The ears have it: “Forget what you think you know about ours being a visual culture, in which sight is the privileged sense.

Two thoughtful new discussions of the culture of listening – of what our modern world sounds like, and what we listen for and hear – make a strong case for the primacy of ears. And each further suggests that our experience of our aural environment – in which sound, like light, heat, or water, can be turned on or off with the flick of a switch – is a hallmark of modernity.” Nando Times

The New York Times reviews Gibson’s Pattern Recognition: “Critics of science fiction grouse that Gibson can’t get far while steering the same old postmodern spacecraft, and dismiss his inventiveness as mere bells and whistles. But some die-hard fans lament that he’s deserting the mother ship every time he tries something off the flight path of his first novel, ”Neuromancer” (1984). All of which puts Gibson in the unenviable position of being able to displease many of the people much of the time.

If his elegant, entrancing seventh novel offers an answer to his detractors, it could be roughly translated as: so sue me. Pattern Recognition is almost nose-thumbingly conventional in design. Despite the requisite tech toys, it’s set squarely in the present. But then the dates of Gibson-action have been creeping steadily backward. Predicting the future, Gibson has always maintained, is mostly a matter of managing not to blink as you witness the present.” [more]