Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, Viking/Penguin, £16.99, ISBN 0670875597 Reviewed by Dave Langford
WILLIAM GIBSON rose to fame with his luminous, compulsive images of data flow and streetwise mayhem in future cyberspace. Pattern Recognition, set barely ahead of the present, explores the subtler data manipulations of big advertising: stealth marketing, viral campaigns, the quest for the perfect logo.
His heroine is Cayce Pollard, whose tormented sensitivity to logos and brand names verges on phobia. She even dresses anonymously, every designer icon stripped from her clothes. But Cayce is also an expert “coolhunter”, a high-powered freelance with an intuitive feel for…
