William Gibson
L'Accademia Dei Sogni

Summer readings are indeed the strangest; they don't follow a logical thread, you don't go by genres or authors, but they seem more like a typed river delta that divides and opens in various directions, but always with a single destination, in this case, a reader curious about novelties.

Novelist William Gibson, alleged father of Cyberpunk, is an almost relative to a Web site. Nearly 20 years have passed since the launch of his first work Neuromancer, which made him famous worldwide: "Pattern Recognition"" has been defined, instead, as the first novel marking the evolution, or if you prefer, the birth of a new Gibson: but which one?

The initial impression is that the author does not give up dealing with the fundamental relationship that has characterized his performances, the human-technology relationship, although approached in a decidedly different way; here we are in the "real" world with cell phones, Power Macs, PDAs, and the Web, the true protagonist of the story, a fact masked by the presence of Cayce Pollard, a "made in USA" girl, who guides us in this "real-virtual location."

In the first part of the book, you feel, almost palpably, an insecurity, an indecision about the path to take, and you wonder if a story will ever emerge and which one; this confusion, I believe, is purposefully explained with the "jet lag mechanism" discussed by Damien, a dear friend of Cayce in London: in travels, "the mortal soul lags behind kilometers..., as souls are not fast enough and upon arrival must be awaited like lost luggage"...

Here comes the use of flash-back, which takes us with Cayce into that unlikely but not impossible world "fragmented and sequenced" between New York, London, Tokyo, and Moscow.

Let’s explain: the little American is afflicted by a rather unusual fear, logophobia, which causes her great discomfort in the presence of big brand logos, but at the same time gives her a unique sensitivity in recognizing their advertising success. She is unexpectedly offered a peculiar assignment different from her usual work: she must investigate the origin of some short sequences, now reaching the 135th fragment, which uploaded online have sparked stunning worldwide interest. Cayce "coincidentally" is an expert in sequences and, together with a tight circle of certified cybernaut friends, will attempt to solve the enigma.

One cannot ignore that Gibson revisits some of his passions: Japan and post-Soviet Russia; he introduces us to strange electronic art merchants, but antiquarian (semi-clandestine market of Curta and Sinclair ZX81 calculators), reminding us of his great expertise in the field.

The events "occupy" the space of a week, in which the girl "chases time" on commercial flights, but the jet lag, creating that soul-body dissociation, becomes almost necessary to maintain contact with real time, as if she were traveling directly in the Web, canceling through her person the space-time differences.

The plot is complicated just enough, even though in the end, the butler is always the killer; the inclusion of some characters may seem forced, like the tumultuous reaching of the final stages.

For his admirers, it is certainly an excellent work, for me... a river that, once reaching the sea, has significantly reduced its flow.