Pattern Recognition by William GibsonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
The title says it all: Pattern Recognition. The human brain is a pattern seeking processor. It's one of our great talents and it can also lead us into weird places. It's this tendency that allows us to see the Virgin Mary's face on a piece of toast, as we seem to be strongly programmed to see faces in things. The problem is that some things may just be coincidences and not really part of whatever narrative we're creating to make sense of the information around us. How can you sort out the actual from the accidental? Too much pattern seeking leads to paranoia, perhaps explaining the many conspiracy hounds out there, obsessing over non-existent plots and cabals.
Cayce Pollard is an interesting character. She can't abide advertising logos—Tommy Hilfiger can make her vomit, the Michelin Man can send her into a full blown panic attack. This makes her a discriminating evaluator of marketing plans and she is known as a “cool seeker.” Her father disappeared during the events of 9/11, her mother is part of some rather hippie-ish group who are busy listening to blank tapes, extracting “voices from the Other Side.” Her father is a former security expert during the Cold War, leading me to wonder if he had disappeared on purpose (me looking for meaning where one may not exist). And obviously her mother is looking for another kind of meaning, rather like Victorian spiritualists. Cayce is named after Edgar Cayce, the Sleeping Prophet, which seems meaningful, but is it really? I found myself questioning all the connections that I would usually expect to create a structure to hang the book on. Gibson seems to be having fun, seeding the novel with coincidences and synchronicities, leaving it up to the reader to sort the noise from the message.
I also enjoyed Gibson's sense of humour—one man whose ex-girlfriend referred to him as a Lombard. Not an Italian from Lombardy--it's an acronym: loads of money but a real dickhead. I was amused by Cayce's calm-down mantra (about a pilot whose cockpit was bombarded by birds and “he took a duck to the face at 350 knots.”). Why that phrase would be calming is one of the mysteries of human psychology.
There are two more Blue Ant books, but this one ends satisfactorily (at least for me) so I doubt that I will continue on. My TBR is already groaning!
Book number 424 of my Science Fiction & Fantasy Reading Project.
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