An out of this world event

I spent much of yesterday doing something a publisher should never have to do - buying skin for an author in preparation for an book launch. But when this event takes place in the virtual world of Second Life and when the author is William Gibson, normal publishing activity leaps out of the window.

The author of Neuromancer, Pattern Recognition and the just released Spook Country has legions of fans in Second Life and four hours before the event they had began to gather to await his arrival. Indeed so many arrived early that William Gibson himself could not get into the sim (the virtual space where the event was taking place) leading to a brief evacuation to allow the author to sneak in through the virtual fire escape. And then we were reminded that Second Life is still very much a world in its infancy by a video which failed to play - hopefully not too many were disappointed by seeing the quicktime logo for a few minutes!

But when William Gibson took to the stage, descending from the heavens in a customized shipping container, everything came good. He read from the opening portion of Spook Country and answered a series of very fine questions from the audience who hung onto his every word. Audio was beamed in from the MDM campus in Vancouver to the riversrunred studios in London, and out to Second Life. What made me happy about this event was that it gave people from all over the world a chance to be in the same space as one of their favourite authors, and during the event I was receiving goodwill messages from people thrilled to see him.

Should he return to Second Life he will find lots of friends, old and new, and I guess that this is what virtual worlds and social marketing is really all about.

Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher

PS Pics (these courtesy of Earth Primbee), these 'mixed-reality' images courtesy of the MDM campus, audio and video (some already available here)  from the event will be available very soon and there is a nice piece about it here.

Update: you can now download the audio of William Gibson's reading and the q&a below.

Download williamgibsonreading.mp3

Download williamgibsonslqa.mp3

And here's a cool video of William Gibson's appearance in SL - Thanks to Draxtor Despres for this

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Comments

[Desmond Shang]

Sir, it is absolutely remarkable to see one of my favourite authors within our world!

With regard to the brief mention of having Writers speak in Caledon, I extend our most Sincere Invitation and hope that you proceed! We would be Honoured to host.

Warm Regards,

Desmond Shang, Guvnah
~ Independent State of Caledon ~