The Blue Ant Trilogy
These three novels by William Gibson came out in the 2000s and have been a huge influence on me, especially the first one, Pattern Recognition. Find the basics about it on Wikiquote and Goodreads.
Hubertus Bigend & Blue Ant
“She’s here on Blue Ant’s ticket. Relatively tiny in terms of permanent staff, globally distributed, more post-geographic than multinational, the agency has from the beginning billed itself as a high-speed, low-drag life-form in an advertising ecology of lumbering herbivores. Or perhaps as some non-carbon-based life-form, entirely sprung from the smooth and ironic brow of its founder, Hubertus Bigend, a nominal Belgian who looks like Tom Cruise on a diet of virgins’ blood and truffled chocolates.” (William Gibson, Pattern Recognition)
““It’s about contingency. I help the client go where things are already going.” (William Gibson, Pattern Recognition)
““Yes. I want to make the public aware of something they don’t quite yet know that they know—or have them feel that way.” (William Gibson, Pattern Recognition)
“Far more creativity, today, goes into the marketing of products than into the products themselves, athletic shoes or feature films. That is why I founded Blue Ant: that one simple recognition.” (William Gibson, Pattern Recognition)
““I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s a title, yet, for doing whatever it is that would be required. Advocate, perhaps? Facilitator?”” (William Gibson, Pattern Recognition)
“‘I’ve learned to value anomalous phenomena. Very peculiar things that people do, often secretly, have come to interest me in a certain way. I spend a lot of money, often, trying to understand those things. From them, sometimes, emerge Blue Ant’s most successful efforts. Trope Slope, for instance, our viral pitchman platform, was based on pieces of anonymous footage being posted on the Net.’” (William Gibson, Spook Country)
“‘Intelligence, Hollis, is advertising turned inside out.’ ‘Which means?’ ‘Secrets,’ said Bigend, gesturing toward the screen, ‘are cool.’ On the screen appeared their images, standing beside the table, Bigend not yet seated, captured by a camera somewhere above. The Bigend on the screen took a pale blue cloth from his pocket, pulled out a chair, and began to dust its arms and back and seat. ‘Secrets,’ said the Bigend beside her, ‘are the very root of cool.’” (William Gibson, Spook Country)
“‘He doesn’t want you to have heard of him. He doesn’t want people to have heard of Blue Ant, either. We’re often described as the first viral agency. Hubertus doesn’t like the term, and for good reason. Foregrounding the agency, or its founder, is counterproductive. He says he wishes we could operate as a black hole, an absence, but there’s no viable way to get there from here.’” (William Gibson, Spook Country)
“I’m agnostic, basically. About everything.’” (William Gibson, Spook Country)
““We aren’t just an advertising agency. I’m sure you know that. We do brand vision transmission, trend forecasting, vendor management, youth market recon, strategic planning in general.”” (William Gibson, Zero History)
“He ate quickly, methodically topping up whatever metabolism kept him firing on those extra cylinders. She’d never seen him tired, or jet-lagged. He seemed to exist in his own personal time zone.” (William Gibson, Zero History)
““Narrative. Consumers don’t buy products, so much as narratives.”” (William Gibson, Zero History)
““It’s about atemporality. About opting out of the industrialization of novelty. It’s about deeper code.”” (William Gibson, Zero History)
“Guerrilla marketing strategies. Weird inversions of customary logic. That Japanese idea of secret brands. The deliberate construction of parallel microeconomies, where knowledge is more congruent than wealth.” (William Gibson, Zero History)