#apparently he inked a four-book prequel deal for neuromancer? whatever.

[power-chords]

Sometimes I feel annoyed and even resentful that William Gibson is known for the wrong book. Neuromancer is fine and I get it. But he wrote the actual masterpiece for the information age, Pattern Recognition, in 2003, about what it's like to be a covertly insane but well-dressed and functionally well-adjusted woman in your 30s whose job it is to liaise between craft and capital interests. You live in New York but are frequently uprooted for dreamlike wanderings around strange cities with different but equally fascinating histories. You had a father who was brilliant and eccentric and unknowable (but he loved you very much). You have experienced a piece of art that has changed you so fundamentally that you are consumed by the obsessive drive to understand the mechanics of its power over you. In doing so you encounter the most interesting people from all walks of life who are not like you at all, and yet identical to you in some core spiritual way. And you get yourself into a bunch of trouble, and then you get yourself out of it.