I first started reading Gibson as an Omni reader back in the mid 80's. "Burning Chrome" just rocked my world...where the hell did this guy come from? I had read all of his Omni shorts, but because of the lack of connection to a fanbase I was never even aware that he had written a novel.
Fast forward a decade...I'm the old fart in the dorms at USL, drinking and bullshitting SciFi with a bunch of kids who weren't even born when I graduated high school and I bring up these great Omni shorts I had read a decade earlier.
They all start babbling on about Gibson and "Neuromancer"....one of them goes to his room and brings me his copy to read. Damm....does SciFi get any better than this?
Apparently not.
The following novels were good, but just didn't grab me like "Neuromancer" did. His "Steampunk" book was cool, but not that great. Virtual Light was almost there.
I was waiting....I wanted to be blown away again like I was the first time...I wanted that big rush of words, something that was so totally liminal that it couldn't be ignored.
Thank you, WG, for "Pattern Recognition"....it's about time that you showed the world that you aren't just a great SciFi writer, you are a great fiction writer. You told us what was coming 20 years ago, and now you tell us how it is.
I'm on my 3rd time through the book, and it's still cool. I've yet to see anyone capture the spirit of forum discussions and net culture the way he does. I guess he just had to wait for the real world to catch up to his world to show us his magic again.
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