Plots: Space, Conspiracy, and Contingency in William Gibson's Pattern Recognition and Spook Country

Abstract

The author William Gibson is clearly interested in space. However, as a novelist rather than a geographer, Gibson is interested in two kinds of plots: with locations but also with stories. His novels bring these two forms of ‘plot’ together: his narratives essentially involve the location and tracking of missing people and objects though space, as well as complex conspiracies; in his most recent novels— Pattern Recognition and Spook Country—these plots are set in motion by, or become tangled up with, members of security and intelligence services. They therefore seem like perfect examples of post-9/11 popular geopolitical texts. However, these concerns predate 9/11 by many years, and Gibson's plots are driven as much by contingency as conspiracy. As a consequence of this, unforeseen circumstances and the apparently coincidental meeting of characters both play an important role in the narratives. These geographies of conspiracy and coincidence are explored to suggest that, if Gibson is something of a ‘contingency theorist’, then it is partly because of the way he thinks and writes about space.