''Node Magazine'' is a

literary Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to ...

project in the guise of a fictional magazine created to annotate the novel ''

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'' (2003), and was succeeded in 2010 by ...

'' by

William Gibson William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as ''cyberpunk''. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, his ...

. The project is essentially a

hypertext Hypertext is E-text, text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typi ...

version of the novel. It takes its name from ''Node'', a non-existent magazine in ''Spook Country'' owned by

Hubertus Bigend Hubertus Bigend is a fictional character appearing in the third trilogy of novels of science fiction and literary author William Gibson. Bigend is the antihero of Gibson's ''Pattern Recognition'' (2003), ''Spook Country'' (2007) and '' Zero History ...

, which employs the novel's protagonist to pursue the source of

locative art Locative media or location-based media (LBM) are Electronic media, media of communication functionally bound to a location. The physical implementation of locative media, however, is not bound to the same location to which the content refers. Loc ...

. The project drew attention from the novelist, and has been featured in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'', ''

Salon Salon may refer to: Common meanings * Beauty salon, a venue for cosmetic treatments * French term for a drawing room, an architectural space in a home * Salon (gathering), a meeting for learning or enjoyment Arts and entertainment * Salon (P ...

'', ''

The Seattle Times ''The Seattle Times'' is a daily newspaper serving Seattle, Washington, United States. It was founded in 1891 and has been owned by the Blethen family since 1896. ''The Seattle Times'' has the largest circulation of any newspaper in Washington (s ...

'' and the ''

Santa Cruz Sentinel The ''Santa Cruz Sentinel'' is a daily newspaper published in Santa Cruz, California, covering Santa Cruz County, California, and owned by Media News Group. Ottaway Community Newspapers, a division of Dow Jones & Company bought the paper in 1982 ...

''. The academic literary critic John Sutherland has claimed that the project threatened "to completely overhaul the way

literary criticism Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. Th ...

is conducted".

Origin

The project was initiated when the recipient of an advanced reading copy of the novel mobilised "an army of volunteers" to track the references and assemble the cloud of

data In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted ...

surrounding the novel – every element of the work which is searchable on internet resources such as

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

and

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

. The pseudonymous author, under the

pen name A pen name, also called a ''nom de plume'' or a literary double, is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen na ...

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'
PR-Otaku
an attempt at logging and annotating Gibson's preceding novel ''

Pattern Recognition Pattern recognition is the automated recognition of patterns and regularities in data. It has applications in statistical data analysis, signal processing, image analysis, information retrieval, bioinformatics, data compression, computer graphi ...

''. 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 henovel in which everything is concretized – solidity and specification is added to hetext." He has conceived this as nothing less than a new form of hyper-

annotation An annotation is extra information associated with a particular point in a document or other piece of information. It can be a note that includes a comment or explanation. Annotations are sometimes presented in the margin of book pages. For anno ...

: 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

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.

References

External links

nodemagazine.com

node.tumblr.com
* -

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.
"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. * [http://www.zerohistory.net ZeroHistory.net
a blog focusing on Gibson's follow-up to ''Spook Country'', ''Zero History">ZeroHistory.net">"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 follow-up to ''Spook Country'', ''Zero History
'' {{authority control American literature websites
Literary criticism William Gibson