Gibson - Pattern Recognition.nfo
General Information
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Title: Pattern Recognition
Author: William Gibson
Read By: Shelley Frasier
Copyright: 2002
Audiobook Copyright: 2002
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Tantor
Abridged: No
Original Media Information
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Media: CD
Number: 9
Condition: New
File Information
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Number of MP3s: 218
Total Duration: 10:20:37
Total MP3 Size: 286.63
Ripped By: JT
Ripped With: Exact Audio Copy
Encoded With: LAME 3.96
Encoded At: CBR 64 kbit/s 44100 Hz Mono
ID3 Tags: Set, v2.3
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Book Description
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Amazon.com
The 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
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
From Publishers Weekly
Gibson, known as the "patron saint of cyberpunk lit," has made his reputation
with futuristic tales. Though his new novel is set in the present, baroque
descriptions of everyday articles and menacing anthropomorphic treatment
of the Internet and sister technology give it a sci-fi feel. Cayce Pollard,
a market researcher with razor-sharp intuition, makes big bucks by evaluating
potential products and advertising campaigns. In London, she stays in
the trendy digs of documentary filmmaker friend Damien (away on assignment),
whom she e-mails frequently. When Cayce brusquely rejects the new logo
of advertising mogul Hubertus Bigend, she earns his respect and a big
check but makes an enemy of his graphic designer, vindictive Dorotea
Benedetti. Hubertus later hires Cayce to ferret out the origin of a
series of sensual film clips appearing guerrilla style on computers
all over the world and attracting a growing cult following. Cayce treats
this as a standard job until somebody breaks into Damien's flat and
hacks into her computer. Suddenly every casual encounter carries undertones
of danger. Her investigative trail takes her to Tokyo and Russia and
through a rogue's gallery of iconoclastic Web-heads. Casting a further
shadow is the memory of her father, Win, a security expert (probably
CIA) missing and presumed dead in the World Trade Center disaster of
exactly a year earlier. For complicated reasons even she doesn't understand,
she connects her current dilemma with her father's tragedy and follows
the trail with the fervor of a personal vendetta. Gibson's brisk, kinetic
style and incisive observations should keep the reader entertained even
when Cayce's quest begins to lose urgency. Gibson's best book since
Mona Lisa Overdrive should satisfy his hardcore fans while winning plenty
of new ones.
From School Library Journal
Cayce Pollard is a well-paid professional marketer. She and her friends-filmmak-
ers, dealers in electronic esoterica, designers, and hackers-live on
the cutting edge of a highly technological, "post-geographic" world,
where the manipulation of cultural trends can bring great power. When
she is employed to discover the source of "the Footage," a mysterious
film that has been appearing in bits and pieces on the Web and gathering
a worldwide underground following, her survival is at stake. In her
search for the auteur, she outwits corporate spies, terrorists, and
mobsters in London, Tokyo, Moscow, and New York; struggles with ethical
issues; and even delves into the mystery of her father's disappearance
on September 11, 2001. Some readers might feel that this novel demands
too much of them-the prose is witty, each page challenges with provocative
observations, and there are a lot of pieces to the puzzle. But those
who enjoyed Gibson's earlier work, or the writing of Neal Stephenson
or Bruce Sterling, should relish this headlong race through an unsettling
but recognizable world to a surprisingly humane conclusion. Christine
C. Menefee, Fairfax County Public Library
From Booklist
A precursor to Colin Laney, the "netrunner" of Gibson's sf novels, Idoru
(1996) and All Tomorrow's Parties (1999), Cayce (pronounced "Case")
Pollard is a coolhunter, "a 'sensitive' of some kind, a dowser in the
world of global marketing," able to recognize trends (i.e., patterns)
before anyone else--only she operates in the post-9/11 world of today.
Hired by the rich and toothsome Hubertus Bigend to pass judgment on
a new logo for a popular footwear product, a jetlagged Pollard finds
herself in London on business. A self-proclaimed footagehead, named
for the group of hobbyists obsessed with the mysterious release of segments
of footage on the Internet, Pollard is subsequently hired by Bigend
to use her talents to uncover the source of the footage, a job that
ultimately sends her to meet a socially inept hacker in Tokyo, a creepy
former NSA agent in Bournemouth, and, inevitably, gets her involved
with the Russian Mafia and the new oligarchs in Moscow. Pollard's acute
talents are compromised by her grief over the recent disappearance of
her father, an ex-security agent, missing since 9/11, and her "trademark
phobias" (she is allergic to Tommy Hilfiger and the Michelin Man). Gibson's
usual themes are still intact--globalism, constant surveillance, paranoia,
and pattern recognition--only with the added presence of real-world
elements (pilates, Google, Bibendum, Echelon, Buzz Rickson's). With
incredibly evocative prose, Gibson masterfully captures the essence
of a specific time and place and the often chaotic sense of disorientation
experienced while globe hopping ("soul delay," as Pollard calls it,
referring to the time it takes for the soul to catch up to the body).
Gibson fans will not be disappointed. Benjamin Segedin
Book 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.
About the Author
As the author of Neuromancer, William Gibson is credited with having
coined the term "cyberspace" and envisioned the Internet-and its effects
on daily life-before any such things existed. Many of his descriptions
and metaphors have entered the culture as images of human relationships
in the "wired" age. This is his first novel set firmly in the present.-
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