Nodal point

William Gibson talks about how his new present-day novel, "Pattern Recognition," processes the apocalyptic mind-set of a post-9/11 world.

By Andrew Leonard

Feb 13, 2003 | "You're experiencing apophenia," William Gibson tells me, near the end of an interview.

I had just asked him what the significance is of the fact that Cayce Pollard, the protagonist in his new novel, "Pattern Recognition," has a first name that sounds exactly like that of Case, the protagonist in Gibson's first novel, "Neuromancer." Has he, in some obscure way, come full circle? "Neuromancer" unleashed a vision of the future that has become more real ever since the novel was published; "Pattern Recognition" is set in the very recent past, in a world that becomes more bizarre and unreal the closer you look at it.

But Gibson denies that there is any significance. It's just coincidence. I'm just being apophenic.

As defined by Gibson in "Pattern Recognition," apophenia is "the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness in unrelated things." In other words: Recognizing patterns that aren't actually there.

There is no connection between Cayce and Case; no meaningfulness. Gibson explains that as part of his novelist craft, he goes through a complicated artistic ritual in order to summon his characters out of the ether. In this ritual, coming up with the right name is the crucial first step. And the process by which he came up with Cayce, he declares, had nothing to do with Case. "Cayce" was its own "found object" -- much as the name Case, from "Neuromancer," was also a found object, inspired originally by Case pocketknives.

Gibson admits, though, that as soon as he realized the similarity of the names, he knew some readers would assume that something was going on, even when it wasn't.

"I had to decide whether to do it and have some people assume that it had some symbolic meaning," says Gibson, "or do it knowing that it has no symbolic meaning for me, but that some people would assume that it did, and consequently in some weird way it would."

So, in a sense, apophenia begets its own meaning, even in the absence of meaning. Welcome to the world of "Pattern Recognition," where a whole mess of people are suffering from greater or lesser degrees of what might be apophenia, except when it isn't. Cayce Pollard's mother, for example, believes she can hear the voices of the dead in the empty spaces of audiotapes. Cayce doesn't buy that malarkey, but who is she to talk? She's a freelance "coolhunter" who specializes in spotting street trends that can be commodified, who moonlights as a logo-evaluator but is physically allergic to brands like Prada and Michelin, and who is obsessed with finding meaning in mysterious segments of film "footage" that are being uploaded to the Net.

"Pattern Recognition" stands on its own as one of Gibson's best novels -- a riveting, evocative thriller that whirls around the world. But much has been made of the fact that, technically speaking, unlike all his previous work, "Pattern Recognition" isn't a science fiction novel. It is set in August 2002, in a world reeling from the impact of 9/11 and populated by people who aren't jacking their brains into the Matrix or battling artificial intelligences run amok.

But Gibson doesn't have to invent the future, any more, because it's already here. "Pattern Recognition" is a novel in which people live and die by their e-mail, flame each other endlessly in online discussion forums and fight for control of information. Advertising agencies, not AIs, are the malign puppet masters. But that's OK: The world, as Gibson notes repeatedly during our interview, is weird enough without needing to invent anything.

Gibson has always maintained that science fiction writers write about the present, and in "Pattern Recognition" he decided to dispense with the pretense, without metaphor or misdirection. The most obvious impact this has on the novel is that, inevitably, it becomes obsessed with finding meaning and connections in the most significant event thus far in the 21st century -- the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

And here we meet apophenia on a grand scale. Because if, as Gibson writes, 9/11 was "an experience out of culture," then how are we to impose meaning on it? As in another recent artistic attempt to come to grips with 9/11, Spike Lee's "25th Hour," 9/11 resists easy submersion into anyone's narrative. It is, by definition, overpowering, and any reference to it is inescapably heavy-handed.

It's a testament to Gibson's skill as a writer, and the overall tautness of "Pattern Recognition," that the shadow of the World Trade Center towers doesn't overwhelm its characters, even though it informs nearly every page. And for those of his fans who have been yearning for him to write another "Neuromancer," maybe it's time to set aside that desire once and for all. Gibson may have more to offer, in the future, as a chronicler of the now.

You set "Pattern Recognition" in the recent past as opposed to the future. Was this because the future that you originally imagined has been getting closer? Is it harder to stay ahead of it?

It's been getting more overt. In some incredibly bone-simple way, nobody can write about the future, and somehow in reading science fiction and talking about it we forget that. It's something to do with the core compact between writer and reader in the genre, so we wind up talking about it as though I had actually been writing about the future.

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