64:
144:
Bigend hires
Pollard to track down the source of haunting film fragments known as "the footage" that have been appearing anonymously online, though she loathes him and suspects that his motivation is mercenary; the exploitation of the art as a marketable commodity. Bigend and Blue Ant benefit from
429:
learns that Node magazine is a project of
Hubertus Bigend, the zeitgeist-infiltrating force behind Blue Ant, a Belgian-based advertising enterprise that calls itself the "first viral agency." "He doesn't want you to have heard of him," one of Bigend's minions tells Hollis. He operates on the
48:(2010). In an interview Gibson says "I've always had a sense of Bigend as someone who presents himself as though he knows what's going on, but who in fact doesn't. It's just my sense of the subtext of the character: he's bullshitting himself, at the same time as he's bullshitting all of us."
346:
the corporate universe has rejected in favour of the
Bigendian approach. The character of Bigend thus represents for Wetmore "a shift in the nature of capitalism and, consequently, a change in the way postindustrial technologies deployed by capitalism interact with the self."
338:(1984) and the entity which recruits him, characterizing both Bigend and Case's recruiter as "mysterious and potentially untrustworthy". Wetmore observes that Bigend "espouses a curiously communal and transnational approach to marketing" compared to that of the money-hungry
430:
principle that secrets "are the very root of cool." The irony is that readers of "Pattern
Recognition" have already heard of him, and there's something deliciously sinister in the fact that the antihero forms the most obvious link between 's two most recent novels. In
434:, Bigend funded Cayce's search for the source of haunting film fragments appearing on the Web; here we learn that Bigend successfully harnessed that sublime technology (whose online scholars represented "the first true freemasonry of the 21st century") to sell shoes.
199:, is the founder of the innovative advertising agency Blue Ant. He is the only child of Belgian industrialist Benoît Bigend and Belgian sculptor Phaedra Seynhaev. Much has been made, by Bigend's admirers and detractors alike, of his mother's early years with the
183:), Bigend hires protagonist Hollis Henry for the ostensible purpose of writing a magazine article on it. Of Bigend, Henry is told that "he doesn't want you to have heard of him". To sate her curiosity, Henry accesses his fictional
211:") but Bigend himself has declared that the success of Blue Ant has entirely to do with his own gifts, one of which, he claims, is the ability to find precisely the right person for a given project. He is very much a hands-on
1066:
914:
179:—that it was "way Bigendian". Thus, Bigend appears as the backer of the ethereal magazine. Again seeking out the origin of a new artwork (in this instance
724:
1554:
1584:
332:
Academic Alex
Wetmore identified a parallel between the relationships of Bigend and Cayce Pollard and that of Case, the protagonist of Gibson's
1559:
1574:
1041:
229:
The book also reveals that the correct pronunciation of "Bigend" is "bay-jhan", though this is seldom used even by Bigend himself.
1337:
840:
107:
She's here on Blue Ant's ticket. Relatively tiny in terms of permanent staff, globally distributed, more post-geographic than
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123:, entirely sprung from the smooth and ironic brow of its founder, Hubertus Bigend, a nominal Belgian who looks like
556:
Janairo, Michael (August 5, 2007). "'Spook
Country' a compelling thriller: Bigend returns for the next big thing".
1378:
1061:
604:
145:
Pollard's work both by the discovery of the origin of the footage and by a relationship he establishes with a
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1034:
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is a fictional character appearing in the third trilogy of novels of science fiction and literary author
111:, the agency has from the beginning billed itself as a high-speed, low-drag life-form in an advertising
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771:
Gwinn, Mary Ann (August 6, 2007). "Futuristic fantasy lives now for author
William Gibson".
484:
558:
447:"Maximus Clarke talks with William Gibson about his "speculative novels of last Wednesday""
263:
253:
which he likes because it is a color that cannot be represented on most computer monitors.
78:
267:
reviewer
Michael Janairo as a "hyper-connected, ever curious, multigazillionaire", and by
8:
1108:
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77:"on a diet of virgins' blood and truffled chocolates". Cruise pictured here at the 2007
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was famously but falsely reported to have described him as "a jumped up
Situationist
128:
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915:"William Gibson explores the science fiction of the here-and-now in his new novel"
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Petersen, Per
Serritslev (April 2005). "9/11 and the 'Problem of Imagination':
153:, it is revealed that Bigend successfully harnesses the footage to sell shoes.
23:
319:), and "information-sucking android-like advertising guru and godgame magus" (
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38:
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660:"Q&A: William Gibson discusses Spook Country and Interactive Fiction"
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313:), "accentless Machiavellian fixer with unnervingly white teeth" (
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169:, but realised when writing about a non-existent magazine named
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Bigend's appearance is compared by the protagonist of Gibson's
1137:
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was the inspiration for the real-life literary project
99:
agency Blue Ant, from the perspective of protagonist
878:: William Gibson's Shifting Technological Subject".
466:
464:
752:"How Soon Is Now? William Gibson's Present Tense"
461:
1546:
473:Chapter 1: The Website of dreadful night, page 6
195:Hubertus Hendrik Bigend, born June 7, 1967, in
163:Gibson did not anticipate Bigend appearing in
16:Fictional character in William Gibson's novels
1035:
880:Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society
575:"'Pattern Recognition' is Gibson at his best"
421:Park, Ed (August 5, 2007). "Shadow and act".
91:as the charismatic founder of the fictional "
191:She tried the link for his Knowledge entry.
706:(February 2, 2003). "Prophets and Losses".
1042:
1028:
869:
867:
702:
491:. Information Science Reference. pp.
476:
283:. Other appellations include "imperious" (
722:
487:Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics
301:), "filthy-rich man-behind-the-curtain" (
1555:Characters in novels of the 21st century
723:Bolhafner, J. Stephen (August 5, 2007).
696:
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173:—characterized as a European version of
62:
873:
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1585:Literary characters introduced in 2003
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998:
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874:Wetmore, Alex (2007). "The Poetics of
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1472:Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics
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239:Bigend again featured prominently in
1525:William Gibson: A Literary Companion
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603:Berry, Michael (February 2, 2003).
307:), "untrustworthy corporate spiv" (
13:
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634:. London: Continuum. p. 100.
405:
355:
295:), "pontifical Belgian ad mogul" (
14:
1596:
1365:Disneyland with the Death Penalty
815:Byrt, Anthony (August 23, 2007).
750:Lim, Dennis (February 11, 2003).
544:
1575:Fictional advertising executives
913:Watson, Chris (August 5, 2007).
573:Shawl, Nisi (January 31, 2003).
538:10.1111/j.0105-7510.2005.00830.x
382:
156:
127:on a diet of virgins' blood and
1379:Distrust That Particular Flavor
232:
1067:List of awards and nominations
509:
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356:
1:
1372:No Maps for These Territories
943:
788:Litt, Toby (April 26, 2003).
681:Chapter 15: Spiv, pages 74-75
389:List of fictional anti-heroes
245:, Gibson's 2010 follow-up to
1358:Agrippa (A Book of the Dead)
1262:Fragments of a Hologram Rose
399:
350:
201:Situationalist International
7:
1580:Fictional mass media owners
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693:Chapter 13: Boxes, page 62
121:non-carbon based life-form
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632:Fictions of Globalization
1570:Fictional businesspeople
1005:. London: Viking Press.
999:Gibson, William (2010).
984:. London: Viking Press.
978:Gibson, William (2007).
892:10.1177/0270467606295974
630:Annesley, James (2006).
605:"Breaking the 'Pattern'"
524:as Terrorist Pretexts".
251:International Klein Blue
85:Bigend is introduced in
1276:The Gernsback Continuum
841:"The Case of the World"
730:St. Louis Post-Dispatch
292:St. Louis Post-Dispatch
261:Bigend is described by
1311:Red Star, Winter Orbit
1146:All Tomorrow's Parties
227:
217:
142:
82:
1227:The Difference Engine
929:on September 30, 2007
839:(February 24, 2003).
483:Foth, Marcus (2008).
193:
189:
119:. Or perhaps as some
105:
66:
1404:First Person Shooter
817:"Milgrim's progress"
449:. September 22, 2010
79:London Film Festival
1165:Pattern Recognition
1109:Mona Lisa Overdrive
956:Pattern Recognition
923:Santa Cruz Sentinel
876:Pattern Recognition
709:The Washington Post
471:Pattern Recognition
432:Pattern Recognition
257:Critical impression
137:Pattern Recognition
129:truffled chocolates
88:Pattern Recognition
70:Pattern Recognition
58:Pattern Recognition
33:Pattern Recognition
1297:The Belonging Kind
83:
1542:
1541:
1318:The Winter Market
1249:
1248:
1012:978-0-670-91952-9
991:978-0-670-91494-4
790:"Back to the 80s"
658:(July 24, 2007).
580:The Seattle Times
502:978-1-60566-152-0
424:Los Angeles Times
298:The Village Voice
93:viral advertising
73:to that of actor
52:Character history
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1486:Derivative works
1157:Blue Ant trilogy
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925:. Archived from
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853:on June 20, 2008
849:. Archived from
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26:. Bigend is the
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959:. New York:
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931:. Retrieved
927:the original
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886:(1): 73–75.
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851:the original
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795:The Guardian
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