While on my vacation last week, I finishedPattern Recognition by William Gibson. I think it could be his best book. Or, at least, the one I’ve enjoyed the most, so far.
Someone somewhere on the internet–and, I know, shame on me for not remembering–wrote that the present that we’re living in right now is the future and that writers who take advantage of this (eg, Bruce Sterling’s Zeitgeist and WG’s Pattern Recognition) write books that are more like science fiction than most science fiction books.
I’ll admit that I feel pretty strongly that the world gets stranger and stranger all the time. Things change faster than people can really keep track of. Who had email ten years ago? Where was the internet ten years ago? Who had cameras in their cellphones ten years ago?
And those are just the technological changes. Who can say yet how these things will shake out to effect the day to day?
Here’s an example: A few years ago, I didn’t have a cell phone. Every year or so (sometimes more) I travel down to my home town to visit old friends and family and all that jazz. When I have done so in the past, I had to arrange things very carefully or risk getting stranded somewhere with nothing to do, waiting for another friend to contact me or become available. This time around, I had a cellphone with me and there was no dead time, unless I wanted there to be. If I wanted to get a hold of someone or let someone know that I was available, I didn’t have to travel all the way back to my “homebase” there. Now maybe I’m writing about something which is totally obvious and which people take for granted, but it is one very tiny thing that has completely altered (for the better!) the way that travelling has worked out for me. (Not to mention, avoiding the scraps-of-paper telephone record-keeping approach…)
Anyway, you can find Gibson’s book here too.
Also, you should check out William Gibson’s website. It’s groovy.