Book Review: Distrust That Particular Flavor

Usually, I'm not a fan of these types of books, where a publisher has persuaded an author to throw together a bunch of previously published articles, talks, and the like, into a collection for sake of putting it on a shelf.

That said, I found this book pretty good for a couple reasons: (1) It was interesting to learn some background on Gibson's writing process and his, well, I'll call it 'observational research'. (2) There were some interesting bits of background on books of his that I read that gave me new appreciation for them (e.g. I feel much better about Pattern Recognition now), and (3) it was interesting to read these different pieces from over a decade or two, that were each mini-time capsules of futurism, upon which Gibson gives some additional commentary.

If you like speculative fiction and near-term futurism, this is a good read.

Distrust That Particular Flavor

Book Review: Pattern Recognition

Pattern Recognition was... ok. Liked the premise, typical cyber-thriller plot that's more speculative-present than future, with a cool-hunter as protagonist. The first 2/3 of the book are pretty good, giving a real palpable taste for the various scenes (in multiple senses of 'scene').

However, three main flaws were that made me give the low rating. First, Gibson didn't really convey the cool-hunting thing other than giving the protagonist a kind of an ingrained ability/allergy that let her sense what would work. Secondly, and a far more egregious sin, is that the ending is a real failure. These are the types of stories you want to come together in the end, where the threads of stories and different characters wind and twist closer together until everything is brought to a tight finish. Stephenson is a master at this, for example. However, in Pattern Recognition, Gibson just has it kind of suddenly happen and that's that. Kind of hard to explain without spoilers, but suffice it to say that it's an unsatisfying end. Third, and related to the last point, is that several of the characters, including the main antagonist, just kind of dead-end.

Fail. skip it.