Customer Reviews

Patterns

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In this collection are some of the best cyberpunk stories around. It is good to see this book finally back in print. All will see why Pat Cadigan is a well respected writer of science fiction and in the sub genre cyberpunk. If you want to read good short stories with a bite, then Patterns is the book for you.

I don't mean fun in the normal sense of fun, of course. Theses are not what anyone would call fun stories by any stretch of the imagination.

They resemble the works of Bradbury or Dan Simmons. Normal everyday events, somehow out of kilter a bit, or taking that half step behind the everyday to show... something else.

Not quite as brooding as Simmons, and not quite as adjective happy as Bradbury. Somewhere in the middle.

Overall, well worth reading, but they don't seem to fit in any particular genre. A little like this, a little like that. Horror maybe. But they're much too subtle to be horror. At least the conventional kind of everyday horror.

Pat Cadigan shows her breadth of writing style in this collection. It is an amazing read, and the stories are now like old friends--rather than the shock of the new. Highly Recommended!

With the stories in this collection, Ms.Cadigan calmly and methodically rips your beating heart from your chest and shows it to you. She puts it back, but it doesn't feel quite the same any more. My initial reaction to most of these stories was "Oh god - we should warn somebody!" but then I remembered - it's only a story. Or is it? Pat Cadigan just keeps getting better and better!

Another first collection, Patterns collects almost half of Pat Cadigan's short fiction from the last ten years. Cadigan writes from the dark underbelly of society, and she usually works in the impact of technology on her characters. It was this style that placed her within the Cyberpunk movement at the time. But Patterns shows that Cadigan's fiction centers more on people--it is the characters you remember from these stories, their problems, their horrors, their hopes--not ideas.

My favorite story here is "Rock On," a tale of music and ownership, the trap of job and ability. Gina, a synner (synthesizer), is on the run from her normal band, Man O'War. But Gina's problem is that she only knows how to syn, and that she loves it, even if she views it as a trap. Another author would have gone on to great detail about living synthesizers, yet Cadigan's focus is on Gina and her addiction/loathe for the job that she does so well. "Rock On" goes beyond any future punk posturings; instead, it is a metaphor for the last decades--caught in our good intentions, we are slaves to our livelihoods. (Cadigan's novel Synners is an expansion of this story.)

Then there's Martha, a businesswoman on her first trip to New Orleans in "It Was the Heat." Caught between being just one of the guys and herself, Martha's carefully created working mother persona melts under the hot sun, and she discovers that control is a delicate thing. And China in "My Brother's Keeper," the big sister from college who receives a goodbye postcard from younger brother Joe, the heroin user. She rushes back to save him, but finds that she needs to save herself.

As indicated above, Cadigan gives us the much needed female perspective in science fiction, and her style is such that it doesn't alienate male readers. If only more male writers could do the same for their female readers, science fiction could become the exciting prospect that was the hope of the cyberpunks. Until then, we should thank god that Cadigan is around to show what life, and literature, could be like. This collection is only recently available as a paperback (before it could only be had in an expensive small press edition); buy it now before it is out of print again.

You can't describe this collection of stories. They are all
magnificent. Buy this book.