Pattern Recognition - William Gibson (2003)

 

Rating: Admirable

Around the turn of the twenty first century William Gibson stated that any possible future that he could imagine would not be as weird as what was happening in the present. Accordingly, Pattern Recognition was the first of his novels to be set in the (then) present, so weirdly it is now set in the past. It has been a long time since I’ve read a Gibson novel, longer than the life of this blog. Pattern Recognition attracted me due to its fantastic premise, involving a female protagonist, Cayce Pollard, who displays allergic reactions to logos. Cayce makes a living as a marketing consultant, the worst her reaction is, the better the logo. Cayce is employed by the marketing company, Blue Ant, owned by the toothy Tom Cruise-like Hubertus Bigend (one of the best character names ever). In London to meet with the Blue Ant marketers, Cayce starts to experience a sequence of unsettling events, including being bullied by Blue Ant hard bitch, Dorotea Benedetti. In addition, Cayce, along with a world-wide coterie, is obsessed with very short arty film clips (referred to as ‘the footage’) that appear intermittently via the internet, and are created by an anonymous source, a source that Bigend wants to uncover, seeing it as a brilliant marketing art-form. Bigend, all toothy and hirsute, uses his persuasive powers, basically oozing cinematic charm, to hire a reluctant and paranoid Cacye to track down the creator.

Gibson, feeling weird in the (then) present

Pattern Recognition reveals a Gibson different to the one who produced significant novels such as Neuromancer (1984) and All Tomorrow’s Parties (1999). I always felt that although Gibson’s ideas were brilliant, technically his prose was slightly clunky. Not so with Pattern Recognition, in fact after only fifty pages I was comparing his prose style with that of DeLillo and Ballard, and I started to see the world differently while under the novel’s influence, something that happens rarely (but does with Ballard and DeLillo). Typically, Gibson displays a fine degree of cultural insight, tapping into the opaque signs and signifiers that lurk in our oversaturated media dominated world (as it already was back in 2003). Curiously, however, there are some quaint uses of technology; to watch segments of the ‘footage’ Bigend uses a potable DVD player! The novel was published six years before Smartphones became sophisticated and cheap enough to completely change our interactions with media, therefore DVD technology seems completely out of date as a portable medium now. Gibson produces some brilliant lines, and the novel is replete with visually expressive writing. The overall feel is very noirish, especially when Cayce ends up in Tokyo, perhaps the most natural environment for a Gibson novel. Despite an excellent start the novel begins to taper off about two thirds of the way through, particularly after several mysteries are cleared up. The novel’s denouement is melancholic (a good descriptor for the overall tone of the novel) and subdued, which was disappointing after such an intriguing beginning. Recently I read that short stories tend to be all middle, which is an appropriate descriptor for Pattern Recognition, as it doesn’t quite ignite. Overall, the novel is full of promise that doesn’t completely deliver, but I haven’t been put off and will read the second and third books in the trilogy, Spook Country (2007) and Zero History (2010).  

Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology – Bruce Sterling, editor (1986)

I came to cyberpunk quite late, not reading my first book of this science fiction sub-genre till the early 1990’s. It was, fortuitously, Neuromancer (1984) by the granddaddy of cyberpunk, William Gibson. It was an interesting time to start reading cyberpunk because surreally its themes were actually beginning to manifest in society. Unlike most science fiction, which tends to set its narratives in the far future or in deep space, cyberpunk focuses on the near future and tends to extrapolate dystopian outcomes based on emergent technologies. Amongst its typical themes are AIs, cyborgs, computer hacking and direct interaction between humans and cyberspace, the ubiquitous access to networked digital information (sounds familiar?) and increasing corporate control over society, along with severely weakened governments.

Of course the above description is limited, but you get the idea. Cyberpunk emerged in the early eighties and established itself as a highly influential movement. Mirrorshades was published in 1986 and was an intended showcase for cutting edge cyberpunk. Reading it 25 years on I am ambivalent, bordering on disappointed, towards some of the stories and very impressed by others, a reaction that is typical when it comes to most short story collections.

The collection begins with William Gibson’s first professionally published story - The Gernsback Continuum (1981), an elegant satire of utopian fantasies. The protagonist suffers from unwanted visions of a shiny perfect future as conceptualized by writers in the first half of the twentieth century. Enjoyable, but hardly essential, unless you are a Gibson completest. In contrast the next story - Snake Eyes (1986) by Tom Maddox, places the reader into the dystopian world of a future high-tech military industrial nightmare as seen through the eyes of a heavily cybenetically implanted fighter pilot. Discarded by the military he must fight for his sanity whilst also suffering from the probing mind of a nebulous AI. Unfortunately this story now suffers from over familiarity and ultimately failed to move me.

Despite the fact that some stories have dated there are highlights which shrug off the jaded focus of 25 years hence. Rudy Rucker’s story - Tales of Houdini (1983) provides a psychedelically rollicking good time with a fast paced snapshot of the adventures of Houdini from an alternate universe. It’s entertaining and hilarious and made me want to begin reading Rucker’s The Ware Tetralogy (2010) that’s sitting on my shelf as soon as possible.

Solstice (1985) by James Patrick Kelly is perhaps the most complex and thought provoking story in this collection. Cage, a drug artist, famous for his invention of all manner of neurologically inspiring substances, is trying to deal adequately with his bizarre relationship with his cloned daughter. It’s a psychological puzzle, with clues laid out in interludes detailing the history of theories about the origins and uses of Stonehenge. It’s as strange as it sounds and thoroughly mind-bending.

The two most impressive stories come late in the collection. Freezone (1985) by John Shirley features an anachronistic rock ‘n’ roller clad in the leather jacket once worn by John Cale whilst he was in The Velvet Underground. Disillusioned by his flakey band mates he befriends a group of wanted assassins. This story provides a fully realized world that manages to push past its short story boundaries. Stones Lives (1985) by Paul Di Filippo is perhaps the most brilliant story in the collection. The streamlined and intriguing tale of a blind slum dweller given eye implants and a mission to observe is perhaps the most cyberpunk moment here. Stone Lives concludes brilliantly and made me wish that it had been made into a movie just so I could see it all unfold.

Although Mirrorshades is uneven in quality it is an interesting collection, particularly with the benefit of hindsight, but anyone wanting to investigate cyberpunk should read William Gibson’s Neuromancer and other novels like Idoru (1996). He’s certainly not the only great cyberpunk writer; Bruce Stirling, John Shirley and Neale Stephenson (all amongst the original group in the early eighties) also fit that description. However Gibson’s novels are the most succinct representations of cyberpunk.

Whilst Mirrorshades wasn’t the wild ride I wanted it to be, it caused me to investigate what happened to some of the ‘lesser’ names that outshine the bigger names in the collection. Paul Di Filippo took some time to have his first novel published, with Ciphers: A Post-Shannon Rock 'N' Roll Mystery in 1997. Di Filippo has had a steady stream of novels published since and has the lure of an obscure writer just ready for more recognition. James Patrick Kelly has been quite successful, winning the Hugo Award twice in the 1990’s for his novels Think Like a Dinosaur (1995) and for 10¹⁶ to 1 (1999). If they offer the same obtuse stylings as Solstice then they are sure to be entertaining.

The writer that most interests me here is Rudy Rucker (great name). He seems to be a renaissance man - a computer scientist, philosopher and novelist. I’ve encountered him before when I read Year Million: Science at the Far Edge of Knowledge – edited by Damien Broderick (2008). In a book full of wild and fascinating ideas about what humanity will be like in a million years, Rudy Rucker’s essay stood out as being particularly out there. Rucker riffs on nano-machines interfacing with human consciousness, telepathy and the very earth itself becoming a giant computer and he made it all sound plausible, believe me! As a cyberpunk and transrealist writer I think that he’s the one to read if you like your science fiction books to be intense and bursting with ideas. The Ware Tetralogy seems to fit that description – four novels in one with the first dating back to the early eighties, predating Mirrorshades by four years.

Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick - Lawrence Sutin (1989)

For those of you who don’t know anything about Philip K. Dick then there are two things you need to know - he was a total freak but he was also a brilliant and unique writer of science fiction, perhaps because he was, well, a freak. I know this because I’ve read quite a few of his novels and short stories. After reading Divine Invasions – A Life of Philip K. Dick I’m more convinced than ever that he was one of a kind. I few months ago at the Revelation Film Festival I saw Radio Free Albemuth and it was a film worthy of Dick’s vision. I mentioned this to a fellow ‘Dickhead’ at work and he lent me this book. Divine Invasions is a fine summation of Dick’s work and I recommend it to anyone interested in this maverick’s life.

Philip K. Dick was born in 1928 in Chicago and later moved with his mother to Berkeley after his parents divorced. Dick would live in and around Berkeley for most of his life. Dick was born just at the right time to be involved in the great rise of science fiction in the pulp era of the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s. Dick is rightly considered to be one of the most important science fiction writers to emerge from this era because his influence permeates both modern film and literature. Also, to a certain degree, modern life resembles his books (more on this later). Early on Dick churned out short stories on demand in an attempt to make a living from the pulp magazines. Although science fiction was popular during that era it certainly wasn’t seen as a legitimate form of literature and initially Dick yearned to escape its confines by writing mainstream literature. However, only one of these novels would be published in his lifetime - Confessions of a Crap Artist (1975), but fortunately for Dick he became recognized as one of the most talented science fiction writers around.

Dick wrote a large number of short stories throughout his career, many brilliant, most fascinating and some deserving of the moniker ‘pulp’. The most recent collection I read - The Father Thing: Volume Three of the Collected Stories (1987) had some of his greats, like The Golden Man and Null – O. These stories are brilliant distillations of Dick’s imagination and his disturbing world-view. He was also a prolific writer of novels, typing at mad speeds under the influence of legally prescribed amphetamines; he was hooked on them for well over a decade. During 1963 – 1964 alone Dick produced 11 science fiction novels, including two that I’ve read in recent years – Dr Bloodmoney (1965) and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965).

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is a perfect example of Dick’s obsessions – what is real, how can you tell you know what’s real and what is human? A question that would later be fully explored in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968). Stigmata is bizarre, intense, thoroughly entertaining and above all subverts the reader’s perception of just what science fiction can do. This is true of many of Dick’s books, just start reading and you are in for a wild ride. Stigmata is a great place to start if you are unfamiliar with Dick’s writing.

Dick’s writing mostly negates science fiction’s usual obsession with predicting the future. Most of his books are set in the near future and usually within the confines of the solar system. Furthermore Dick certainly didn’t write space operas, although part of me wished that he had. Dick’s main interest was placing ordinary people in extraordinary situations, usually mind-bending and unfathomable in nature. The events in Dick’s narratives are not only weird to the reader, but also to the protagonists. Dick gets away with presenting weird realities in his stories because his characters are very believable and are usually ordinary individuals the reader can relate to. A great example of this is the policeman in Flow My Tears the Policeman Said (1974) who has to deal with some intensely strange situations, yet he has reoccurring sinus problems and a yearning to connect. Many of his characters are usually neurotic or have very human flaws, like being messy or hopeless at relationships. In fact one could argue that Dick was a humanist science fiction writer. Also, characterisation is one of Dick’s great strengths, something that was often missing in his contemporaries writing. As Divine Invasions reveals, Dick quite often sourced his characters from those around him, his relationships and from his own numerous neurosis.

Another fascinating aspect to Dick’s writing is the fact that because he set many of his stories in the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries we are essentially now living in their time frames. Although we don’t have flying cars, and Dick loved flying cars (in novels such as Flow my Tears the Policeman Said and The Game Players of Titan (1963) flying cars are sarcastic, stubborn and offer unwanted advice about their owner’s lives), in many ways we are living in times that he would recognize. The interactive and malleable digital society that we take for granted is far weirder than we think. The technology of the Web has created an environment in which duplicity and occluded reality are as easy to create as ever before. The sinister implications of this would be easily recognizable to Dick. The kind of technology that is used to deceive, to control and to spy in modern times could have come right out of some of Dick’s narratives (this would have made him very paranoid). In some ways, though, Dick would have been proud that we have become aware that the universe is way weirder than we could have ever imagined. As an interesting aside, for William Gibson, one of the most significant science fiction writers of the last thirty years, the multiple layered realities of Dick’s near future narratives have become symptomatic of our times. Gibson has mostly given up on the future, setting his recent novels in the present because he believes that it is weirder than any future he can now imagine. See the great quote: The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed. *

Dick’s life and work would get stranger before he died in 1982 of multiple stokes and a heart attack. His life came to resemble his books and fittingly he began to place himself as characters in their narratives; in VALIS (1981) he was known entertainingly as Horselover Fat and sometimes he would appear as multiple characters at odds with each other or sharing the same experiences. Dick managed the post-modern trick of inserting his life into his novels as a reaction to his life becoming like his novels – they just bled into each other.

In what became known as the 2-3-74 experiences, Dick ‘received’ via beams of light a series of insights, messages and visions that obsessed him for the rest of his life. These visions he ‘received’ in 1974 conferred to him that reality, as humanity knew it, was an illusion, that in fact we were trapped in time by an outside force. These were religious experiences for Dick and he spent years pondering his visions and insights. Helped along by his vast knowledge of the world’s religions, Dick kept a diary he called the Exegesis, that helped him explore his experiences. Apparently the Exegesis journal is to be published shortly. Safe to say, as Sutin noted, Dick did not take himself too seriously and throughout the Exegesis writings he wonders whether he’s just a delusional hack. Dick’s last three novels published during his lifetime explore these experiences and obsessions – VALIS (1981), The Divine Invasion (1981) and The Transmigrations of Timothy Archer (1982).

Apparently Dick regarded himself as a ‘fictionalising philosopher’, and I think that description is apt. Philip K. Dick is a hip writer insomuch that many get into his books because of his reputation and his mind-boggling plots, however he offers much more than that. Dick deserves to be read because he challenges the reader and his writing is intensely thought provoking and insightful. Personally I still have much to look forward to, as I’m yet to read such greats as Ubik (1969) and Martian Time Slip (1964). If you think that you may be immune to the lure of Dick’s writings, that he was just a delusional writer of pulp sci-fi, then please set aside your presumptions and give his writings a chance. After all, you are living in a ‘Phildickian’ universe but you just don’t know it yet. **

·      I couldn’t find the interview in which Gibson talks about the present, but this is entertaining in any case.

** Or now maybe you do after reading the above?