Pattern Recognition is a novel by the American-Canadian science fiction writer William Gibson published in 2003. Set in August and September 2002, the story follows Cayce Pollard, a 32-year-old marketing consultant who has a psychological sensitivity to corporate symbols. The action takes place in London, Tokyo, and Moscow as Cayce judges the effectiveness of a proposed corporate symbol and is hired to find the creators of film clips anonymously posted to the internet.
The novel's central theme examines the human desire to detect patterns or meaning, and the risks of finding patterns in meaningless data. Other themes include methods of interpretation of history, cultural familiarity with brand names, and tensions between art and commercialization. The September 11, 2001, attacks are used as a motif representing the transition to the new century. Critics have noted that Pattern Recognition was influenced by Thomas Pynchon's postmodern detective story The Crying of Lot 49.
Pattern Recognition was Gibson's eighth novel and his first to be set in the contemporary world. Like his previous works, it has been classified as a science fiction and postmodern novel, with the action unfolding along a thriller plot line. Critics approved of the writing but found the plot unoriginal and some of the language distracting. The book peaked at number four on the New York Times Best Seller list, was nominated for the 2003 British Science Fiction Association Award, and was shortlisted for the 2004 Arthur C. Clarke Award and Locus Awards.
Background Before writing Pattern Recognition, the author, William Gibson, published seven novels (one co-written) and numerous short stories beginning in 1977. His previous novel, All Tomorrow's Parties, was published in October 1999 as the conclusion of the Bridge trilogy. Pattern Recognition was written between 2001 and 2002 while Gibson was living in Vancouver, British Columbia and released in February 2003. Pattern Recognition was originally intended to be a stand-alone novel, but afterwards Gibson wrote Spook Country and Zero History which take place in the same universe and use some of the same characters.
Gibson traveled to Tokyo in 2001 to prepare for this new novel, which takes place in London, Moscow, and Tokyo. He did not travel to London or Moscow but used interviews with friends and internet resources for research. In September 2001 Gibson had written about 100 pages but was struggling to finish. He stopped writing after watching the September 11, 2001 attacks on television and "realized [the novel] had become a story that took place in an alternate time track, in which Sept. 11 hadn't happened". He considered abandoning the novel but a few weeks later re-wrote portions to use the attacks as a motivating factor for the distress the main character feels. In a 2003 interview he said, "There I was, in the winter of 2001, with no idea what the summer of 2002 was going to be like. ... In the original post-9/11 draft, London felt more like London is feeling right now. Cayce keeps seeing trucks full of soldiers. But I took that out, because as it got closer to the time, it wasn't actually happening."
Plot summary Advertising consultant Cayce Pollard, who reacts to logos and advertising as if to an allergen, arrives in London in August 2002. She is working on a contract with the marketing firm Blue Ant to judge the effectiveness of a proposed corporate logo for a shoe company. During the presentation, graphic designer Dorotea Benedetti becomes hostile towards Cayce as she rejects the first proposal. After dinner with some Blue Ant employees, the company founder Hubertus Bigend offers Cayce a new contract: to uncover who is responsible for distributing a series of anonymous, artistic film clips via the internet. Cayce had been following the film clips and participating in an online discussion forum theorizing on the clips' meaning, setting, and other aspects. Wary of corrupting the artistic process and mystery of the clips, she reluctantly accepts. Cayce is not entirely comfortable with Ivy's chat group called "Fetish:Footage:Forum" (or F:F:F), as shown by the following excerpt:
A friend from the discussion group, who uses the handle Parkaboy, privately emails her saying a friend of a friend has discovered an encrypted watermark on one clip. They concoct a fake persona, a young woman named Keiko, to seduce the Japanese man who knows the watermark code. Cayce, along with an American computer security specialist, Boone Chu, hired to assist her, travels to Tokyo to meet the man and retrieve the watermark code. Two men attempt to steal the code but Cayce escapes and travels back to London. Boone travels to Columbus, Ohio to investigate the company that he believes created the watermark. Meanwhile, Blue Ant hires Dorotea who reveals that she was previously employed by a Russian lawyer whose clients have been investigating Cayce. The clients wanted Cayce to refuse the job of tracking the film clips and it was Dorotea's responsibility to ensure this.
Through a completely random encounter Cayce meets Voytek Biroshak and Ngemi, the former an artist using old ZX81 microcomputers as a sculpture medium, the latter a collector of rare technology (he mentions purchasing Stephen King's word processor, for example). Another collector, and sometime 'friend' of Ngemi's, Hobbs Baranov, is a retired cryptographer and mathematician with connections in the American National Security Agency. Cayce strikes a deal with him: she buys a Curta calculator for him and he finds the email address to which the watermark code was sent. Using this email address Cayce makes contact with Stella Volkova whose sister Nora is the maker of the film clips.
Cayce flies to Moscow to meet Stella in person and watch Nora work. Nora is brain damaged from an assassination attempt and can only express herself through film. At her hotel, Cayce is intercepted and drugged by Dorotea and wakes up in a mysterious prison facility. Cayce escapes; exhausted, disoriented and lost, she nearly collapses as Parkaboy, who upon Cayce's request was flown to Moscow, retrieves her and brings her to the prison where the film is processed. There Hubertus, Stella and Nora's uncle Andrei, and the latter's security employees are waiting for her. Over dinner with Cayce, the Russians reveal that they have been spying on her since she posted to a discussion forum speculating that the clips may be controlled by the Russian Mafia. They had let her track the clips to expose any security breaches in their distribution network. The Russians surrender all the information they had collected on her father's disappearance and the book ends with Cayce coming to terms with his absence while in Paris with Parkaboy, whose real name is Peter Gilbert.
Characters Cayce Pollard – A 32-year-old woman who lives in New York City. She pronounces her given name "Case" although her parents named her after Edgar Cayce. She uses her interest in marketing trends and fads, and her psychological sensitivity to logos and advertising, in her work as an advertising consultant. Her sensitivity becomes a phobia towards older corporate mascots, especially the Michelin Man. She wears only black, gray or white, usually Fruit of the Loom shrunken cotton T-shirts (all tags removed) with Levis jeans (with the trademarks filed off the buttons) or skirts, tights, boots, as well as a black Buzz Rickson MA-1 bomber jacket. (Buzz Rickson did not produce the MA-1 in black, but due to demand created by the novel, began offering a "William Gibson collection" black MA-1.Gibson, "Buzz in Black") Hubertus Bigend – The 35-year-old founder of advertising agency Blue Ant. He was born in Belgium but educated at a British boarding school and at Harvard University. Dorotea Benedetti – The representative of the graphic design company. She has a background in industrial espionage and is secretly hired to encourage Cayce to leave London without accepting Bigend's offer to track the film clips. Bernard Stonestreet – A representative of the advertising agency Blue Ant. "Parkaboy"/Peter Gilbert – Cayce's friend from the online discussion forum. He lives in Chicago and describes himself as a "middle-aged white guy since 1967". Boone Chu – A Chinese-American living in Washington state, but raised in Oklahoma. He had a failed start-up company specializing in security. He is hired to assist Cayce in the search for the maker of the footage. Voytek Biroshak – A blond man born in Poland and raised in Russia. He acquires and sells antique calculators to raise funds for an exhibition on Sinclair ZX81 computers. Damien Pease – A 30-year-old friend of Cayce whose flat she stays at while in London. He is a video director shooting a documentary on WWII battleground excavation near Stalingrad. Hobbs Baranov – A former NSA cryptographer and mathematician. He collects antique calculators and sells intelligence as he squats near Poole with a Gypsy group. – Creator of website, discussion group, and chatroom Fetish:Footage:Forum that Cayce frequents. The website's intention is to discuss the anonymous film postings.
Style and story elements The novel uses a third-person narrative in the present tense with a somber tone reminiscent of a "low-level post-apocalypticism". Cayce's memories of the September 11, 2001 attacks, which briefly use the future tense, are told by Gibson as "a Benjaminian seed of time", as one reviewer calls it, because of the monistic and lyrical descriptions of Cayce's relationship to objects with the attacks in the background.. Two neologisms appear in the novel: gender-bait and mirror-world. Gibson created the term mirror-world to acknowledge a locational-specific distinction in a manufactured object that emerged from a parallel development process, for example opposite-side driving or varied electrical outlets. Gender-bait refers to a male posing as a female online to elicit positive responses. The term coolhunter, not coined by Gibson but used in the marketing industry for several years, is used to describe Cayce's profession of identifying the roots of emerging trends..
The September 11, 2001 attacks are used as a motif representing a break with the past with Cayce's father, who disappears during the attacks, as the personification of the 20th century. Gibson viewed the attacks as a nodal point after which "nothing is really the same". One reviewer commented that in "Gibson's view, 9-11 was the end of history; after it we are without a history, careening toward an unknown future without the benefit of a past—our lives before 9-11 are now irrelevant." Cayce's search for her father and Damien's excavation of the German bomber symbolize the historicist search for a method to interpret people's actions in the past. Coming to terms with her father's disappearance may be interpreted as a requiem for those lost to the 20th century, something that may have been influenced by Gibson coming to terms with the loss of his own father.