Editing Pattern Recognition (novel)

{{original research|date=April 2025}}
{{short description|2003 novel by William Gibson}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}}
{{Infobox book | <!--See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Novels-->
| name = Pattern Recognition
| image = Pattern recognition (book cover).jpg
| caption = Original first edition cover
| author = [[William Gibson]]
| cover_artist =
| country = United States
| language = English
| series = [[Hubertus Bigend|Bigend cycle]]
| genre = [[Science fiction]]
| published = February 3, 2003 ([[G. P. Putnam's Sons]])
| media_type = Print ([[hardcover]] and [[paperback]]), [[audiobook]]
| pages = 368 pp (hardcover)
| isbn = 0-399-14986-4
| dewey= 813/.54 21
| congress= PS3557.I2264 P38 2003
| oclc= 49894062
| preceded_by = <!-- As this is the first work the author set in this fictional universe, it has no predecessor -->
| followed_by = [[Spook Country]]
}}

'''''Pattern Recognition''''' is a novel by [[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 seek the creators of film clips anonymously posted to the internet.

The novel's central theme involves the examination of 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 identify influences in ''Pattern Recognition'' from [[Thomas Pynchon]]'s postmodern detective story ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]''.

''Pattern Recognition'' is Gibson's eighth novel and his first one to be set in the contemporary world.  Like his previous work, it has been classified as a science fiction and [[Postmodern literature|postmodern]] novel, with the action unfolding along a [[Thriller (genre)|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|''New York Times'' Best Seller list]], was nominated for the 2003 [[BSFA award|British Science Fiction Association Award]], and was shortlisted for the 2004 [[Arthur C. Clarke Award]] and [[Locus Award|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 (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]]<ref name=Gill>{{Cite news |last=Gill |first=Alexandra |date=February 8, 2003 |title=Back in the here and now |newspaper=[[The Globe and Mail]] |place= [[Toronto]] |pages=R19}}</ref> and released in February 2003.  ''Pattern Recognition'' was originally intended to be a stand-alone novel,<ref name=Graham/> 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.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Gibson |first=William |date=September 2001 |title=My Own Private Tokyo |newspaper=[[Wired (magazine)|Wired]] |volume=9 |issue =9 |url=https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.09/gibson.html |access-date=2008-01-06}}</ref> He did not travel to London or Moscow but used interviews with friends and internet resources for research.<ref name=Lim2>{{Cite news |last=Lim |first=Dennis |date=12 February 2003 |title=Think Different |newspaper=[[The Village Voice]] |url=http://www.villagevoice.com/books/0307,lim2,41824,10.html |access-date=2007-12-30 |archive-date=2008-01-15 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080115222817/http://www.villagevoice.com/books/0307,lim2,41824,10.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> In September 2001 Gibson had written about 100&nbsp;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 history|alternate time track]], in which Sept. 11 hadn't happened".<ref name=Gill/> 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.<ref name=Graham>{{cite web | author = Gibson, William & Graham, Fiona | author-link= William Gibson |title= Finding Faces in the Clouds | format = author interview | url= https://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2003/04/27/bogibson.xml |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20030728215837/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=%2Farts%2F2003%2F04%2F27%2Fbogibson.xml |url-status= dead |archive-date= July 28, 2003 |work= [[The Daily Telegraph]] |date= April 30, 2003 |access-date= 2007-12-16 }}</ref> 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."<ref name=Gill/>

== 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|Ivy's]] chat group called "Fetish:Footage:Forum" (or F:F:F), as shown by the following excerpt:

{{blockquote|There are perhaps twenty regular posters on F:F:F, and some much larger and uncounted number of [[lurker]]s. And right now there are three people in Chat, but there's no way of knowing exactly who until you are in there, and the chat room she finds not so comforting. It's strange even with friends, like sitting in a pitch-dark cellar conversing with people at a distance of about fifteen feet.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Hi Parkaboy. nt |author=Gibson, William |url=http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/books/pattern.asp#excerpt |publisher=Putnam Adult |date=February 3, 2003 |access-date=2013-05-02 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110928084114/http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/books/pattern.asp#excerpt |archive-date=September 28, 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>}}

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 (data file)|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|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.<ref>Gibson, [https://williamgibsonblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/ "Buzz in Black"]</ref>)
* '''[[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)|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 [[World War II|WWII battleground]] excavation near [[Stalingrad]].
* '''Hobbs Baranov''' – A former [[National Security Agency|NSA]] [[Cryptography|cryptographer]] and [[mathematician]]. He collects antique calculators and sells [[Intelligence (information gathering)|intelligence]] as he squats near [[Poole]] with a [[Romani people|Gypsy]] group.
* '''{{vanchor|Ivy}}''' – 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 ==
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{{original research|section|date=April 2025}}
The novel uses a [[third-person narrative]] in the present tense with a somber tone reminiscent of a "low-level post-apocalypticism".<ref name = Hollinger/> Cayce's memories of the [[September 11, 2001 attacks]], which briefly use the future tense,<ref name=Smith>{{cite web |title= Pattern Recognition by William Gibson |url= http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/patternrecognition.htm |access-date= 2007-12-15 |first= Jeremy |last=Smith |date=21 February 2004 |publisher= infinity plus}}</ref> are told by Gibson as "a [[Walter Benjamin|Benjaminian]] seed of time", as one reviewer calls it,<!--THIS CITATION ONLY COVERS THE BENJAMINIAN QUOTE, OTHERWISE MAKING NO REFERENCE TO MONISTIC, LYRICAL DESCRIPTION, WHICH IS ALL WP OR AND EDITORIALISING.--><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Taylor |first=Paul |year=2006 |title=Pattern Recognition in Fast Capitalism: Calling Literary Time on the Theorists of Flux |journal=Fast Capitalism |volume=2 |issue=1 |pages=47–60 |doi=10.32855/fcapital.200601.005 |url= http://www.uta.edu/huma/agger/fastcapitalism/2_1/taylor.htm |access-date=2008-01-01|doi-access=free }}.</ref> because of the [[monistic]] and lyrical descriptions of Cayce's relationship to objects with the attacks in the background.{{or|date=April 2025}}{{cn|date=April 2025}} 

Two [[neologism]]s appear in the novel: ''[[gender-bait]]'' and ''mirror-world''.{{cn|date=April 2025}}<!--Someone beside us needs to state that these terms have never been used before!--> Gibson created the term ''mirror-world''{{says who|date=April 2025}} 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.{{or|date=April 2025}}{{cn|date=April 2025}} ''Gender-bait'' refers{{says who|date=April 2025}} to a male posing as a female online to elicit positive responses.{{or|date=April 2025}}{{cn|date=April 2025}} The term ''[[Coolhunting|coolhunter]]'', not coined by Gibson,{{says who|date=April 2025}} but rather used in the marketing industry for several years,<ref>{{Cite news|last=Gladwell |first=Malcolm |author-link=Malcolm Gladwell |date=17 March 2007 |title=The Coolhunt |magazine=The New Yorker |url=http://www.gladwell.com/1997/1997_03_17_a_cool.htm |access-date=11 January 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071030181246/http://www.gladwell.com/1997/1997_03_17_a_cool.htm |archive-date=30 October 2007 }}.</ref><!--THIS SECOND REFERENCE DOES NOT CONTAIN "COOLHUNT", "PATTERN", OR "GIBSON", BUT RATHER IS JUST THE TOP LEVEL WEB PAGE FOR A GENERAL INVESTIGATION OF MARKETING TOWARD TEENS, I.E., IT IS A WP:OR EDITOR'S ASSOCIATION, IN PLACE OF OUR REPORTING ON PUBLISHED INTERPRETIONS: <ref>{{cite video |people=Rachel Dretzin, Barak Goodman |date=2001-02-27 |title=Frontline: The Merchants of Cool |publisher=[[Public Broadcasting Service]] |url= http://www-c.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/ |access-date=2008-01-09|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20080119140046/http://www-c.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/ |archive-date = January 19, 2008|url-status=dead}}</ref>--> is used to describe Cayce's profession of identifying the roots of emerging trends.{{or|date=April 2025}}{{cn|date=April 2025}}

The September 11, 2001 attacks are used as a [[Motif (narrative)|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".<ref name=Suzuki>{{cite journal | last = Suzuki| first = Shigeru |date=November–December 2003 |title = A Requiem for the Fall of the Petal | journal = [[American Book Review]] | volume = 25 |issue=1 | publisher = [[Illinois State University]] | pages=31}}</ref> 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."<ref>{{cite journal|last=Barlow |first=Jeffrey |date=March 2003 |title=Pattern Recognition |journal=Interface |volume=3 |issue=2 |publisher=Berglund Center for Internet Studies ([[Pacific University]]) |url=http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2003/02/gibson.php |access-date=2007-12-17 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080505032216/http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2003/02/gibson.php |archive-date=2008-05-05 }}</ref> Cayce's search for her father and Damien's excavation of the German bomber symbolize{{says who|date=April 2025}} the [[historicist]] search for a method to interpret people's actions in the past.{{or|date=April 2025}}{{cn|date=April 2025}} Shigeru Suzuki interprets the character Cayce's coming to terms with her father's disappearance as a requiem for those lost to the 20th century,<ref name=Suzuki/> something that may have been influenced by Gibson coming to terms with the loss of his own father.<ref name=Graham/>

The film clips are a motif used to enhance the theme of the desire to find meaning or detect patterns,{{says who|date=April 2025}} being released over the internet to gain a cult following.{{cn|date=April 2025}}<!--None of this opening interpretive perspective appears in Ahrens otherwise aptly cited article.--> Frank Ahrens of the ''[[Washington Post]]'' notes that Gibson  predicts the arc of the [[lonelygirl15]] videoblog, that gained an international following in 2006.<ref>{{Cite news |first=Frank |last=Ahrens |url= https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/16/AR2006091600105.html |title=The Lessons of 'Lonelygirl': We Can Be Fooled, And We Probably Don't Care |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |date= 17 September 2006 |pages=F07 |access-date= 7 March 2008}}.</ref> In Gibson's novel, corporate interest in the footage is aroused by its originality and global distribution methods, and the characters debate whether the anonymous clips are part of a complete narrative or a work in progress, and when and where they were shot.{{cn|date=April 2025}} Tatiani Rapatzikou has suggested that the enigmatic nature of the footage metaphorically represents the nature of a confusing and uncertain post-9/11 future.<ref name=Rapatzikou>{{Cite book |last =Rapatzikou |first =Tatiani |year =2004 |title =Gothic Motifs in the Fiction of William Gibson |volume =36 |series =Postmodern Studies  |place =New York |publisher =[[Rodopi Publishers|Rodopi]] |isbn =90-420-1761-9}}.{{page needed|date=April 2025}}</ref>{{page needed|date=April 2025}}{{verification needed|date=April 2025}} [[Dennis Danvers]] has remarked that the footage being edited down to a single frame is like the world compressed into a single novel.<ref name=Danvers>{{cite news |first=Dennis |last=Danvers |author-link=Dennis Danvers |title=Review: Pattern Recognition by William Gibson |publisher=[[Blackbird (online journal)|Blackbird]] |date=Spring 2003 |url = http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v2n1/nonfiction/danvers_d/gibson.htm |access-date=2007-11-27}}</ref> The footage, released freely to a global audience with a lack of time or place indicators, has also been contrasted to ''Pattern Recognition'' written under contract for a large corporation and which uses liminal name-dropping that definitively sets it in London, Tokyo, and Moscow in 2002.<ref name= Easterbrook/>

== Major themes ==
{{Essay-like|section|a composite of WP policy-compliant reporting from sources, but adding original research in part|date=April 2025}}
{{original research|section|date=April 2025}}
=== Pattern recognition ===
{{Quote box|width=30%|align=right|quote=<div style="text-align:left;">Parkaboy says you should go to new footage as though you've seen no previous footage at all, thereby momentarily escaping the film or films you've been assembling with, consciously or unconsciously, since first exposure. Homo sapiens are about pattern recognition, he says. Both a gift and a trap.</div>
|source=[[Cayce Pollard]], ''Pattern Recognition'', pages 22–23.}}
The central idea of the novel, seen by [[Toby Litt]] of ''[[The Guardian]]'' as being "plainly stated", is that "Homo sapiens is about [[pattern recognition]]" and that this is "[b]oth a gift and a trap", with the trap being humankind's [[apophenia]], "the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness in unrelated things".<ref name=Litt>{{cite news |first=Toby |last=Litt |author-link= Toby Litt |title=Back to the 80s |work=[[The Guardian]] |date=April 26, 2003 |url= http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,942915,00.html |access-date=2007-12-07 | location=London}}</ref><ref name=Lim>{{cite news|first=Dennis |last=Lim |title=How Soon Is Now? – William Gibson's Present Tense |publisher=[[The Village Voice]] |date=12 February 2003 |url=http://www.villagevoice.com/books/0307,lim,41823,10.html |access-date=2007-11-27 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071209163515/http://www.villagevoice.com/books/0307%2Clim%2C41823%2C10.html |archive-date=9 December 2007 }}</ref> Followers of the seemingly random clips in the novel seek connections and meaningfulness in them, but are revealed to be connecting unrelated things,<!--IF THE WORD APOPHENIA APPEARS IN GIBSON, CITE PAGE, OTHERWISE PLEASE AVOID USING REVIEWER IDEAS AS BEING "REVEALED" IN THE TEXT. LET THE TEXT SPEAK FOR ITSELF, AND REVIEWERS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.--> as the clips are just edited surveillance camera footage.{{cn|date=April 2025}} Likewise, Cayce's mother turns to investigating [[electronic voice phenomenon|electronic voice phenomena]] after Cayce's father disappears.{{cn|date=April 2025}} Science fiction critic Thomas Wagner underscores the human propensity to [[pattern recognition|recognise patterns]] using a comparison between the film clips and Cayce's search for her father after the attacks:<blockquote>[T]he very [[randomness]] and ineffability of the clips flies in the face of our natural human tendency towards pattern recognition ... [T]he subculture that surrounds "following the footage" ... [is] an effective plot device for underscoring the novel's post-9/11 themes: to wit, the uncertainty of the fabric of day-to-day life people began to feel following that event … [We] as people don't like uncertainty, don't like knowing that there's something we can't comprehend. And if we can't fit something into an existing pattern, then by golly we'll come up with one.<ref name=Wagner>{{cite web |url= http://www.sfreviews.net/patternrec.html |title= Pattern Recognition |access-date= 2007-11-29 |first= Thomas M. |last= Wagner |year= 2003 |publisher= sfreviews.net|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20071017102343/http://www.sfreviews.net/patternrec.html |archive-date = October 17, 2007|url-status=dead}}</ref></blockquote> Within the marketing world, Cayce is portrayed not as an outside rebel, but rather a paragon of the system. Inescapably within the system, she seeks an [[Epistemological realism|epistemological perspective]] to objectively interpret patterns.<ref name=Wagner/><ref name=Skeates>{{cite journal |last= Skeates |first= Richard |date=April 2004 |title = A Melancholy Future Poetic | journal=City | volume = 8 | issue = 1| pages=135–140}}</ref> The review of the novel in ''[[The Village Voice]]'' calls this search "a survival tactic within the context of no context—dowsing for meaning, and sometimes settling for the illusion of meaning".<ref name=Lim/>

=== Memory of history ===
{{Quote box|width=30%|align=right|quote=<div style="text-align:left;">The future is there ... looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become. And from where they are, the past behind us will look nothing at all like the past we imagine behind us now. ... I only know that the one constant in history is change: The past changes. Our version of the past will interest the future about the extent we're interested in whatever past the Victorians believed in. It simply won't seem very relevant. </div>
|source=Cayce Pollard (echoing the views of Parkaboy), ''Pattern Recognition'', page 59.
}}
Using 20th-century relics, such as a [[Curta calculator]], an excavated [[Junkers Ju 87|Stuka]], Hobbs Baranov, and Voytek's planned [[ZX81]] show, Gibson raises the question of how a contemporary society views past societies. Gibson portrays the past century as dominated by conflict, suspicion, and espionage. Following the disappearance of Cayce's father, a designer of embassy security systems, on September 11, 2001, Cayce is left feeling "ungrieved" until she reviews footage and records of that day tracking his movements until he vanishes.<ref name=Palmer>{{cite journal |last=Palmer |first=Christopher |date=November 2006 |title = ''Pattern Recognition'': "None of What We Do Here Is Ever Really Private" | journal=[[Science Fiction Studies]] | volume =33 | issue =100 |publisher=SFS Publications |issn = 0091-7729 |oclc =1787622 |pages=473–482 |doi=10.1525/sfs.33.3.473 | url = https://online.ucpress.edu/sfs/article-abstract/33/Part%203%20(100)/473/208395/Pattern-Recognition-None-of-What-We-Do-Here-Is?redirectedFrom=fulltext | access-date = 1 April 2025}}</ref>

Following this line of thought Gibson raises the question of how the future will view today's society. The novel "adopts a postmodern [[historicism]]"<ref name= Easterbrook/> perspective, through the arguments presented by Bigend, Cayce, and Parkaboy. Bigend and Cayce's view of history are compared to those of philosopher [[Benedetto Croce]] in that they believe history is open for interpretation when re-written from the frame of reference of another society. Parkaboy rejects this view, believing that history can be an exact science.<ref name=Easterbrook>{{cite journal |last=Easterbrook |first=Neil|date=November 2006 |title = Alternate Presents: The Ambivalent Historicism of ''Pattern Recognition'' | journal=[[Science Fiction Studies]] | volume =33 | issue =100 |publisher=SFS Publications |issn = 0091-7729 |oclc =1787622 |pages=483–504|doi=10.1525/sfs.33.3.483 }}</ref>

=== Originality and monoculture ===
The book explores a tension between originality and monoculture by focusing on the artist's relationship with a [[commercialized]] world and its [[marketing]] of free art and [[consumer product]]s.<ref name=Zeidner/> Critic Lisa Zeidner argues that the artist's "loyalty and love"<ref name=Zeidner/> involved with creating originality counters Bigend's assertion that everything is a reflection of something else and that the creative process no longer rests with the individual. Commercialism is portrayed as a monoculture that assimilates originality. The [[Tommy Hilfiger]] brand is used as an example, "[[simulacra]] of simulacra of simulacra. A dilute tincture of [[Ralph Lauren]], who had himself diluted the glory days of [[Brooks Brothers]], who themselves had stepped on the product of [[Jermyn Street]] and [[Savile Row]] ... There must be some Tommy Hilfiger [[event horizon]], beyond which it is impossible to be more derivative, more removed from the source, more devoid of soul."<ref>Gibson 2003, p18.</ref>

One critic points out that the marketing agency Blue Ant is named after the wasp [[Blue Ant]]: "it's a wasp with a painful sting. The female hunts for a ground-dwelling cricket. She paralyses it with a sting and lays her egg on it. The still living yet immobile cricket becomes food for the wasp's young. What a clever metaphor for the process of targeting, commodifying, and marketing cool."<ref name=Lieb>{{cite web |url= http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3622545 |title= Pattern Recognition: Marketing's Mirror World |access-date= 2007-11-29 |first= Rebecca |last= Lieb |date= February 7, 2003 |publisher= ClickZ Network |url-status= dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20071012135522/http://clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3622545 |archive-date= October 12, 2007 }}</ref> On the other hand, as [[Rudy Rucker]] notes, while new art is constantly threatened by commodification, it is dependent on the monoculture for its launching point and uniqueness.<ref name=Rucker>{{cite news |first=Rudy |last=Rucker|title=Logomancer |publisher=[[Wired (magazine)|Wired]] |date=February 2003 |url = https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/play.html?pg=9 |access-date=2007-11-27}}</ref> Gibson's product positioning language and Cayce's analysis of consumerist trends show that society is not a victim of consumerism, but rather its creator who helps shape it without ever stepping outside it.<ref name=Smith/>  Alex Link argues that rather than a simple attack on consumerism outright, the novel outlines a complex interrelationship between art, brand design, and terrorism as varying attitudes to history, terror, and community.<ref name=Link>{{cite journal |last=Link |first=Alex |title=Global War, Global Capital, and the Work of Art in William Gibson's ''Pattern Recognition'' |journal=Contemporary Literature |volume=49 |issue=2 |date=Summer 2008 |pages=209–31 |issn=1548-9949 |url=http://130.102.44.247/journals/contemporary_literature/v049/49.2.link.html |access-date=2011-01-18 |doi=10.1353/cli.0.0023 |s2cid=161992641 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120202033201/http://130.102.44.247/journals/contemporary_literature/v049/49.2.link.html |archive-date=2012-02-02 }}</ref>

=== Branding, identity, and globalization ===
The novel's language is viewed as rife with labeling and product placements.<ref name=Jolis/> Postmodern theorist [[Fredric Jameson]] calls it "a kind of hyped-up name-dropping ... [where] an encyclopaedic familiarity with the fashions ... [creates] class status as a matter of knowing the score rather than of having money and power".<ref name=Jameson>{{Cite journal | last = Jameson | first = Fredric | author-link=Fredric Jameson | title = Fear and Loathing in Globalization | journal = [[New Left Review]] | volume = II | issue = 23 | publisher = New Left Review | date = September–October 2003 | url = http://newleftreview.org/II/23/fredric-jameson-fear-and-loathing-in-globalization }}</ref> He also calls it "postmodern nominalism"<ref name =Jameson/> in that the names express the new and fashionable.<ref name =Jameson/> This name-dropping demonstrates how commercialism has created and named new objects and experiences and renamed (or re-created) some that already existed. This naming includes nationalities; there are eight references to nationality (or locality) in the first three pages. Zeidner wrote that the novel's "new century is unsettlingly transitional making it difficult to maintain an individual identity".<ref name=Zeidner>{{cite news |first=Lisa |last=Zeidner |title=Netscape |publisher=[[The New York Times Book Review]] |date=January 19, 2003 |url = https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9903E2DC113EF93AA25752C0A9659C8B63 |access-date=2007-11-27}}</ref> One character argues that "there will soon be no national identity left … [as] all experience [will be] reduced, by the spectral hand of marketing, to price-point variations on the same thing."<ref>Gibson 2003, p341.</ref> This is juxtaposed against the footage that contains no hints of time period or location.<ref name=Hollinger/> Globalization is represented by characters of varying nationalities, ease of international travel, portable instant communication, and commercial monoculture recognizable across international markets. As an example, Gibson writes how one 'yes or no' decision by Cayce on the logo will impact the lives of the people in remote places who will manufacture the logos and how it will infect their dreams.<ref name=Suzuki/>

== Genre ==
{{Quote box|width=30%|align=right|quote=<div style="text-align:left;">[W]e have no idea, now, of who or what the inhabitants of our future might be. In that sense, we have no future. Not in the sense that our grandparents had a future, or thought they did. Fully imagined cultural futures were the luxury of another day, one in which 'now' was of some greater duration. For us, of course, things can change so abruptly, so violently, so profoundly, that futures like our grandparents' have insufficient 'now' to stand on. We have no future because our present is too volatile. ... We have only risk management. The spinning of the given moment's scenarios. Pattern recognition.</div>
|source=[[Hubertus Bigend]], ''Pattern Recognition'', pages 58–59.}}

While some reviewers regard the novel as a [[Thriller (genre)|thriller]],<ref name=FT>{{cite news |author=Pizzichini, Lilian|title=A Noir Vision of the Future |work=[[Financial Times]] |date=April 19, 2003 |page=5}}</ref> others see it as an example of post-millennial science fiction with stories set in the "technocultural future-present".<ref name=Hollinger/><ref>{{Cite news |last=Clute |first=John |author-link =John Clute |title=The Case of the World |magazine=[[Science Fiction Weekly]] |publisher=[[SciFi.com]] |date=February 24, 2003 |url=http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue305/excess.html|access-date=23 February 2008|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20080228153828/http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue305/excess.html |archive-date = February 28, 2008|url-status=dead}}.</ref> Some reviewers note that the novel furthers the post-millennial trend in science fiction of illustrating society's inability to imagine a definitive future<ref name=Hollinger>{{cite journal |last = Hollinger |first = Veronica |date=November 2006 |title = Stories about the Future: From Patterns of Expectation to Pattern Recognition |journal = Science Fiction Studies |volume = 33 |issue = 100 |pages = 452–471 |publisher = SFS Publications |doi = 10.1525/sfs.33.3.452 |issn = 0091-7729 |oclc =1787622}}</ref> and the use of technologies once considered advanced or academic now commonplace within society and its vernacular.<ref name=Bolhafner/> Gibson said that the only science fiction elements are "[t]he Footage and Cayce's special talents" but that he "never bought that conceit that science fiction is about the future".<ref>{{Cite news |title=Interview: William Gibson |magazine=[[Newsweek]] |date=February 24, 2003 |issue=8 |pages=75 |volume=141}}</ref> [[Dennis Danvers]] explained the use of science fiction as a narrative strategy: <blockquote>[s]cience fiction, in effect, has become a narrative strategy, a way of approaching story, in which not only characters must be invented, but the world and its ways as well, without resorting to magic or the supernatural, where the fantasy folks work. A realist wrestling with the woes of the middle class can leave the world out of it by and large except for an occasional swipe at the shallowness of suburbia. A science fiction writer must invent the world where the story takes place, often from the ground up, a process usually called world-building. In other words, in a science fiction novel, the world itself is a distinctive and crucial character in the plot, without whom the story could not take place, whether it's the world of Dune or Neuromancer or 1984. The world is the story as much as the story is in the world. Part of Gibson's point ... is that we live in a time of such accelerated change and layered realities, that we're all in that boat, like it or not. A novel set in the "real world" now has to answer the question, "Which one?"<ref name=Danvers/></blockquote>

These elements, and the use of the September 11, 2001 attacks as a breaking point from the past, led academics to label it a [[Postmodern literature|postmodern novel]]. The attacks mark the point where the 'modern', that is the 20th-century certainty in society's advancement towards a better future, changed to the 'postmodern', that is the 21st-century uncertainty in which future will develop. [[Fredric Jameson]] finds Gibson using culture as the determinant of change for the first time with this novel, rather than technology. Jameson focuses on the novel's "postmodern nominalism" that uses brand names to refresh old objects and experiences.<ref name =Jameson/>

In [[Post-structuralism|post-structural literary theory]] Cayce is compared with the main character, Oedipa Maas, of Thomas Pynchon's ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]'' as detectives interpreting clues but with neither the character nor the reader knowing if there actually is a pattern to be found and, if there is one, whether it is real or  conspiracy.<ref name=Skeates/> Gibson's use of name-dropping brands to create a sense of "in-group style … of those in the know" is traced back to Thomas Pynchon's 1963 novel ''[[V.]]''&nbsp;.<ref name=Jameson/> Gibson's writing style is said to be similar to [[Raymond Chandler]]'s detective stories<ref name=FT/> and Alfred Hitchcock's thrillers that used [[MacGuffin]]s (the identity of the maker of the footage, in this case) to drive the story.<ref name=Rucker/> Gibson's social observations are influenced by the works of [[Naomi Klein]] and [[Malcolm Gladwell]].<ref name=Heer>{{Cite news |last=Heer |first=Jeet |title=William Gibson Can't Be Bothered With the Future |newspaper=[[National Post]] |date=October 30, 2003 |pages=B3}}</ref>

While markedly different from his previous writing, in that it is not set in an imaginary future with imaginary technologies, ''Pattern Recognition'' includes many of his previous elements, including impacts of technology shifts on society, Japanese computer experts and Russian mafia figures.<ref name=Jewell>{{cite news |first= Stephen |last=Jewell |title=William Gibson: Pattern Recognition |publisher=[[The New Zealand Herald]] |date=February 8, 2003 |url = http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/6/story.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=3099760 |access-date=2007-12-16}}</ref> In common with Gibson's previous work, [[Paul Di Filippo]] found in ''Pattern Recognition'': "the close observation of the culture's [[bleeding edge]]; an analysis of the ways technology molds our every moment; the contrasting of boardroom with street; the impossibility and dire necessity of making art in the face of instant co-optation; the damaged loner facing the powers-that-be, for both principle and profit".<ref name=Filippo>{{Cite news |first=Paul |last=Di Filippo |author-link=Paul Di Filippo |title=Prophets and Losses |newspaper=[[Washington Post]] |date=February 2, 2003 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/2003/02/02/prophets-and-losses/2c8cc2e8-bef2-4a10-972d-af2f45d69f4d/ |access-date=2007-12-16 |page=BW04}}.</ref>

== 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>

== Publication history ==
[[File:Pattern Recognition (novel) - covers.jpg|thumb|400px|Book covers for the (top left to right) North American (paperback), British (hard cover), British (paperback), Dutch, French, (bottom left to right) Spanish, Portuguese, German, Japanese, and Polish releases]]
The hardcover edition, released in February 2003, was published by the Penguin Group imprint [[G. P. Putnam's Sons]].{{full|date=April 2025}} [[Berkley Books]] published the [[Paperback#Trade paperback|trade paperback]] one year later, on February 3, 2004,{{full|date=April 2025}} and a [[mass market paperback]] in February 2005.{{full|date=April 2025}} In the UK the paperback was published by [[Penguin Books]],{{full|date=April 2025}} a year after its [[Viking Press]] imprint published the hardcover version.{{full|date=April 2025}} In 2004 it was published in French, Danish, Japanese, German, and Spanish.{{cn|date=April 2025}} The book was published in Russia in 2005, and its translator, Nikita Krasnikov, was named best translator for that year at the "Bastkon" literary conference in the Moscow area.<ref>{{cite web | author = Vladimirsky, Vasily | date = March 2006 | title = Изгнание бога—Доклад о вероятности оЗ от 26.02.2006 | work = Ozon.ru | url = http://www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/2609574/ | access-date = 1 April 2025 | url-status = dead | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20060319074447/http://www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/2609574/ | archive-date = 2006-03-19 | language = ru | quote = <small>Уильям Гибсон. Распознавание образов / На литературно-практической конференции "Басткон", прошедшей недавно в Подмосковье, автор перевода этого романа Никита Красников был отмечен как лучший переводчик 2005 года. [William Gibson. Pattern Recognition / At the literary and practical conference "Bastkon", which was recently held in the Moscow region, the author of the translation of this novel, Nikita Krasnikov, was awarded as the best translator of 2005.]</small>}}</ref> [[Tantor Media]] published the 10.5-hour-long, unabridged [[audiobook]] on April 1, 2004, and re-released it on January 1, 2005.{{cn|date=April 2025}} Voiced by Shelly Frasier, it was criticized by [[John Joseph Adams|John Adams]] of ''Locus'' as being pleasant but with distracting dialects.<ref>{{Cite news | last=Adams | first=John | author-link=John Joseph Adams | date= July 2004 | title=Reviews by John Joseph Adams | periodical=[[Locus (magazine)|Locus Magazine]] |publisher=Locus Publications |issue=522 | url=http://www.locusmag.com/2004/Reviews/07_AdamsAudiobooks.html | access-date=2007-12-27}}.</ref>

== Adaptations ==
The digital radio station BBC 7 broadcast (now [[BBC Radio 4 Extra]]) an abridged version of the novel, voiced by [[Lorelei King]], in five 30-minute episodes in February and October 2007.<ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/a-z/p |title=P: Pattern Recognition |work= BBC Programmes |access-date=2008-03-09 |publisher=BBC}}</ref> Post-punk band Sonic Youth included a track called "Pattern Recognition" on their 2004 album ''[[Sonic Nurse]]'' that opens with the lyric "I'm a cool hunter making you my way".<ref>{{Cite news |first=Shawn |last=Conner |url= https://www.straight.com/article/sonic-youth-ages-with-edge | title= Sonic Youth Ages With Edge | newspaper=[[The Georgia Straight]] | date=8 July 2004 | access-date=2007-12-28}}</ref> A film adaptation was initiated in April 2004 with producer [[Steve Golin]]'s production company Anonymous Content and the studio Warner Bros. Pictures hiring director [[Peter Weir]].<ref>{{cite news | first=Dana |last=Harris |author2=Cathy Dunkley | url=https://variety.com/2004/film/news/wb-holding-pattern-1117903722/ | title=WB holding 'Pattern' | publisher=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]] | date=22 April 2004 | access-date=2007-02-13 }}</ref> Screenwriters [[David Arata]], [[D. B. Weiss]], and Weir co-wrote the screenplay<ref>{{cite news | first=Michael |last=Fleming | url=https://variety.com/2007/scene/markets-festivals/hbo-turns-fire-into-fantasy-series-1117957532/ | title=HBO Turns 'Fire' Into Fantasy Series | publisher=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]] | date=16 January 2007 | access-date= 2007-02-13}}</ref> but in May 2007, Gibson commented on his personal blog that he believed Weir would not be proceeding with the project.<ref>{{cite news |first=William |last=Gibson |author-link=William Gibson |url=http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/2007_05_01_archive.asp#2514436070772070825 |title=I've Forgotten More Neuromancer Film Deals Than You've Ever Heard Of |date=1 May 2007 |access-date=2007-05-22 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070523100703/http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/2007_05_01_archive.asp#2514436070772070825 |archive-date=23 May 2007 |url-status=dead }}</ref>
{{Clear}}

== Footnotes ==
{{Reflist|30em}}

== External links ==
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110928084114/http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/books/pattern.asp William Gibson Books: ''Pattern Recognition'']; author's site
* [http://fawny.org/pr/ PR-Otaku]: Logging and annotating William Gibson's ''Pattern Recognition''
* {{IMDb title|qid=Q129714899|id=tt0409138|title=Pattern Recognition}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20060513083226/http://historypreservation.com/hpassociates/detailpop.php?uniqnum=59 Buzz Rickson "Pattern Recognition" Black MA-1 Intermediate Flying Jacket]
* [http://www.cbc.ca/bc/bookclub/williamgibson.html Audio interview at CBC Bookclub – ''Pattern Recognition''] (1hr) from 2003: part one runs 16&nbsp;min; part two runs 9&nbsp;min; part three runs 17&nbsp;min; part four runs 9&nbsp;min
* [http://www.worldswithoutend.com/novel.asp?ID=583 Pattern Recognition] at Worlds Without End
* [http://ssrn.com/abstract=1027211 William Gibson's Pattern Recognition: Jet-Lagged Intimations of the Present] by Jose Angel García Landa, ''Social Science Research Network''

{{William Gibson}}
{{featured article}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pattern Recognition (Novel)}}
[[Category:2003 American novels]]
[[Category:Novels by William Gibson]]
[[Category:Techno-thriller novels]]
[[Category:Fiction set in 2002]]
[[Category:Novels set in London]]
[[Category:Novels set in Tokyo]]
[[Category:Novels set in Moscow]]
[[Category:G. P. Putnam's Sons books]]
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