The Null Device

Rudy Rucker on William Gibson's new novel, Pattern Recognition. The concepts sound interesting, at least superficially.

Mind you, one of the things I don't like about William Gibson's novels is that his characters are all from the same small set of cardboard cutouts. Everyone is, it seems, either a grizzled mercenary techie of some sort, a future-dwelling mutant geek with special senses or a sassy, butt-kicking teenage girl. In fact, I can't remember the differences between his last 2 or 3 novels, because they all melted into one amalgam of hard-boiled one-liners, snippets of disjointed, future-shocked pop culture and random Japanese things. The review suggests that Pattern Recognition may go in the same direction; we already have a hard-boiled "cool hunter" who's so sensitive to things that she's physically allergic to brand names and the obligatory Tokyo references.

I'll probably buy it anyway; whether I remember anything of the plot afterward is another question entirely.

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William Gibson (best known for writing Neuromancer on a 1927 typewriter after watching kids in a video arcade) now has a blog. Which looks much the same sort of deal as Neil Gaiman's blog used to be before he started linking to stuff. (via bOING bOING)

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If you've read any William Gibson, you've probably noticed his obsessions with all things Japanese. You can't pick up a Gibson novel which doesn't tie into Japanese pop-culture or society somehow; even his Victorian-era steampunk collaboration with Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine, had a Japanese delegation visiting London. Now Gibson has written an article on Japanese culture, and why it fascinates him. (via Plastic)

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