No Logo
May 4th, 2005
Naomi Klein’s anti-corporate manifesto is slightly outdated–it came out even before Seattle, and she had to add an afterword after 9/11–but her arguments about the ever-encroaching branding on our lives are still incisive, and if anything, corporations have even more power over us than they did in the late nineties. The first section, “No Space,” is especially interesting, and so is her take on possible alternatives to the corporation-sponsored “globalization.” Klein’s website.
Pattern Recognition
April 5th, 2005
William Gibson’s seventh since the absolutely essential Neuromancer, Pattern Recognition is his first contemporary novel. His trademark disorienting hardboiled cyberpunk style is still in full effect, and perhaps because of his genre-bending ways–or perhaps because the world has caught up with him–Pattern Recognition still feels like sci-fi. There’s the usual streetwise Gibson heroine, utterly confident in her powers of divining bleeding edge culture (so much so that sniffing out the Next Big Thing is her job), and of course she’s on the trail of a major international mystery (this time in form of transporting snippets of footage released anonymously on the Internet)–but despite all that, the book is also about September 11. “Rides on a strong current of melancholy,” GQ blurbed, and that’s exactly right. Everybody’s ranting and raving about Safran Foer and his half-a-million advance, but Gibson shows how you can successfully blend science fiction and thriller tropes with serious takes on globalization, terrorism, marketing, and security into one best-selling whole. Very strong work.
William Gibson Forums
Interview with Gibson on Pattern Recognition
New York Times Review
SF Gate
Washington Post
Village Voice
