I just started reading William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. After the first couple of chapters, it looks like this book will be a fun read. There is a character who has a type of skill for intuitive recognition of what, in the marketing industry, will work or not as a logo or style. This character is also involved in some kind of an underground web-based video movment. Every so often, mysterious “footage” appears on the web, and the goal is to figure out what it means or who and why it is being released. Apparently, the character’s recognition skill does not work in this situation. So, there seems to be a theme of confronting mystery and the alienation sustaining ritualistic behaviour that develops in the course of the long, drawn-out process of trying to figure things out. As of now, I’ve reached the point where the main character, after just engaging in her ritualistic practice of viewing new footage, faces her utter existential lonliness….
As a non-frequent reader of sci-fi, I’m beginning to find this story enjoyable due to it’s strong connection to contemporary themes pertaining to technology, alienation, and aesthetics.
