Stories about the Future: From Patterns of Expectation to Pattern Recognition

Hollinger, Veronica. "Stories about the Future: From Patterns of Expectation to Pattern Recognition." Science Fiction Studies #100, 33.3 (November 2006). Linked here.[1]

Concentrates on "technoculture" and SF as a kind of postmodern realism in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake (2003),[2] Greg Egan's Schild’s Ladder (2002),[3] and William Gibson's Pattern Recognition (2003).

Additionally, see for

• Greg Egan's Schild’s Ladder as a post-Singularity work, with "Singularity" of the Vernor Vinge sort: a technological singularity highly dependent on "the increasing pace of technoscientific development, especially in the fields of artificial intelligence" (AI) "and nanotechnology."

• William Gibson's All Tomorrow's Parties and its climax less in "the destruction by fire of the Oakland Bay Bridge" and more in the quiet action by "Rei Toei, the Idoru [... who] frees herself from her dependence on technology and enters the world as an autonomous sentient entity"; and for "breakthroughs in nanotechnology [that] promise unprecedented changes in the very material of the physical world" (p. 461).

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WORKING Hollinger's "Works Cited" includes the following that might be of interest to users of the Wiki (but which we have not yet entered):

Best, Steven, and Douglas Kellner. The Postmodern Adventure: Science, Technology, and Cultural Studies at the Third Millennium. NYC: Guildford, 2001.

Broderick, Damien. "Racing Toward the Spike." In Prefiguring Technocluture: An Intellectual History. Ed. Darren Tofts et al. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2002. 278-91.

Clute, John. "The Case of the World, Two" (rev. Pattern Recognition). Scores: Reviews 1993-2003. Harold Wood, UK: Beacon 2003. 403-06.

Harding, Robert. "Manuel Castello's Technocultural Epoch in The Information Age. SFS 33.1 (March 2006): 18-29.

Sleight, Graham. Rev. Pattern Recognition. New York Rev of Science Fiction 15.9 (May 2003): 8-9.

RDE, finishing, 29Dec21