Here are some photos of my UK edition of Spook Country which Blackwell's bookshop managed to dig out for me on Friday 27th July 2007.
The different shades are due to the presence or absence of camera flash, which tends to glare off the shiny dust jacket cover. The shade is, to the human eye, effectively black.
I still think that the US cover artwork with the edges of the buildings and the slate grey / blue / green sky and clouds, looks the best.
Click on the thumbnails for larger images:
More images and blurb:
WILLIAM GIBSONSPOOK COUNTRY
'Like Chandler...an intoxicating stylist'
New York Times
In New York, what you've got on your iPod can be bad for your health...Tito, a young and athletic Cuban, has been asked to pass the 'old man' iPods in Washington Square. He doesn't know why and he's not stupid enough to ask. But the old man likes to speak Russian, and he knows a great deal about Tito's family, reason enough for Tito to make sure the old man gets what he wants.
Milgrim is a pill junkie hooked on anti-anxiety drugs who happens to be fluent in Russian - which makes him very useful to a man named Brown. Milgrim knows that Brown is involved with the military and therefore dangerous, and he's desperate to get away. But Brown keeps Milgrim on a short leash - for Brown needs a man who understands Russian.
Across the country in LA, journalist Hollis Henry has been asked to investigate Bobby Chombo, a man who knows the ins and outs of military navigation systems - who never sleeps in the same space twice. Unfortunately for Hollis - and one or two other interested parties - Bobby has very good reasons for not wanting to be found. Reasons that involve iPods and nothing whatsoever to do with music...
Spook Country is a thriller of the here and now, of what happens when old spies come out of the woodwork to play one last game.
£18.99
WILLIAM GIBSON is the award winning author of Pattern Recognition, Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, The Difference Engine, Virtual Light, Idoru and All Tomorrow's Parties. He Lives in Vancouver, Canada.
An interesting choice, by the Penguin Viking publication team, of a non-sequential order for listing William Gibson's previous novels.
Cover design by Pentagram Cover Photograph © David H.Wells/Photonica/ Getty images
The old man reminded Tito of those ghost-signs, fading high on the windowless sides of blackened buildings, spelling out the names of products made meaningless by time.If Tito were to see one of those announcing the very latest, the most recent and terrible news. yet could know that it had always been there, fading, through every kind of weather, unnoticed until today, that might feel something like meeting the old man, and carefully passing him an iPod, beneath a folded newspaper.
Each time the old man, expressionless and looking elsewhere, pocketed another iPod, Tito noticed the dull gold of his wristwatch, its dial and hands almost lost behind the worn plastic crystal, A dead man's watch, like the ones jumbled in battered cigar boxes at the flea market.
PRAISE FOR WILLIAM GIBSON
'A big novel, full of bold ideas. Races along like an expert thriller'
GQ'Part-detective story, part-cultural snapshot... all bound by Gibson's pin-sharp prose'
'Gibson casts an eye on our present and shows it to us as if for the first time'
NEIL GAIMAN author of AMERICAN GODS'More insight, wit, and sheer style than any of his contemporaries'
INDEPENDENT
In the earlier UK Cover artwork, the quote from the Independent newspaper was on the front cover instead of the New York Times one which is there now.
ISBN 978-0-670-91494-49 780670 914944
penguin.com