Heya, I was just re-skimming Pattern Recognition, and I wondered, what year does this take place in? The wiki page claims summer 2002, but I can't find evidence of that year in the text. (That it's summer is proved by Damien's filming of the Dig.) Anyone got anything about the year?

I don't think it is directly mentioned in the text, although it may be calculable from remarks ("last fall" or something like that), but 9/11 looms large in the book, and given that it's set in summer, 2002 seems right. In the first meeting Cayce goes to, I think someone makes a remark about it. "Still sad," or something like that. Seems appropriate to 2002.

Also, I think WG has specifically said it was set in the summer of 2002 in interviews (or possibly even on his blog).

Thanks Colin -- you tipped me off to something I should have perhaps done before, which is search the forum for "2002", where I turned up a post by Ron Drummond (http://williamgibsonboard.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/6406046771/m/5256026312?r=5216072932#5216072932) with the info that Gibson mentioned 2002 in his blog post of 1-27-03.

(I say "perhaps" I should have done that because searching for information that you already know is there strikes me as loading the dice, even if I remember from some book on codes and ciphers that you should start a break a code when you already know what the message says.)

Still, I would love some textual support. The "still sad" (Dorotea at the initial meeting) seems a good marker. Though I'm haunted by Cayce discovering the footage "the previous November" in NoLiTa, and that can't be the November after 911 can it? Actually, I suppose it can, if she spent part of September and October putting up posters.

Then again, instead of trying to figure out what date it takes place in, perhaps I should be thinking about why the date is so unmarked (as opposed to the explicit dating at the opening of Spook Country).