Node Magazine
Encyclopedia
Node Magazine is a literary
project in the guise of a fictional magazine created to annotate the novel Spook Country
by William Gibson
.
The project is essentially a hypertext
version of the novel. It takes its name from Node, a non-existent magazine in Spook Country owned by Hubertus Bigend
, which employs the novel's protagonist to pursue the source of locative art.
The project drew attention from the novelist, and has been featured in The Guardian
, The Washington Post
, Salon
, The Seattle Times
and the Santa Cruz Sentinel
. The academic literary critic John Sutherland
has claimed that the project threatened "to completely overhaul the way literary criticism
is conducted".
of the novel mobilised "an army of volunteers" to track the references and assemble the cloud of data
surrounding the novel – every element of the work which is searchable on internet resources such as Google
and Wikipedia
. The pseudonymous author, under the nom de plume patternBoy, conceived the Node project as "a multi-author blog of fictional news stories in the Spook Country universe", and did not anticipate that it would itself become the focus of media attention. He declared the launch of the Node tumblog sister-site to Node Magazine on June 24, 2007, with the following announcement:
The project has precedent in Joe Clark's PR-Otaku, an attempt at logging and annotating Gibson's preceding novel Pattern Recognition
. Gibson has noted that while PR-Otaku "took a couple of years to come together", Node was complete before the novel was even published.
:
Gibson in turn has characterized the project as "a sort of little Wikipedia" for Spook Country, and has declared it to be "stunning," remarkably accurate, genuinely novel and "sort of scary." He has spoken of his newfound awareness when writing of "a ghostly cloud of hypertext
hanging around the text of the manuscript," the alteration this has on the way readers experience the text, and the fact that all his research will be retraceable by readers of his work.
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
project in the guise of a fictional magazine created to annotate the novel Spook Country
Spook Country
Spook Country is a 2007 novel by speculative fiction author William Gibson. A political thriller set in contemporary North America, it followed on from the author's previous novel, Pattern Recognition , and was succeeded in 2010 by Zero History, which featured much of its core cast of characters...
by William Gibson
William Gibson
William Gibson is an American-Canadian science fiction author.William Gibson may also refer to:-Association football:*Will Gibson , Scottish footballer...
.
The project is essentially a hypertext
Hypertext
Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the...
version of the novel. It takes its name from Node, a non-existent magazine in Spook Country owned by Hubertus Bigend
Hubertus Bigend
Hubertus Bigend is a fictional character appearing in the later novels of science fiction and literary author William Gibson. Bigend is the antihero of Gibson's Pattern Recognition , Spook Country and Zero History...
, which employs the novel's protagonist to pursue the source of locative art.
The project drew attention from the novelist, and has been featured in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, Salon
Salon.com
Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...
, The Seattle Times
The Seattle Times
The Seattle Times is a newspaper serving Seattle, Washington, US. It is the largest daily newspaper in the state of Washington. It has been, since the demise in 2009 of the printed version of the rival Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Seattle's only major daily print newspaper.-History:The Seattle Times...
and the Santa Cruz Sentinel
Santa Cruz Sentinel
The Santa Cruz Sentinel is a daily newspaper published in Santa Cruz, California, covering Santa Cruz County, California, and owned by MediaNews Group Inc....
. The academic literary critic John Sutherland
John Sutherland
John Andrew Sutherland is an English academic, emeritus professor, newspaper columnist and author.John Sutherland is now Emeritus Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London. After graduating from the University of Leicester in 1964, he began his academic...
has claimed that the project threatened "to completely overhaul the way literary criticism
Literary criticism
Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...
is conducted".
Origin
The project was initiated when the recipient of an advanced reading copyAdvance copy
As a marketing tool, publishers provide free copies of new titles to booksellers, journalists and even celebrities.Such books are variously referred to as readers editions, an advance copy, an advance reading copy, ARC or ARE...
of the novel mobilised "an army of volunteers" to track the references and assemble the cloud of data
Metadata
The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...
surrounding the novel – every element of the work which is searchable on internet resources such as Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
and Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
. The pseudonymous author, under the nom de plume patternBoy, conceived the Node project as "a multi-author blog of fictional news stories in the Spook Country universe", and did not anticipate that it would itself become the focus of media attention. He declared the launch of the Node tumblog sister-site to Node Magazine on June 24, 2007, with the following announcement:
The project has precedent in Joe Clark's PR-Otaku, an attempt at logging and annotating Gibson's preceding novel Pattern Recognition
Pattern Recognition (novel)
Pattern Recognition is a novel by science fiction writer William Gibson published in 2003. Set in August and September 2002, the story follows Cayce Pollard, a 32-year-old marketing consultant who has a psychological sensitivity to corporate symbols...
. Gibson has noted that while PR-Otaku "took a couple of years to come together", Node was complete before the novel was even published.
Significance
Sutherland credits the project as "giving an extraordinary reading of [the] novel in which everything is concretized – solidity and specification is added to [the] text." He has conceived this as nothing less than a new form of hyper-annotationAnnotation
An annotation is a note that is made while reading any form of text. This may be as simple as underlining or highlighting passages.Annotated bibliographies give descriptions about how each source is useful to an author in constructing a paper or argument...
:
Gibson in turn has characterized the project as "a sort of little Wikipedia" for Spook Country, and has declared it to be "stunning," remarkably accurate, genuinely novel and "sort of scary." He has spoken of his newfound awareness when writing of "a ghostly cloud of hypertext
Hypertext
Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the...
hanging around the text of the manuscript," the alteration this has on the way readers experience the text, and the fact that all his research will be retraceable by readers of his work.
External links
- nodemagazine.com
- node.tumblr.com
- "Spook Country" hyperlink cloud annotations a version with extra hyperlink annotations, without repeating the graphical images, with extra independent hyperlink annotations, re-ordered into chapter sequence order, as one medium / large blog archive file.
- ZeroHistory.net, a blog focusing on Gibson's prospective follow-up to Spook Country, provisionally titled Zero History