William Gibson on 'Zero History' - Intelligence Squared, Cadogan Hall, London, Monday October 4th, 2010 7pm - 8.30 - tickets £20 - £25 !

Given how popular William Gibson's previous reading / signing events in London have been, it is perhaps not a surprise that this forthcoming event for Zero History is much more expensive than the ones held at the TUC Congress hall, for Pattern Recognition and Spook Country .

William Gibson on 'Zero History'

Monday October 4th, 2010

Doors open at 6.15pm. The event will begin at 7.00pm and finish at 8.30pm.

Event Info

'In terms of influence he is probably the most important novelist of the past two decades' Steven Poole, Guardian

American-born William Gibson is one of the most acclaimed and successful writers of the last twenty years. He coined the phrase "cyberspace" and developed the concept in his bestselling first novel Neuromancer, creating an iconography for the Information Age long before widespread use of the Internet. Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive completed his first trilogy. He has written six further novels, moving gradually away from science fiction and futuristic work, instead writing about the strange contemporary world we inhabit.

Gibson will be talking about his life and work, and in particular his new book Zero History, which is set largely in London and captures the paranoia and fear of our post-Crash times.
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Venue Info

Cadogan Hall

5 Sloane Terrace, London SW1X 9DQ, Tel: 020 7730 4500

Tube: Sloane Square
Bus Routes: 11, 19, 22, 137, 211, 319, 360 C1

However, as William Gibson tweeted:

https://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/19634410839

London: the expensive seats http://bit.ly/9UTvu5

Tue Jul 27 05:49:47 +0000 2010

Ticket Type  Price
Stalls  £25.00
Gallery  £20.00

Cadogan Hall, a former church used for musical concerts etc., has a capacity of 900 or so in the main auditorium, so this is a big event, which should finance William Gibson's trip to London.

Cadogan_Hall_gsv_450.jpg

This event is organised by Intelligence Squared, who produce a glossy magazine and who hold televised and internet broadcast public debates . See this review by a Charles Moore, the former editor of The Daily Telegraph broadsheet newspaper:
The House of Commons no longer provides model debate
Charles Moore reviews Intelligence Squared, and laments the decline of proper parliamentary debate.

But of course the British interest in debate did not suddenly disappear. It was perhaps to answer the half-conscious sense of a vacuum that Intelligence Squared began. In 2002, its founders Jeremy O'Grady and John Gordon noticed that Lady Antonia Fraser filled the 750-seat hall of the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington with her talk about Marie-Antoinette. Why shouldn't they do the same, they wondered, with debates? They set up a company to achieve this.

As the title implies, the idea multiplies itself. Last year, Intelligence Squared ran 27 events. Frequently, there is such demand for the £25 tickets that they have to move out of the RGS to the more intimidating grandeur of Methodist Central Hall. Intelligence Squared has already licensed the use of its name in New York, Sydney, Kiev and Hong Kong, and is in the process of doing so in Nigeria and Brazil. It has a popular website on which films of the debates appear and written and weekly topical mini-debates can be found.

William Gibson will not, presumably, be debating anything, but this event and venue do show his increasing status as an important cultural icon in the United Kingdom, as elsewhere.

What else will William Gibson be doing between this Monday 4th October event and the Forbidden Planet Megstore book signing on Saturday 9th October 2010 ?

The hard core William Gibson Discussion Board fans from the UK and Europe will probably be mostly at the Saturday book signing.

october london gibson hacking 2010

About this blog

This is the ZeroHistory.net blog

Discussion and hyper link cloud enhanced literary criticism around the forthcoming new novel by cyber punk / literary fiction author William Gibson, which is currently in progress, and which is provisionally entitled Zero History.

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.

Email Contact

Please feel free to email us your views about this website or news about the issues it tries to comment on:

blog @ ZeroHistory.net

If you have confidential information that you want to share with us, feel free to make use of our PGP public encryption key for blog @ ZeroHistory.net or an email account based overseas e.g. Hushmail

William Gibson's Twitter feed - GreatDismal

William Gibson is now a keen user of Twitter, rather than his now seemingly abandoned blog, so that is now the most likely place to find the latest news about his writing, or travels etc.

It is also the place to spot his occaisinal requests to his fans, for help with research on specific background details, some of which may, or may not, end up in the finished novel Zero History which he is currently working on.

William Gibson's Twitter stream - GreatDismal

"Zero History" hyperlink cloud annotation

For "Zero History", we aim to repeat the success of our collaborative "Spook Country" hyperlink cloud annotation - re-orderd into numerical Chapter sequence.

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"

Zero History blog & Node Magazine - hyperlink cloud literary criticism & annotation

Gabriel Hounds - Systemneustart

The German translation of Zero History is entitled Systemneutstart - "System Re-Boot"

A class of students at the Philipps-Universität Marburg in Germany, have a group blog, which analyses some of the themes of this novel which they call:

Gabriel Hounds

Spook Country blog

Spook Country blog - SpookCountry.co.uk - includes discussion and hyper link cloud enhanced literary criticism of William Gibson's previous novel Spook Country

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.

Links

Wikipedia entry for William Gibson.

Official William Gibson Books website: www.williamgibsonbooks.com

Wiliam Gibson's blog post announcement What's in a name? of Zero History as the title of his new novel.

William Gibson's Twitter announcement of the Zero History title.

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.

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"Zero History" hyperlink cloud annotation

For "Zero History", we aim to repeat the success of our collaborative "Spook Country" hyperlink cloud annotation - re-orderd into numerical Chapter sequence.

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"

Zero History blog & Node Magazine - hyperlink cloud literary criticism & annotation

Zero History Cover Art

Zero_History_amazon_150.jpg

Zero History blog Cover Art category archive

Zero_History_UK_cover_art_150.jpg

Systemneustart_cover_150.jpg German edition: Systemneustart approximates to "System Re-boot"

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