Book cover

Pattern Recognition is William Gibson's eighth novel, published in 2003. Although set in the immediate past and referring to real-world technology, it's still often considered a work of science fiction. John Clute of Science Fiction Weekly referred to it as "SF for the new century." [1] Image File history File links source: http://images. ... Image File history File links source: http://images. ... Some credit William Gibson with writing the most clear-cut examples of the Science Fiction genre known as cyberpunk, as well as coining the term cyberspace. ... DeFoes Robinson Crusoe, Newspaper edition published in 1719 A novel (from French nouvelle, new) is an extended fictional narrative in prose. ... 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ...

The novel is set during the summer of 2002, primarily in London, New York, Tokyo and Russia. The first major literary work to respond to the events of 9/11, it does so mostly by indirection. An overwhelming, unavoidable fact of daily existence, the disaster is barely mentioned yet its memory pervades everything. The novel's heroine, Cayce Pollard, has a psychological hypersensitivity that causes her to have allergic reactions to brands and corporate logos - which makes her the ideal advertising consultant, as the strength of her reactions indicate the hipness of a pitch or brand. The plot develops as she is drawn into a mystery surrounding snippets of film footage that are placed at random locations on the Internet for their growing base of admirers to find and puzzle over. This mystery dovetails for Pollard with the mystery of what happened to her father on 9/11, who had flown to NYC for unknown reasons the day before and was last seen getting into a taxi in midtown Manhattan at 7 a.m. on the morning of the attacks. In the course of her international travels (both for business and in her pursuit of answers), Pollard is caught up in the ramifying interconnections between all terrorist acts. London is the capital city of the United Kingdom and of England. ... Official language(s) None, English de facto Capital Albany Largest city New York City Area  - Total  - Width  - Length  - % water  - Latitude  - Longitude Ranked 27th 141,205 km² 455 km 530 km 13. ... View of Tokyos Shibuya district Long a symbol of Tokyo, the Nijubashi Bridge at the Imperial Palace. ... The World Trade Center on fire The September 11, 2001 attacks were a series of coordinated terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001. ... Manhattan Borough,highlighted in yellow, lies between the East River and the Hudson River. ...

The book contains a scathing critique of viral marketing. As is characteristic with Gibson novels, Pattern Recognition is replete with neologisms. Some of the most memorable ones are: gender-bait, a male posing as a female online to elicit positive responses. The term cool-hunter seems like a neologism, though it had been in use within the marketing industry for many years, detailed in the 2001 documentary on PBS, The Merchants of Cool. Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that seek to exploit pre-existing social networks to produce exponential increases in brand awareness, through viral processes similar to the spread of an epidemic. ... A neologism is word, term, or phrase which has been recently created (coined) —often to apply to new concepts, or to reshape older terms in newer language form. ... Gender-bait is a term coined by William Gibson in his 2003 novel Pattern Recognition. ...

The novel inspired Sonic Youth to write a song of the same title, which opens with the lyric "I'm a cool hunter making you my way" and appears on their 2004 album, Sonic Nurse. Sonic Youth is a rock group formed in New York City in 1981. ... Sonic Nurse is an album by Sonic Youth, released on June 7th, 2004. ...

The book was first published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 2003, ISBN 0-425-19293-8.

A film adaptation of the book is currently in production, to be directed by Peter Weir. Peter Weir (born August 21, 1944) is an Australian film director. ...

External links

• PR-Otaku: Logging and annotating William Gibson's Pattern Recognition
• William Gibson Books: Pattern Recognition; author's site
• "The Case of the World", by John Clute, Science Fiction Weekly, February 24, 2003

• Pattern Recognition at The Internet Movie Database