Editing Pattern Recognition (novel) (section)

== Reception ==
''Pattern Recognition'' was released on February 3, 2003, as Gibson launched a 15-city tour.<ref name=Lieb/> The novel was featured on the January 19 cover of ''[[The New York Times Book Review]]''. In the American market it peaked at number four on the [[New York Times Best Seller list|''New York Times'' Best Seller list]] for hardcover fiction on February 23 and spent nine weeks on ''USA Today's'' Top 150 Best-Selling Books peaking at number 34.<ref>{{Cite news |url= https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/23/books/bestseller/0223besthardfiction.html |title=Best Sellers: Hardcover Fiction |access-date=2008-01-07|date= February 23, 2003| newspaper=[[The New York Times]]}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |url= http://asp.usatoday.com/life/books/booksdatabase/default.aspx |title=This Week's Top 150 Best Sellers |access-date=2008-01-07 |newspaper=[[USA Today]] |type=Best-Selling Books Database}} Requires navigation to ''Pattern Recognition'' or William Gibson entry.</ref>  In the Canadian market, the novel peaked at number three on ''[[The Globe and Mail]]'s'' best seller list on February 15 in the hardcover fiction category.<ref>{{Cite news |date= 15 February 2003 |title= Hardcover bestsellers |newspaper=[[The Globe and Mail]] |publisher=[[CTVglobemedia]]}}.</ref> The novel was shortlisted for the 2004 [[Arthur C. Clarke Award]] and the [[BSFA award|British Science Fiction Association Award]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.clarkeaward.com/previous-awards/shortlists/ |title=Shortlists |access-date=2012-04-08 |publisher=The Arthur C Clarke Award |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130106124621/http://www.clarkeaward.com/previous-awards/shortlists/ |archive-date=2013-01-06 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.locusmag.com/SFAwards/Db/Bsfa2004.html |title=2004 British Science Fiction Association Awards |access-date=2008-01-09 |publisher=Locus Publications |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080112201622/http://www.locusmag.com/SFAwards/Db/Bsfa2004.html |archive-date=2008-01-12 }}</ref>

Gibson's writing was positively received by science fiction writers [[Dennis Danvers]], [[Candas Jane Dorsey]], and [[Rudy Rucker]].<ref name=Danvers/><ref name=Rucker/><ref name=Dorsey>{{cite web |url= http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk/review/index.cfm?article=41 |title= Pattern Recognition by William Gibson |access-date= 2007-12-31 |first= Candas Jane |last= Dorsey |author-link= Candas Jane Dorsey |date= 11 February 2003 |publisher= trAce Online Writing Centre |url-status= dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20070818184207/http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk/review/index.cfm?article=41 |archive-date= 18 August 2007 }}</ref> Rucker has written: "[w]ith a poet's touch, he tiles words into wonderful mosaics"<ref name=Rucker/> and Danvers wrote that "no sentence has a subject if it can do without one".<ref name=Danvers/> One critic found the prose to be as "hard and compact as glacier ice"<ref name=Lim/> and another that it "gives us sharply observed small moments inscribed with crystalline clarity".<ref name=Bolhafner>{{cite news|first=J. Stephen |last=Bolhafner |title=Pattern Recognition |publisher=[[St. Louis Post-Dispatch]] |date=April 20, 2003 |url=https://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/entertainment/reviews.nsf/Entertainment/Book/987CFC496D01B9D486256D0C005A05FB?OpenDocument&Headline=This+science+fiction+novel+is+all+too+real |archive-url=https://archive.today/20071205223637/http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/entertainment/reviews.nsf/Entertainment/Books/987CFC496D01B9D486256D0C005A05FB?OpenDocument&Headline=This+science+fiction+novel+is+all+too+real |archive-date=5 December 2007 |access-date=2009-03-15 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Gibson's descriptions of interiors and of the built environments of Tokyo, Russia and London were singled out as impressive,<ref name=Jameson/><ref name=FT/><ref name=Robinson>{{cite web |url= http://www.mostlyfiction.com/scifi/gibson.htm#pattern |title= ''Pattern Recognition'' |access-date= 2007-12-29 |first= Bill |last= Robinson|date= 16 March 2003 |publisher= MostlyFiction.com}}</ref> and ''[[The Village Voice]]'''s review remarked that "Gibson expertly replicates the biosphere of a discussion board: the coffee-shop intimacy, the fishbowl paranoia, the splintering factions, the inevitable flame war".<ref name=Lim/> Lisa Zeidner of ''[[The New York Times Book Review]]'' elaborated: <blockquote>As usual, Gibson's prose is ... corpuscular, crenelated. His sentences slide from silk to steel, and take tonal joy rides from the ironic to the earnest. But he never gets lost in the language, as he sometimes has in the past. Structurally, this may be his most confident novel. The secondary characters and their subplots are more fully developed, right down to their personal e-mail styles. Without any metafictional grandstanding, Gibson nails the texture of Internet culture: how it feels to be close to someone you know only as a voice in a chat room, or to fret about someone spying on your browser's list of sites visited.<ref name=Zeidner/></blockquote> Filled with name-dropping of businesses and products, such as [[MUJI]], [[Hotmail]], [[iBook]], [[Netscape (web browser)|Netscape]], and [[Power Mac G4|G4]], the language of the novel was judged by one critic to be "awkward in its effort to appear "cool"&nbsp;"<ref>{{cite news |first=Adam |last=Dunn |title=The Cyberpunk Arrives at the Present |publisher=[[CNN.com]] |date=February 4, 2003 |url = http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/books/02/04/william.gibson/ |access-date=2007-11-27}}</ref> while other critics have found it overdone and feared it would quickly date the novel.<ref name=Wagner/><ref name=Filippo/> The ''[[Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]]'' review commented that the "constant, unadulterated "hipster-technocrat, cyber-MTV" lingo [is] overdone and inappropriate"<ref name=Jolis>{{cite news |first=Anne |last=Jolis |title='Pattern Recognition' by William Gibson |publisher=[[Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]] |date=March 16, 2003 |url = http://www.post-gazette.com/books/reviews/20030316gibson0316fnp5.asp |access-date=2007-11-27}}</ref> On the technology, [[Cory Doctorow]] found Gibson's use of [[Watermark (data file)|watermarks]] and [[keystroke logging]] to be hollow and has noted that "Gibson is no technologist, he's an accomplished and insightful [[social critic]] ... and he treats these items from the real world as metaphor. But ... Gibson's metaphorical treatment of these technologies will date this very fine book".<ref name=Doctorow>{{cite web |url= http://www.mindjack.com/books/gibsonpr.html |title= Just Not Evenly Distributed |access-date= 2007-12-29 |first= Cory |last= Doctorow |author-link=Cory Doctorow |date= 24 February 2003 |publisher= Mindjack}}</ref>

Some critics found the plot to be a conventional "unravel-the-secret"<ref name=Wagner/> and "woman on a quest"<ref name=Danvers/> thriller.<ref name=Zeidner/> [[Toby Litt]] wrote that "[j]udged just as a thriller, ''Pattern Recognition'' takes too long to kickstart, gives its big secrets away before it should and never puts the heroine in believable peril".<ref name=Litt/> The conclusion, called "unnecessarily pat"<ref name=Gross>{{cite news |first=Samantha |last=Gross |title=It's Back to the Present in William Gibson's New Thriller |publisher=[[The Associated Press]] |date=April 6, 2003 |url=http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_127152.html |access-date=2007-12-28 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090203085209/http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_127152.html |archive-date=February 3, 2009 }}</ref> by one critic, was compared by Litt with the "ultimate fantasy ending of 1980s movies – the heroine has lucked out without selling out, has kept her integrity but still ended up filthy rich."<ref name=Litt/> The review in the ''[[Library Journal]]'' called the novel a "melodrama of beset geekdom" that "may well reveal the emptiness at the core of Gibson's other fiction", but recommended it for all libraries due to the author's popularity.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Berger |first=Roger A. |date=February 2003 |title= Pattern Recognition (Book) |journal=[[Library Journal]] |volume=128 |issue=2 |pages=116}}</ref>