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Jul
9
Penguin UK to mount William Gibson-themed Second Life expedition
Posted in: Press Room on 9th July 2007 by UKSFBN admin
Freshly posted over on the Penguin Books UK blog is news that the publisher is planning to host a series of activities within the virtual environs of Second Life to promote Spook Country [Amazon], the new novel by one of the founding fathers of Cyberpunk, William Gibson.
Spook Country is a modern-era thriller in which a freelance journalist is drawn (or is she actually being driven by her mysterious and possibly dangerous employers?) towards a mystery; a Cuban ex-pat is given orders that will change his life forever and a virtual-reality artist seems to be the eye of the growing storm.
It's also due to be published in early August and is the first William Gibson novel since 2003's Pattern Recognition so it's bound to be one that the fans will be eager to get their hands on; hence the start of Penguin's publicity push.
Penguin's Jeremy Ettinghausen explains on the blog: "Over the next few weeks - to celebrate and, yes, promote his new novel Spook Country - we're planning a range of William Gibson activities in Second Life; we're screening his fine and strange movie No Maps for These Territories; there's a competition to design an avatar for the man himself; we're giving away shipping containers packed with Gibson goodies and at the beginning of August, William Gibson himself will be coming into Second Life to read from Spook Country and answer questions.
"If you want to join in, log into Second Life, join the Penguin Readers group or get in touch with me virtually by sending an IM to Jeremy Neumann. We're looking forward to sharing a consensual hallucination with you."
As part of the prep-work for the SL campaign, Jeremy also got the opportunity to take William Gibson himself on a tour of some of the dystopian virtual environments that SL has to offer. Jeremy says: "It was quite a thrill to give William Gibson himself a short tour of Second Life at the end of last year. And while I am not sure what he expected, I don’t think he expected that his avatar would be publicly mocked for its lack of aesthetic qualities.
"We visited one of the hardcore dystopian cyberpunk sims and had a wander around. A group of cosplayers were sitting chatting on benches and when they saw William Gibson (obviously not appearing under his own name) a few catcalls rang out. He was, I think, both surprised and disturbed by this – I think surprised by the mocking and disturbed that in a virtual world where anonymity is prized and the usual laws of physics do not apply, appearance still seemed to be an issue for residents.
"This experience gave us the idea for the Design an Avatar for William Gibson competition – we want people to use their knowledge of his books and of the author to design something for him to don when he appears in Second Life in August. And, if the author’s reaction to Second Life is anything to go by, there will be no prizes for conventionality."
More information on William Gibson on the official William Gibson website or Wikipedia; more info on Spook Country from Penguin UK or Amazon.co.uk.
Source: Colin Brush, Penguin UK
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Tagged With: book news | competition | online | Penguin-UK | publishing industry | Second-Life | thriller | William-Gibson
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[...] Jeremy Ettinghausen offered UKSFbooknews greater detail on Gibson’s initial foray into Second Life: “…”We visited [...]
Awww - poor William Gibson. That is both funny and sad about the cat calls. This is a great article--I linked to it on my post about Spook Country. I will probably end up buying this book in the near future.