] Science fiction has long been William Gibson's electric ] guitar - the instrument he uses to gain perspective, to ] transform life's ditties into anthems of transcendent ] strangeness. In Pattern Recognition (Putnam, $26), he ] goes acoustic, unplugging the overt sci-fi tropes that ] have marked his work and producing a mainstream product. ] He succeeds because our real world has such gnarly tech ] (Web surfing on a laptop with a Wi-Fi connection is ] functionally the same as jacking your brain into a ] cyberspace deck) and because his riffs make such a good ] read. Rudy Rucker reviews Pattern Recognition for Wired. Wired: Legomancer |