Inhabiting William Gibson's Modern Trilogies

Zë Au Sol

22 Apr 2024 — 1 min read

A pour-over at Tapped & Packed, 2014-02-21

I think William Gibson is best known for the Sprawl trilogy, and specifically Neuromancer. Amazingly he has written other books: the Blue Ant/Bigende trilogy, and the Jackpot series, among others.

Pattern Recognition - there will be spoilers in general - follows Case Pollard, a woman who has an allergy to brands, and especially Bibendum, in her efforts to track down online footage that's being tracked with what is effectively a hash. This is a thinly veiled excuse for Gibson to explore his fetish for Soho (London), the booming marketing industry and the bleed-through of military clothing into civilian life.

As someone who worked for a company involved in digital marketing, with their London office very close to Soho, around the time PR is set, it's eerily close to my own experience and curiosities. Like Case, I was paid to travel between city centres to solve problems. I enjoyed the proliferation of military equipment into the civilian realm - I loved a pack with PALS on it - and as the trilogy progressed experienced similar technologies to the main characters. Looking back, Gibson might as well have been having coffee at the table next to me in Pop Up (or Milk Bar, or Tapped & Packed).

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