. Banks will love this book. Pattern Recognition is the first novel in the Blue Ant trilogy - read Spook Country and Zero History for more.

'A big novel, full of bold ideas . . . races along like an expert thriller' GQ

'Dangerously hip. Its dialogue and characterization will amaze you. A wonderfully detailed, reckless journey of espionage and lies' USA Today

'A compelling, humane story with a sympathetic heroine searching for meaning and consolation in a post-everything world' Daily Telegraph

Idoru is a gripping techno-thriller by William Gibson, bestselling author of Neuromancer

'Fast, witty and cleverly politicized' Guardian

About this title

Review

In Pattern Recognition, William Gibson changes focus from the not-too-distant future of his slick, influential SF novels to a netwise vision of strangeness just hours or minutes from the present.

Talented, vulnerable heroine Cayce Pollard is an adept "coolhunter" with an intuitive gift for telling whether any image or logo will be a commercial flop. The downside is her tortured sensitivity--like an allergic reaction--to logo overexposure. She can just about bear to fly BA, but not cross-promoted Virgin...

When she's consulted by top ad agency Blue Ant and gives the thumbs-down to their designer's latest concept, the edgy urban paranoia begins. A porn-site URL that she never accessed appears in her browser history, and the phone's redial button goes somewhere it shouldn't. The same faces appear around her as she flits between continents. Small world. Worryingly small.

As new vistas open in viral marketing and stealth publicity, the big admen are all too interested in Cayce's private hobby: mystery fragments of haunting movie footage, released anonymously on the Web. This unknown "garage Kubrick" auteur has spawned a fascinated, obsessive online cult. Is this a brilliant marketing operation for a still-unknown product, or something with different, dark and painful roots?

Cayce's personal quest, or flight, converges on the source of the Footage, helped and threatened by memorably offbeat characters. In Britain, these include a pettily sadistic woman who seems to know Cayce's most carefully concealed phobias, and an embittered collector of obsolete mechanical calculators made in Liechtenstein. Tokyo: a lovesick Japanese geek whose "otaku" friends find a hidden digital signature in the Footage. Moscow: a strange girl whose uncle is a fabulously wealthy--and dangerously protected--Russian mafioso...

Here's Cayce in a Japanese hotel, showing that wittily lyrical Gibson view of the world and his deft use of brand names:

She uses the remote as demonstrated, drapes drawing quietly aside to reveal a remarkably virtual-looking skyline, a floating jumble of electric Lego, studded with odd shapes you wouldn't see elsewhere, as if you'd need special Tokyo add-ons to build this at home.

This world of glittering surfaces and pulsating data connections is mined with surprises, betrayals, flurries of violence and unexpected allies. This is a very 21st century novel: compulsive reading, and vintage Gibson. --David Langford

Review

A masterful performance. ("Chicago Tribune") One of the first authentic and vital novels of the 21st century. ("Washington Post Book World") Gibson nails the texture of Internet culture. ("New York Tiimes") Completely contemporary...his best book. ("San Francisco Chronicle Book Review") [An] eerie vision of our time. ("New Yorker")

"A masterful performance." --"Chicago Tribune"
"One of the first authentic and vital novels of the 21st century." --"Washington Post Book World"
"Gibson nails the texture of Internet culture." --"New York""Tiimes"
"Completely contemporary...his best book."--" ""San Francisco""Chronicle Book Review"
"[An] eerie vision of our time."--"New Yorker"
"A masterful performance." --Chicago Tribune

"One of the first authentic and vital novels of the 21st century." --Washington Post Book World

"Gibson nails the texture of Internet culture." --New YorkTiimes

"Completely contemporary...his best book."-- San FranciscoChronicle Book Review

"[An] eerie vision of our time."--New Yorker

"A masterful performance." Chicago Tribune

"One of the first authentic and vital novels of the 21st century." Washington Post Book World

"Gibson nails the texture of Internet culture." New YorkTiimes

"Completely contemporary...his best book." San FranciscoChronicle Book Review

"[An] eerie vision of our time." New Yorker"

"A masterful performance." Chicago Tribune

"One of the first authentic and vital novels of the 21st century." Washington Post Book World

"Gibson nails the texture of Internet culture." New YorkTiimes

"Completely contemporary...his best book." San FranciscoChronicle Book Review

"[An] eerie vision of our time." New Yorker

"

"A masterful performance."--Chicago Tribune

"Gibson nails the texture of internet culture: how it feels to be close to someone you know only as a voice in a chat room, or to fret about someone spying on your browser's list of sites visited."--The New York Times

"Completely contemporary...his best book."--San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

"[An] eerie vision of our time."--The New Yorker

"Pattern Recognition races along like an expert thriller, but it rides on a strong current of melancholy, of elegy for the broken and the vanished...Gibson knows he's building on ground zero."--GQ

"So good it defies all the usual superlatives."--The Seattle Times

"It turns out that William Gibson knows as much about the present as he does about the future...a masterful performance from a major novelist who seems to be just now hitting his peak. Welcome to the present, Mr. Gibson."--Chicago Tribune

"Gibson's first novel to take place in the present takes you on a reckless journey of espionage and lies and doesn't promise a safe return...wonderfully chilling...a dangerously hip book."--USA Today

"[Gibson], who invented the future with Neuromancer, shows he's just as skilled at seeing the present."--Entertainment Weekly

"A serious thriller set in the dystopian present...glossy [and] well-paced."--Time

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0241953537
• ISBN 13: 9780241953532
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 368