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Neuromanced Again
Feb. 11th, 2004 12:52 amMy beloved came back from buying groceries today, and made a side trip to the bookstore. Among the UFO conspiracy paperbacks and Greene's FABRIC OF THE COSMOS was William Gibson's latest, PATTERN RECOGNITION.
I had fallen in love several years ago with Gibson's NEUROMANCER, and had tried to recapture that love affair by reading COUNT ZERO and IDORU, but it wasn't the same.
Now, however, I can only set down PATTERN RECOGNITION long enough to write here that I'm in love again. Amazingly, this story feels like cutting-edge science fiction even though it's set in a slightly, deliberately outdated present of insdustrial espionage, fangeek culture, guerilla PR, and artificial chic.
The prose style of the first chapter is a jarringly hip name-dropping catalogue of current mass-consumer culture that may possibly make no sense to someone reading it 20 years from now. And the plot doesn't get cranking until chapter 7.
I have no idea why a protagonist's with a phobia of the Michelin Man is so compelling, but I can totally identify with her "allergy" to trademarks and corporate branding.
This story is a mystery without a murder (who made those ultra-hip bits of film footage uploaded to the 'Net?), and the gumshoe-investigator schtick is eliminated in favor of glib, sarcastic commentary on pop culture.
Delicious, like a cup of honey-flavored mandarin orange chai served in a coffee house older than the combined ages of your local, multiple Starbucks.
I had fallen in love several years ago with Gibson's NEUROMANCER, and had tried to recapture that love affair by reading COUNT ZERO and IDORU, but it wasn't the same.
Now, however, I can only set down PATTERN RECOGNITION long enough to write here that I'm in love again. Amazingly, this story feels like cutting-edge science fiction even though it's set in a slightly, deliberately outdated present of insdustrial espionage, fangeek culture, guerilla PR, and artificial chic.
The prose style of the first chapter is a jarringly hip name-dropping catalogue of current mass-consumer culture that may possibly make no sense to someone reading it 20 years from now. And the plot doesn't get cranking until chapter 7.
I have no idea why a protagonist's with a phobia of the Michelin Man is so compelling, but I can totally identify with her "allergy" to trademarks and corporate branding.
This story is a mystery without a murder (who made those ultra-hip bits of film footage uploaded to the 'Net?), and the gumshoe-investigator schtick is eliminated in favor of glib, sarcastic commentary on pop culture.
Delicious, like a cup of honey-flavored mandarin orange chai served in a coffee house older than the combined ages of your local, multiple Starbucks.
