• Title: Pattern Recognition
• Author: William Gibson
• Genre/Subject: SF
• Publisher: Berkley
• Publication Date: 2003
• Start date: 10/6/2020
• Finish date: 10/12/2020

Review:

This is a book that has not aged well. Set in the present, which is 2003, it struggles to appear futuristic with the technology of the time.

I lived in that time, and I prophesied that we were getting there, but not there yet. CD-ROMS, limited to what a CD could hold, and a bulky, easily damaged medium. The whole concept of a digital watermark needing a shadowy firm to encrypt it, very hard to get behind with my jaded 2020 outlook. Emails being read? Scandalous! Forums. Not since 2012 have I even looked into one.

And everyone is loaded with money and connections and security. Except our protagonist, who keeps wandering off and becoming a damsel in distress.

A real struggle to believe in, and even to finish. This is why I always write the title in this journal first, so I have to finish it.