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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.

Fri May 30

William Gibson 2008 Book Tour

The official word on the 2008 Book Tour to support the paperback version of Spook Country [williamgibsonboard]: 

SEATTLE - TACOMA, WA
Tuesday, June 3

6:45 PM arrival
7:00 PM to 8:00 PM PST
Reading/Q&A/Signing UNIVERSITY BOOKSTORE
4326 University Way NE
Seattle, WA 98105
206-633-6443
www.bookstore.washington.edu
_______________________________________________________________________
PORTLAND, OR
Wednesday, June 4

6:15 PM arrival
6:30 PM to 8:00 PM PST
Reading/Q&A/Signing BARNES & NOBLE #2262
12000 SE 82nd Ave
Portland, OR 97266
503-786-3464
_______________________________________________________________________
SAN FRANCISCO, CA
Monday, June 9

6:45 PM arrival
7:00 PM to 8:00 PM PST
Reading/Signing BORDERS BOOKS & MUSIC #57
400 Post Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
415-399-1633
_______________________________________________________________________
SAN FRANCISCO, CA
Tuesday, June 10

7:15 PM arrival
7:30 PM to 8:30 PM PST
Reading/Signing CAPITOLA BOOK CAFE
1475 41st Ave.
Capitola, CA 95010
831-462-4415 
http://www.capitolabookcafe.com/
_______________________________________________________________________
AUSTIN, TX
Wednesday, June 11

7:15 PM arrival
7:30 PM to 8:30 PM CST
Discussion/Signing BARNES & NOBLE #2536
10000 Research Blvd., #158
Austin, TX 78759
(512) 418-8985 
_______________________________________________________________________
DAYTON, OH
Thursday, June 12
6:45 PM arrival
7:00 PM to 8:00 PM EST
Reading/Signing BOOKS & COMPANY @ The Greene
4453 Walnut St.
Beavercreek, OH 45440
937-429-6302
www.booksandco.com
_______________________________________________________________________

LEXINGTON, KY
Friday, June 13

6:45 PM arrival
7:00 PM 
Reading/Q&A/Signing JOSEPH-BETH 
161 Lexington Green Circle, Ste. B1
Lexington, KY 40503
859-271-5330 

_______________________________________________________________________

PHILADELPHIA, PA
Saturday, June 14

1:45 PM arrival
2:00 PM to 3:00 PM EST
Reading/Q&A/Signing BARNES & NOBLE #2646
3535 US Route 1
Princeton, NJ 05840
609-897-9250
_______________________________________________________________________

NEW YORK, NY
Sunday, June 16

6:45 PM arrival
7:00 PM to 8:00 PM EST
Upstairs at the Square 
with Martha Wainwright! BARNES & NOBLE #2675
33 East 17th St
New York, NY 10003
212-253-0810 
_______________________________________________________________________

BOSTON, MA
Tuesday, June 17

12:45 PM arrival
1:00 PM to 2:00 PM EST
Reading/Signing BORDERS BOOKS & MUSIC #120
10-24 School St.
Boston, MA 02108
617-557-7188
Sat Sep 8
NodeMagazine asks, "Is NodeMagazine Mostly About NodeMagazine?"
Fri Sep 7

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].
Thu Aug 30
WARNING! This blog is SPOILER-HEAVY! To start at the beginning...
This completes the Node programming day.
Sun Aug 12
Patternboy interviews cyberpunk legend William Gibson during a noisy boksigning at the Boulder Bookstore asking, “What question do you wish more people were asking?”
Review of William Gibson's appearance in Boulder, CO

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

Tue Aug 7

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]
Mon Aug 6
“ 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]