"Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by
billions of legitimate operators, in every nation ... A graphic
representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in
the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the
nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city
lights, receding."
In 1984 William Gibson invented the word cyberspace in his seminal novel Neuromancer
and today, nearly 25 years later, a growing and significant number of
people are spending increasing amounts of time and money inside
'computer generated constructs', whether they be perhaps the most
analogous to Gibson's idea of cyberspace (Second Life), game-like
(World of Warcraft) or social (facebook).
So when we first started dabbling in
Second Life we quickly realized that something interesting Penguin
could do would be to bring William Gibson into this strange new place,
a place he seemed to have predicted and described years ago (though
he disputes this). Unsurprisingly many of the older residents of Second Life are hardcore sci-fi and cyberpunk fans and dotted around the virtual landscape are a number of sims with a
suitably dystopian
theme. And perhaps now we have a great opportunity to connect an
author and his fans in a totally new, and in this case totally
appropriate, environment.
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.
Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher
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The release of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol will once again raise interest in secret societies, and in particular the Freemasons. Mark Booth, in his provocative bestseller The Secret History of the World, offers an entire chapter on "The Age of Freemasonry." Booth's alternative take on history is relentless, charging through time and space and thought in interdisciplinary fashion; embracing cognitive science, religion, psychology, historiography, and philosophy, a new timeline is drawn, and a huge swath of our cultural heritage that has for long been hidden is restored. From Greek and Egyptian mythology to Freemasons, from Charlemagne to Don Quixote, from George Washington to Hitler-The Secret History of the World shows without a doubt that history as we know it needs a revolutionary rethink, and he has 3,000 years of hidden wisdom to back it up.
How would I be able to contact the author? I have so many questions about this amazing book