"If I write something set 60 years in the future I am going to have to explain how humanity got there and that's becoming quite a big job," [Gibson] said.
"Compared to that further investigation of our alien present seems actually way more doable and it may be more fun to do because it shakes all sorts of people out of the woodwork that want to talk to me," [Gibson added].
He's written two books since then, Spook Country and Zero History which are also set in the present. I haven't read them but supposedly they constitute a sort of informal trilogy.
I agree that Pattern Recognition is very good. Although I will always have a soft spot for Neuromancer and his related books and stories.
Read those other two - they're as good, if not a little bit better. Nothing stunningly different.
As a long-time neuromancer and Gibson fan, I can say his writing has changed and approached the modern day just as it should. Neuromancer made sense at the time it was published - the net wasn't around, it was a far out concept - lots of room for imagination. If it were only released today, it would just seem like really bad sci-fi because the net exists, now, and it's not quite what Gibson wrote about.
I'd the pattern recognition/spook/zero set are not so much current day as very near-future. They're entirely plausible with current technology, with a few inventions along the way that don't currently exist, but probably could.
PLus they're a good read.
I think WG has always said that writing sci fi for him and many SF authors was always really about the present. And if you read Neuromancer again, it really does bear out.
"Compared to that further investigation of our alien present seems actually way more doable and it may be more fun to do because it shakes all sorts of people out of the woodwork that want to talk to me," [Gibson added].
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11502715
Also, http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/09/william-gibson-interv...