Gibson gets hands dirty
for cyber-relevance

Author William Gibson will be embarking upon a joint effort with Penguin Publishing to promote his latest work, Spook Country, on Second Life, reports Wired.

"[We're] planning a range of William Gibson activities in Second Life; we're screening his fine and strange movie No Maps for These Territories; there's a competition to design an avatar for the man himself; we're giving away shipping containers packed with Gibson goodies and at the beginning of August, William Gibson himself will be coming into Second Life to read from Spook Country and answer questions," gushed Jeremy Ettinghausen of Penguin.

In its effort to keep apace in a new media environment, publishers are increasingly trying new tactics to keep manuscripts and authors in the public discourse. Some are trying social networking; others have harked back to overlooked technologies, like audiobooks, for an answer to the new technological riddle.

Appropriately, Gibson first coined the term "cyberspace" in a previous novel called Neuromancer.