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Chapter 1. WHITE LEGO

Chapter 1. WHITE LOGO pages 1 - 8

'Rausch,' said the voice in Hollis Henry's cell. 'Node,' it said.

Chapter 1. WHITE LEGO
Shortly after 3AM on a Wednesday morning in the Mondrian in LA, Hollis Henry awakes to a call from Philip Rausch, editor of Wired-wannabe Node. 'They're ready to show you his best piece,' Rausch says."

Careful to not step on Odile Richard's white lego robot (apparently "collecting data with an onboard GPS unit"), Hollis ventures out to meet Odile ("the least chic Frenchwoman Hollis could recall having met") and Alberto Corrales (a "broad young Latino with shaven head and retro-ethnic burgundy Pendleton") at the Standard.

Presumably a "retro-ethnic burgundy Pendleton" is a plaid woollen shirt made by Pendleton Woolen Mills

Alberto, a historian of internalized space,” hands Hollis a VR visor tethered to a laptop with which she sees a memory from August 1993, released from time but frozen in space, of a dead celebrity outside the Viper Room.

Presumably this dead celebrity was not River Phoenix who died on 31st October 1993 outside of Johnny Depp's Viper Room.

“’Who?’ she asks, finding her breath.” [784 characters]

Chapter 2. ANTS IN THE WATER

Chapter 2. ANTS IN THE WATER pages 9 - 14

"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."



Chapter 2. ANTS IN THE WATER

In New York’s Washington Square, 22-year old Tito, a Havana-born immigrant fluent in Russian, secretly passes an iPod to an old man in "dead man's" clothing. Tito’s older cousin, Alejandro "has been chosen to apprentice under Juana, their aunt, the family’s master forger."

In a Chinese restaurant on Canal Street, Tito and Alejandro discuss their "invisible raft of tradecraft, the protocol," passed down from their grandfather, the craft of a crime family surviving in a dangerous world. [488 characters]


Chapter 3. VOLAPUK

Chapter 3. VOLAPUK pages 15 - 19

"Milgrim, wearing the Paul Stuart overcoat he’d stolen the month before from a Fifth Avenue deli, watched Brown unlock the oversized steel-sheathed door with a pair of keys taken from a small transparent Ziploc bag..."

Chapter 3. VOLAPUK
Brown (cop? FBI? DEA?) supplies his "hostage," East Village attic Milgrim, with just enough Ativan to keep him "not there," protected from Dennis Birdwell (Milgrim's former dealer)... and cooperative. Brown is tracking IFs (Illegal Facilitators) "whose crimes facilitated the crimes of others"

In the United Kingdom, there is now the Serious Crime Bill legislation being introduced which attempts to criminalise such illegal facilitator behaviour, even where there is no actual proof of conspiracy or involvement or prior knowledge of any actual crime.

and needs Milgrim's rare ability to translate Volapuk, an artificial Russian language using Roman letters to approximate Cyrillic ones.

Brown’s IF of focus is a Russian-speaking "ethnic (Cuban-Chinese? Filipino?) version of a younger Johnny Depp," Alejandro’s cousin Tito. [566 characters]

Chapter 4. INTO THE LOCATIVE

Chapter 4. INTO THE LOCATIVE pages 20 - 24

"The Standard had an all-night restaurant off its lobby--a long, glass-frosted operation with wide booths upholstered in matte-black tuck-and-roll punctuated by the gnarled phalli of half a dozen San Pedro cacti."

"See-bare-espace... it is everting." - Odile Richards


Chapter 4. INTO THE LOCATIVE
Over breakfast with Odile and Alberto, Hollis (former "singer in an early-nineties cult band" The Curfew) learns of other locative art installations, "spatially tagged hypermedia." "virtual shrines" to the past made possible by geohacking and "(v)isible to all" on special devices such as those designed by Alberto.

Are these the "head up display" devices the pre-cursors of the sunglasses in Virtual Light ?

Hollis realizes that she has something to write about for Node, "though she was still a long way from knowing what it was." [439 characters]


Chapter 5. TWO KINDS OF EMPTY

Chapter 5. TWO KINDS OF EMPTY pages 25 - 26

"Coming back from the Sunrise Market on Broome, just before they closed, Tito stopped to look in the windows of Yohji Yamamoto, on Grand Street."

Chapter 5. TWO KINDS OF EMPTY
Tito contemplates shades of austerity: Japanese, Cuban, other, before thoughts drift to Alejandro (dealing to curators below Times Square in "that reddish twilight, amid sleepy Puerto Rican transvestites and a few hustlers taking their breaks from Port Authority?"). [266 characters]

Are the "Port Authority hustlers" street criminals etc. who prey on the new arrivals in New York or is this also a reference to the property speculators, bureaucrats and office sararymen who work or live in the Port Authority owned/leased office blocks and residential complexes around Battery Park and the World Trade Center site ?

Chapter 6. RIZE

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Chapter 6. RIZE pages 27 - 30

"Milgrim was enjoying the superior brightness of the nitrogen-filled optics in Brown's Austrian-made monocular well enough, but not the smell of Brown's chewing gum or his proximity in the back of the chilly surveillance van."

Chapter 6. RIZE
Milgrim fantasizes about hitting Brown over the head as they spy on Tito from a graffiti-tagged van. Behind locked doors and mysterious gray box alarms in a room at the New Yorker, Brown substitutes Rize for Ativan ("Same DEA Schedule fucking Four narcotic") prompting Milgrim to consider calling Birdwell, his former dealer to whom he owes money "under awkward circumstances." [378 characters]

The US Drug Enforcement Administration's Schedule IV of Controlled Substances, does not actually include any narcotics e.g. heroin, morphine etc. which are listed under Schedule I.

Chapter 7. BUENOS AIRES

Chapter 7. BUENOS AIRES pages 31 - 35

"Hollis dreamed she was in London with Philip Rausch, walking fast down Monmouth Street, towards the needle of Seven Dials"

Chapter 7. BUENOS AIRES
Rausch wakes Hollis (again) with news of a new lead: Bobby Chombo, the "kind of tech-assist (for) these locative artists" who may have special information re: "patterns of global shipping... or iPods... as a means of data transfer."

Hollis contacts her former Curfew bandmate Reg Inchmale re: potential information on Node and learns of its link to "advertising magnate" and Blue Ant owner Hubertus Bigend. [405 characters]

Chapter 8. CREEPING HER OUT

Chapter 8. CREEPING HER OUT pages 36 - 42

"She watched Alberto trying to explain the helmet and the laptop to Virgin Security."

Chapter 8. CREEPING HER OUT
After viewing a virtual monument to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s nonfatal heart attack on Sunset, Hollis watches former Curfew drummer Laura "Heed" Hyde pass by in a smallish SUV. Hollis uses her own Curfew legacy to convince him to introduce her to reclusive Bobby Chombo.

Alberto describes his artistic process for creating digital models that are unrealized without Bobby’s technical genius for facilitating the locative art projects (wiring routers, mapping GPS grids, etc.). Hollis learns that Bobby refuses to sleep on the same grid point twice.

Chapter 9. A COLD CIVIL WAR

Chapter 9. A COLD CIVIL WAR pages 43 - 46

"The message tone woke him."

Chapter 9. A COLD CIVIL WAR
Tito learns though Alejandro of his grandfather’s connection to Semenov, Castro's first KGB advisor, and "how (his) family came to be what it is." Tito also learns that old man helped his grandfather work the "big magic" that brought their family to America. A magic that carries with it an obligation for Tito to continue the legacy of his father and grandfather. [364 characters]

N.B. the picture entitled "Nikolai Nikolaevic Semenov (1986 - 1986)" of Nobel Prize winning Professor of Chemistry Nicolai Nicolaievic Semenov (1896 - 1986) is not that of "Castro’s first KGB advisor"

There are some web references to "Vassily Petrovich Semenov, a senior KGB agent in Montevideo in 1964."

According to the Wikipedia article on the Cuban spook agency the Dirección General de Inteligencia, (DGI):

"In 1970 a team of KGB advisors led by General Viktor Semyonov was sent to the DGI to purge it of officers and agents considered anti-Soviet by the KGB"

So even if "Semenov" was not actually Fidel Castro's "first KGB advisor", who may well have been "Nikolai Leninov, the KGB Chief in Mexico City, was one of the first Soviet officials to recognize Castro's potential as a revolutionary and urged the Soviet Union to strengthen ties with the new Cuban leader", the name sounds right for such a KGB Spook.

Chapter 10. NEW DEVONIAN

Chapter 10. NEW DEVONIAN pages 47 - 49

"Milgrim was dreaming of the Flagellant Messiah, of the Pseudo Baldwin and the Master of Hungary, when Brown reached down into the hot shallows of his sleep, dug his thumbs into his shoulders, and shook him, hard."

Chapter 10. NEW DEVONIAN
Green-gloved Brown demands Milgrim to translate a cryptic message intercepted by a surveillance bug. Penniless and ID-less Milgrim ponders the Flagellant Messiah and the possibilities hidden with the "warmly rippling amniotic soup" of Rize, his new drug of choice, including thoughts of freedom beyond the gray boxes of Brown’s captivity. [338 characters]

Who are Brown and Migrim snooping on ? If secret messages or data are being passed around using IPods, then where is the opportunity to use a "surveillance bug" ?

Will this be spelled out in more detail, or will we just have to imagine it from a typically sparse and oblique reference, loaded with so many potential meanings, so typical of WIliam Gibson's writing style ?


Chapter 11. BOBBYLAND

Chapter 11. BOBBYLAND pages 50 - 56

"East on La Brea, Alberto steered the Aztec-lacquered VW, Hollis beside him."

Chapter 11. BOBBYLAND
Alberto reluctantly takes Hollis to visit the elusive Bobby Chombo at his nondescript studio in an industrial park off Romaine. Bobby is a "tech guy" and "mimetic literalist, without knowing it" with a "full-on Townsend-Moon hooter" who enables locative artists to get their work on the grid. Fortunately for Hollis, Bobby is also a fan of The Curfew.

Despite his initial coldness, Bobby shows Hollis a new advertising gimmick for a Tokyo department store, a holographic squid with wide anime eyes named Archie. [509 characters]

Eeek ! Perhaps "mimetic literalist" is close to the use of the term Memetic Engineer, which William Gibson had been thinking about at the time of Pattern Recognition

See London 2600 pictures from the Pattern Recognition book signing and reading, Thursday 24th April 2003, Trades Union Congress conference centre, 28 Great Russell Street, London

  • On accepting a London 2600 t-shirt and reading the A-Z list on the back:

    WG: "Memetic Engineer ? So soon ?"

    London 2600: "For several years now ..."


Chapter 12. THE SOURCE

Chapter 12. THE SOURCE pages 57 - 58

"Milgrim dreamed he was naked in Brown’s room, while Brown lay sleeping."

Chapter 12. THE SOURCE
Milgrim dreams of Brown sleeping childlike, surrounded by his pistol, flashlight and a large folding knife. Nearby in this vision is a crumpled paper bag full of a weeks worth of "unmistakable oblongs of pharmaceutical bubble-packs." [233 characters]

Chapter 13. BOXES

Chapter 13. BOXES pages 59 - 66

"She stood beneath Archie's tail, enjoying the flood of images rushing from the arrowhead fluke toward the tips of the two long hunting tentacles."

Chapter 13. BOXES
Accidentally hitting a button on the locative interface, Hollis sees what appears to be a huge shipping container, "translucent rectangular solid of silvery wireframe, crisp but insubstantial."

Bobby muses about his work with advanced GPS technologies ("the most interesting applications turn up on the battlefield, or in a gallery") while suggesting that his interests lie beyond war and art where one day we "internalize the interface" and walk around in a shifting reality of personalized channels.

Nearby are white legos and the "origami-beautiful packaging from someone's new iPod" while an e-mail from Inchmale suggests that there may be less than meets the eye re: Node which "no-shows where any mag should show, even if it were being kept under relative wraps." [767 characters]

The Node Magazine meme is already a bit stronger than that.

Chapter 14. JUANA

Chapter 14. JUANA pages 67 - 70

"He remembered her apartment in San Isidro, near the big train station."

Chapter 14. JUANA
While visiting his santero aunt Juana in Spanish Harlem, Tito learns that his grandfather was a Communist idealist who "put his family before his desire for a more perfect state." The death of Tito's father, a man of greater choices, was a catalyst for Tito's grandfather to seek the help of a CIA operative (the old man in the park) to move the firma (family) to the United States. [382 characters]

The idea of Spooks in Parks leads to a train of thought about "trade craft" - especially "dead letter drops" and "brush pass" meetings conducted under the Cold War "Moscow Rules".

There are quite a few examples of these, both fact e.g. the FBI double agent Robert Hanssen who used dead drops at locations including Nottoway Park, Foxstone Park, Cantabury Park etc in, Virginia .

In fiction, for example, Harry Palmer's bosses had a penchant for meeting with colleagues and opponents on park benches or at bandstands in St. James' Park etc. in London, in the film The Ipcress File


Chapter 15. SPIV

Chapter 15. SPIV pages

"Inchmale had always been balding and intense, and Inchmale had always been middle-aged-even when she first met him, when they were both nineteen."
    Chapter 15. SPIV
    After meeting with DJ-like Bobby Chombo, Hollis and Alberto talk about Bobby's tangential interests in digital music and podcasting. An "uncharacteristically philosophical" Reg Inchmale calls Hollis to re-reemphasize his wife's warning about Hubertus Bigend.

    Back at the Mondrian, Hollis reads Bigend's Wikipedia entry to learn his mother’s connections to Situationist International and of Hubertus' "gifts" including "the ability to find precisely the right person for a given project" and is interrupted by a call from Bigend himself who is waiting in the hotel lobby. [569 characters]

    The actual Wikipedia entry for Hubertus Bigend does not really exist, at the present time, although the search engine pulls up a reference to the Pattern Recognition
    entry.

    UPDATE: - there is of course, now a self referential real Wikipedia entry for Hubertus Bigend, containing the fictional one and a note on the pronunciation of "Bigend" ,which I created initially on 9th August 2007

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubertus_Bigend

Chapter 16. KNOWN EXITS

Chapter 16. KNOWN EXITS pages 77 - 79

"Milgrim was reading the New York Times, finishing his breakfast coffee in a bakery on Bleecker, while Brown conducted a series of quiet, tense and extremely pissed-off conversations with whomever was supposed to be in charge of watching the IF’s known exits, when the IF was home sleeping - or whatever the IF did, when he as home."

[...]

"If Brown had declared that the Queen of England to be a shape-shifting alien reptile, craving the warm flesh of human infants, Milgrim would not have argued."


Chapter 16. KNOWN EXITS
As Brown is reading one of his flunkies the riot act over the phone, Milgrim reads an article in the New York Times about NSA wiretapping. Milgrim wonders aloud to Brown why the NSA couldn't spy on the IF’s operations and translate the Volapuk instead of him. Despite Brown's assertion that NSA wiretaps are only approved for international calls, Milgrim begins to wonder if Brown is a government agent or "just an asshole with a gun." [434 characters]

Good question about the NSA, if this were actually an official US Government surveillance operation.

The National Security Agency (NSA), of course, has for years got around this by getting the equivalent United Kingdom Government Communications HeadQuarters (GCHQ) or other Australian, Canadian , New Zealand etc. intelligence sharing treaty signatories, to do this sort of thing on their behalf, and vice versa. - see Cryptome on the Echelon system.

Chapter 17. PIRATES AND TEAMS

Chapter 17. PIRATES AND TEAMS pages 80 - 89

"The front of her Mondrian haircut had started to remind her of Bobby Chombo's elephantiasis-of-the-forelock, the result of an ongoing interaction of product with particulates."

[...]

"She ran her thumbs along a lambskin seat seam [in the Phaeton]. Like touching the butt of a supermodel, probably"


Chapter 17. PIRATES AND TEAMS
Bigend tells Hollis about a covert operation where the CIA, disguised as pirates, were working with real pirates (the best "were out of Aceh, in northern Sumatra") to stop "suspect cargo vessels to search for weapons of mass destruction."

In August 2003, one of these teams discovered a shipping container aboard a Panamanian freighter and was ordered to leave the container and not look inside. Since then, the container has been constantly on the move and Bigend believes that Bobby Chombo "periodically knows where that container is." [538 characters]

If a Container is buried under a pile of others, in the hold of a Container Ship (rather than being one of the few actually on deck) it must be difficult to check it properly when at sea, rather than when it is unloaded at a Container Terminal Port.

Piracy on the high seas, is still a major violent crime, and , despite the hype,should not to be confused with so called "piracy" when what is really meant is non-criminal civil tort copyright infringement of music and films etc.

The maritime Automatic Identification System broadcasts by modern seagoing ships over gross 300 tonnes and all passenger ships. AIS gives details of their position (obtained from GPS and other radio beacon navigation systems), name, type of vessel etc., which feeds into various Geographical Information Systems, and is,unencrypted, and vulnerable to interception by people like Bobby Chombo or other military, criminal, terrorist or pirate interested third parties.

House of Commons Hansard 18 July 2006 : Column 264W

  • Automatic Identification System

    Mr. Brazier: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what plans he has to tackle the vulnerability of automatic identification systems to pirates. [86263]

    Dr. Ladyman: The Department has already advised Masters of UK and Red Ensign Group registered shipping that they may temporarily cease broadcasting automatic identification system signals when in open waters, if they judge that the security of the vessel is being compromised by them. More detailed advice to Masters on this issue is contained in the Department’s counter piracy note issued to mariners, published in November 2005, as Marine Guidance Note 298.

    The Department has also reached an agreement with an internet provider of AIS information to introduce a package of risk mitigation measures including a time delay and a reduction in the quantity of information accessible from the site.

See:Marine Guidance Note MGN 298 (M) - Measures to Counter Piracy, Armed Robbery and other Acts of Violence against Merchant Shipping

Chapter 18. Eleggua's Windo

Chapter 18. Eleggua's Window pages 90 - 93

"Tia Juana sent him walking, crosstown along the 110th, to Amsterdam and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the better to consult Eleggua."

Also see the "Communications Bay" extract (which may or may not be quite what will be published) in this William Gibson Blog entry of Friday, March 10, 2006


Chapter 18. Eleggua's Window
As instructed by his aunt Juana, Tito visits Cathedral of St. John the Divine to consult the Santiera Orisha (deity) Eleggua, "owner of the roads and doors of this world. Lord of the crossroads, intersections of the human and the divine" whose stained glass window shows "a man climbing a pole to install a wiretap; another man studying the monitor of a computer."

The old man from the park approaches Tito (who reminds the old man of Tito’s father and grandfather) and tells him that he must make another delivery where he will be followed and must lose the delivery to the "them." The old man tells Tito that he will then need to leave the country when the purposely-botched delivery is completed. [698 characters]

This huge unfinished Episcopalian Cathedral of St. John the Divine has a "Communications Bay" stained glass window which depicts printing presses, telegraph, Linotype, broadcasting etc.

wiretap_monitor_stained_glass_300l.jpg

Is this the image which William Gibson is re-interpreting through his cyberpunk mirrorshades for his "Eleggua’s Window" ?

Communications_Bay_300l.jpg

tvglass_150.jpg

N.B. the first two images are adapted from this high resolution image from this web browser crashing webpage from Museum Planet

Chapter 19. FISH

Chapter 19. FISH pages 94 - 99

"Brown took Milgrim back to the Korean-owned laundry on Lafayette Street, for parking."

Chapter 19. FISH
Brown and his hostage Milgrim wait at a Korean laundromat where Brown seems to have "some arrangement" and Milgrim palms the cell phone of a "Real Spanish-speaking beauty." Milgrim uses the phone to call Fish (Fisher), a fellow benzo user also connected to the increasingly paranoid and violent Dennis Birdwell. [311 characters]

Does Milgrim make this phone call with, or without, the knowledge of Brown ?

Chapter 20. TULPA

Chapter 20. TULPA pages 100 - 106

"Had that woman in the wheelchair had an IV drip-stand in tow, one-handing her way across the intersection, the other hand keeping the chrome-plated upright of the stand erect?"

[...]

"The celebrity self is a sort of tulpa ("projected thought-form"). The celebrity self has a life of its own. It can, under the right circumstances, indefinitely survive the death of its subject."

[...]

"I've learned to value anomalous phenomenon... From them, sometimes, emerge Blue Ant's most successful efforts. Trope Slope, for instance, our viral pitchman platform, was based on pieces of anonymous footage being posted on the Net"



Chapter 20. TULPA

Hollis rides with Bigend to Blue Ant's hidden LA HQ where a Anton Corbjin portrait of Hollis rises above the conference table. Bigend tells Hollis that Bobby Chombo is "being paid handsomely to keep (the location of the shipping container) a secret, and his personality is such, as you’ve noted, that he likes having a secret."

Bigend believes that Hollis’ celebrity makes her "the person... whom Bobby is most likely to talk to." Bobby also appears to be periodically smuggling data hidden on iPods to San Jose, Costa Rica where there is "quite a community of retired CIA people there. DEA as well." [599 characters]

Will there be any clues as to where Blue Ant's hidden HQ might be in LA ?

About this blog

This blog is discusses and analyses the new book Spook Country by cyberpunk author William Gibson, published in August 2007.

This will be primarily from a United Kingdom perspective, as some of the themes of espionage and surveillance and hidden forces really do resonate in our endemic Surveillance Society.

This blog has been described, quite fairly, as "otaku-worthy immersion"

Email Contact

email: blog @ SpookCountry [dot] co [dot] uk

Here is our PGP public encryption key or download it via a PGP Keyserver.

Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers

Please take the appropriate precautions if you are planning to blow the whistle on shadowy and powerful people in Government or commerce, and their dubious policies. The mainstream media and bloggers also need to take simple precautions to help preserve the anonymity of their sources e.g.

Spook Country Links

William Gibson Books discussion bulletin board Spook Country *NO SPOILERS* forum

William Gibson Books discussion bulletin board Spook Country - *SPOILERS OK* forum

William Gibson video about "Spook Country" on YouTube and on the official website.

William Gibson Links

William Gibson blog - written by the author himself, on which he has test marketed fragments of his novel Spook Country whilst writing it.

William Gibson Books discussion bulletin board

www.williamgibson.de - William Gibson book promtion website in Germany

William Gibson aleph - lots of resources about William Gibson's works.

The Cyberpunk Project - some online texts of some of William Gibson's writings hosted in Russia.

Wikipedia Links

Wikipedia entry for "Spook Country"

Wikipedia "Spook Country" page edit history RSS feed or Atom feed

The character "Hubertus Bigend" has his own fictional Wikipedia entry in "Spook Country", which has now become now a real one.

Node Magazine

  • Node Magazine - a fictional magazine which "seems to be actively preventing the kind of buzz that magazines normally cultivate before they begin to exist" mentioned in the hints given about the Spook Country book, which has already been created online by a fan (patternboy), before the book has been published.
  • node.tumblr.com - Node Magazine is publishing 2 Chapter Summaries and Quotations each day in the 42 day countdown to the official publication of Spook Country
  • Spook Country blog's "cloud of hyperlinks" in numerical chapter order - commentary and annotations on the node.tumblr.com annotations to Spook Country.

Fictional British TV Spooks

James Bond 007

Stylish, if somewhat far fetched, BBC TV drama based on MI5 the Security Service - Spooks

BBC children's TV series M.I.High

2008 spin off TV series from Spooks [spooks] code 9 , set a few years into the future in 2013, in the Orwellian Police State which has emerged after a nuclear bomb attack on London.

Fictional Spooks

The Spy Wise Blog by Wesley Britton

Real Spooks

MI5 - the Security Service - counter-espionage, counter-terrorism, domestic surveilance

GCHQ - the Government Communications Head Quarters - intercepting and deciphering enemy communications, and protecting UK ones.

MI6 - SIS - the Secret Intelligence Service - mostly foreign intelligence - not quite like depicted in James Bond films.

Ex - Spooks

RichardTomlinson.org - Richard Tomlinson - still being harassed by his former employer MI6. There are also links to Cryptome's archives of articles and alleged, unproven, lists of names of former or mcurrent MI6 agents (including, improbably, some UK Ambassadors), which caused lots of controversy. Tomlinson denies publishing anything not already in the public domain.

Martin Ingram, Welcome To The Dark Side - former British Army Intelligence operative in Northern Ireland.

Operation Billiards - Mitrokhin or Oshchenko ? Michael John Smith - seeking to overturn his Official Secrets Act conviction in the GEC case.

The Dirty Secrets of MI5 & MI6 - Tony Holland, Michael John Smith and John Symond - stories and chronologies.

Naked Spygirl - Olivia Frank

Spooky Info

Cryptome.org - including various spooky documents which some Government agencies would prefer not to be online.

Alan Turnbull's www.secret-bases.co.uk - "An entertaining guide to using Internet-based research tools – Ordnance Survey's maps, Getmapping's aerial photos and Google Earth! to reveal the UK's "hidden" MoD facilities and military sites"

Eye Spy Magazine - " The world's leading newsstand magazine on intelligence and espionage" - photos, articles, book reviews, private sector surveillance equipment and services adverts etc. N.B. Sometimes uncritical articles on various anti-terrorism and espionage topics, presumably in order to keep in favour with their anonymous sources.

Historical Spooks

Science Museum, London - Science of Spying Exhibition - for Spy Kids of all ages until September 2007.

Bletchley Park - "Historic site of secret British codebreaking activities during WWII and birthplace of the modern computer."

Imperial War Museum. London

Spooky CyberPunks and CyberGoths

The Dose is a "free, downloadable PDF zine ranging from industrial and gothic music to indie game development, Japanese visual kei, eyecandy, cyberpunkness" produced in Hungary.The three (so far annual) issues so far, with another promised in July 2007 contain plenty of CyberPunk and CyberGoth images and reviews, with the occasional reference back to William Gibson or other cyberpunk fiction authors.

Spy / Surveillance Art Projects

Spy Box - "A digital camera inside a parcel looks out through a small hole and captures images of its journey through the postal system. The Spy Box was sent from my studio to the gallery taking an image every 10 seconds recording a total of 6994 images these were then edited together to create an animated slideshow." - by artist Tim Knowles

Benjamin Males - "Face Targeting and Analysis System (2008) - Software designed to find and analyse faces in a video stream. First stage in an ongoing project looking at the potential misuse of technology"

London CyberPunk Tourist Guide

As part of the preparations for William Gibson book signing and lecture event promoting Spook Country in London, during August 2007, this "local knowledge" guide to places of interest to cyberpunk fans was compiled, and has been subsequently expanded.

London CyberPunk Tourist Guide - http://CyberPunk.org.uk

Please feel free to add comments or send emails, to keep it up to date.

Zero History

Zero_History_amazon_150.jpg

Zero History blog - ZeroHistory.net - discussion and hyper link cloud enhanced literary criticism of William Gibson's forthcoming novel, entitled Zero History, which is due to be published on 7th September 2010.

See the Fragments of a Hologram Bill thread on the William Gibson Books discussion forum for the snippets of writing which have been released for discussion to the public so far.

Syndicate this site (XML):

Zero History

Zero_History_amazon_150.jpg

Zero History blog - ZeroHistory.net - discussion and hyper link cloud enhanced literary criticism of William Gibson's forthcoming novel, entitled Zero History, which is due to be published on 7th September 2010.

See the Fragments of a Hologram Bill thread on the William Gibson Books discussion forum for the snippets of writing which have been released for discussion to the public so far.

Cover Artwork

US cover art (the design we prefer):
US_cover_April_150.jpg

UK cover art:
UK_cover_February_150.jpg

See how the cover artwork designs have changed slightly over time in the Cover Artwork category archive

"Spook Country" hyperlink cloud annotation

Our "Spook Country" hyperlink cloud annotation - re-orderd into numerical Chapter sequence

The Node Magazine node.tumblr.com, which this was a collaborative online contribution to, was online even before the official publication date of the first hardback edition of the book in August 2007.

This has been commented on by the author William Gibson, and described by Emeritus Professor of English Literature John Sutherland as "the future of literary crticism"

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Open Rights Group

Tor - the onion routing network
Tor - the onion routing network - "Tor aims to defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal anonymity and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. Communications are bounced around a distributed network of servers called onion routers, protecting you from websites that build profiles of your interests, local eavesdroppers that read your data or learn what sites you visit, and even the onion routers themselves." The WikiLeakS.org project makes use of Tor as part of their anonymity infrastructure.

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BlogSafer - wiki with multilingual guides to anonymous blogging

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NGO in a box - Security Edition privacy and security software tools

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Reporters Without Borders - Reporters Sans Frontières - campaign for journalists 'and bloggers' freedom in repressive countries and war zones.

January 2020

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