Node Magazine: The Next Phase
WARNING! This blog is SPOILER-HEAVY!
If this is your first visit, you may want to start at the beginning.
Thanks for taking the time to visit the blog that University College London professor / Guardian UK ciritic called “the future of literary criticism” and scifi legend William Gibson described as “cheap A.I.” and “completely original.”
To learn more about the latest developments in the world of Spook Country and prepare for Gibson’s next novel Zero History, please visit nodemagazine.com.
Thanks! -H.B.
Node 1, 2, 3…
Memetic Engineer has now created a secret subsite annotating the Node tumblog in chronological order [a much more accessible method, especially for newcomers].
Patternboy interviews cyberpunk legend William Gibson during a noisy boksigning at the Boulder Bookstore asking, “What question do you wish more people were asking?”
Node: “Remarkably Accurate and Inherently Unhealthy”
Someone is essentially doing a hypertext version of “Spook Country” at Node magazine, with chapter summaries and various annotations and illustrations.
Yeah, I’ve seen that. The amount of effort involved is a bit scary. The entries I’ve looked at have been remarkably accurate. Oscar Wilde said mirrors and cats are both inherently unhealthy to pay too much attention to, and I think that sort of Web site is in that category for me. - William Gibson / Now romancer by Dennis Lim, Salon
And Now, Towards Chapter 85…
345 posts.
84 chapters.
102 links to amazon.
100+ hours.
42 days.
When I started the Node project, I originally planned a multi-author blog of fictional news stories in the Spook Country universe.
When someone suggested that the site might be a subject of interest once the “inevitable googling begins” post-publication, I thought they were crazy. But just in case, I thought, it might be good to have something worth finding if anyone does.
Inspired not only by my favorite author, but at least as much by Anton Rauben Weiss’s amazing William Gibson aleph site and Joe Clark’s PR-Otaku, I set out to compile a doorway into the spooks within Spook Country.
Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that more than a few people would find these posts, much less William Gibson himself [who seems to like it - I guess I will find out in person on Saturday in Boulder, CO].
I want to thank all of those people who provided comments, encouraging words, and insights, especially my new friend Memetic Engineer.
And now, maybe it’s time to reinvigorate the original idea for Node with the Chapter 85 project. If you are interested in exploring the world of “cyberspace turned inside out,” please email me at admin@nodemagazine.com.
POSTSCRIPT: One of the themes in Spook Country is the use of iPods to smuggle data.
If you would like a complete transcript of the Node tumblog [minus the photos, maps and videos], email me at admin@nodemagazine.com. I will also give you the files that you can use to get the unecrypted files ready for immediate transfer to your iPod [which, even I must admit, is a bit scary].
She put the helmet on, turned it on, and looked up to where Alberto’s giant cartoon rendition of the Mongolian Death Worm, its tail wound through the various windows of Bigend’s pyramidal aerie like an eel through the skull of a cow, waved imperially, tall and scarlet, in the night.
– William Gibson [from Chapter 84. The Man Who Shot Walt Disney, Spook Country]Chapter 84. THE MAN WHO SHOT WALT DISNEY
Bobby, now also free of his anxiety [and] in the presence of Inchmale, explores a potential location for a music video of the Bollards “I’m The Man Who Shot Walk Disney” that will “introduce locative art to a wider audience while helmets like Hollis’s were still in the beta stage” if Bobby agrees to “get everybody else’s work back up on new servers, which he’d already done.”
Earlier, Hollis had glimpsed Tito with his brother Alejandro in a mall beneath the Four Seasons before they disappeared “down the concourse of heavily trademarked commerce.”
Hollis, with unfocused material for her unwritten article for the unlaunched Node, keeps her secret from Bigend and the others, knowing that “the whole business had to play out initially in spook country, and it might well remain there for a very long time.” [807 characters]
‘It’s not bad,’ said Bobby, spilling a little of his second piso mojado as he leaned back in his chair to see the top of Bigend’s building through Hollis’s helmet.
– William Gibson [from Chapter 84. The Man Who Shot Walt Disney, Spook Country]Chapter 83. STRATHCONA
In a bed-and-breakfast near a deserted Vancouver Chinatown, Milgrim–passing himself off as a traveling scholar writing about “revolutionary messianism” and carrying the cash and phone from Hollis’s purse–takes a Rize, settles back on the pillows, and begins reading his book while thinking of a vaguely familiar-looking woman [Hollis] he’d seen outside a used-record store by St. Mark’s Place. [395 characters]
‘And you’re writing your thesis on Baptists, Mr. Milgrim?’
– William Gibson [from Chapter 83. Strathcona, Spook Country]Someone has a website going where every single thing mentioned in Spook Country has a blog entry and usually an illustration so, every reference, someone has taken it, researched it and written a sort of little Wikipedia entry for it and all in the format of a website that pretends to be from a magazine called Node, which is an imaginary magazine, within Spook Country, and which turns out to be imaginary in the context of the narrative.
– Steve Ranger, Heading into Spook Country with the cyberspace guru [silicon.com]
“The FLDS is a breakaway sect of the Mormon Church that is under investigation by the RCMP and B.C. government because of allegations of sexual exploitation, sexual and physical abuse, trafficking in women across the U.S. border and teaching racism and white supremacy in its private – but publicly funded – school.”
About NODE
Countdown to the August 7, 2007 release of William Gibson's Spook Country with news, thoughts, serious spoilers and chapter summaries in 807 characters or less.