Murder of Nicholas Green and Hubertus Bigend: Difference between pages
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'''Hubertus Bigend''' is a fictional character appearing in the later novles of cyberpunk science fiction and literary author [[William Gibson]]. Bigend is the [[antihero]] of Gibson's ''[[Pattern Recognition (novel)|Pattern Recognition]]'' (2003) and its sequel ''[[Spook Country]]'' (2007).<ref name=lat/> |
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<!-- Image with unknown copyright status removed: [[Image:nicholas.jpg|right|thumbnail|250px|Nicholas Green]] --> |
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{{distinguish|Nick Green}} |
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'''Nicholas Green''' ([[September 9]], [[1987]] – [[October 1]], [[1994]]) was an [[United States|American]] boy who was shot and killed in an attempted automobile robbery while vacationing with his family in Southern [[Italy]]. When he died, after two days of agony, his parents chose to donate his organs. The lives of seven very sick Italians, four of them teenagers, were saved. Two of them, who were facing blindness, received Nicholas' corneas. |
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==Character history== |
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==Impact on organ donation in Italy== |
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[[Image:TomCruiseOct07.jpg|thumb|Bigend's appearance is compared by the protagonist of Gibson's ''[[Pattern Recognition (novel)|Pattern Recognition]]'' to that of actor [[Tom Cruise]] "on a diet of virgins' blood and truffled chocolates".<ref name=blood&truffles/> Cruise pictured here at the 2007 [[London Film Festival]].]] |
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At the time [[organ donation]] was rare in Italy. News spread around the world and the story was decisive in the growth of the awareness and number of donations in Italy. Since then, organ donation rate almost tripled in Italy, making it the second Country in Europe after [[Spain]]. |
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Bigend is introduced in ''[[Pattern Recognition (novel)|Pattern Recognition]]'' as the founder of the fictional "[[Viral marketing|viral advertising]]" agency Blue Ant, from the perspective of protagonist Cayce Pollard: |
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{{bquote|She's here on Blue Ant's ticket. Relatively tiny in terms of permanent staff, globally distributed, more post-geographic than [[multinational]], the agency has from the beginning billed itself as a high-speed, low-drag life-form in an advertising [[ecology]] of lumbering [[herbivore]]s. Or perhaps as some [[Alternative biochemistry|non-carbon based life-form]], entirely sprung from the smooth and ironic brow of its founder, Hubertus Bigend, a nominal Belgian who looks like [[Tom Cruise]] on a diet of virgins' blood and [[Chocolate truffle|truffled chocolates]].|||''Pattern Recognition'', p.6<ref name=blood&truffles>''Pattern Recognition'' Chapter 1: The Website of dreadful night, page 6</ref>}} |
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His name continues to be associated with organ donation and generosity. |
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Bigend hires Pollard to track down the source of haunting film fragments known as "the footage" that have been appearing anonymously online,<ref name=tu/><ref name=lat/> though she loathes him and suspects that his motivation is mercenary;<ref>{{cite news |url=http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20030131&slug=gibson31 |date=January 31, 2003 |title='Pattern Recognition' is Gibson at his best |first=Nisi |last=Shawl |work=[[The Seattle Times]] |accessdate=2008-10-09}}</ref> the exploitation of the art as a marketable commodity.<ref name=sfgate>{{cite web|title=Breaking the 'Pattern'|first=Michael |last=Berry |date=February 2, 2003 |work=[[SFGate]] |url=http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/02/02/RV237691.DTL |accessdate=2008-10-09}}</ref> In ''Spook Country'', it is told that Bigend successfully harnesses the footage to sell shoes.<ref name=lat/> |
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All that came out of the parents' decision is being referred as "The Nicholas Effect" (l'Effetto Nicholas), considering not only the organ donation deed, but also all the goodness and change of attitude that came out of Nicholas' story. |
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Gibson did not anticipate Bigend appearing in ''Spook Country'', but realised when writing about a non-existent magazine named ''Node''—characterized as a European version of ''[[Wired (magazine)|Wired]]''—that it was "way Bigendian".<ref name=stalin>{{Cite journal|url=http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/15-08/pl_print |title=Q&A: William Gibson discusses Spook Country and Interactive Fiction |first=Warren |last=Ellis |authorlink=Warren Ellis |date=July 24, 2007}}</ref>{{ref|a|[a]|}} Thus, Bigend appears as the backer of the ethereal magazine,<ref name=tu/> Again seeking out the origin of a new artwork (in this instance [[locative art|locative]]), Bigend hires protagonist Hollis Henry for the ostensible purpose of writing a magazine article on it.<ref name=lat>{{cite news |title=Shadow and act |work=[[Los Angeles Times]] |first=Ed |last=Park |date=August 5, 2007 |quote=[Hollis Henry] learns that Node magazine is a project of Hubertus Bigend, the zeitgeist-infiltrating force behind Blue Ant, a Belgian-based advertising enterprise that calls itself the "first viral agency." "He doesn't want you to have heard of him," one of Bigend's minions tells Hollis. He operates on the principle that secrets "are the very root of cool." The irony is that readers of "Pattern Recognition" have already heard of him, and there's something deliciously sinister in the fact that the antihero forms the most obvious link between [William Gibson]'s two most recent novels. Spoiler alert: In "Pattern Recognition," Bigend funded Cayce's search for the source of haunting film fragments appearing on the Web; here we learn that Bigend successfully harnessed that sublime technology (whose online scholars represented "the first true freemasonry of the 21st century") to sell shoes.}}</ref> Of Bigend, Henry is told that "he doesn't want you to have heard of him".<ref name=lat/> To sate her curiosity, Henry accesses his [[Wikipedia]] entry: |
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==Memorials== |
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A book by his father Reg, ''The Nicholas Effect'', was a bestseller in 1999 both in the USA and Italy. It has been translated in many other languages. |
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{{bquote|She tried the link for his Wikipedia entry. |
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A TV movie, ''Nicholas' Gift'', starring [[Jamie Lee Curtis]] and [[Alan Bates]], was made from the story. |
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Through the years, hospitals, parks, schools, streets, awards, even a bridge, have been named after Nicholas, throughout Italy. |
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The name of Nicholas is linked also to a scholarship established by the Nicholas Green Foundation and the [[National Association for Gifted Children]], [[NAGC]], awarded yearly to a primary or middle school student of every State of the USA, to promote excellence among students who have shown talent during the year. |
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Since 2001, almost yearly, jointly with the [[World Transplant Games Federation]], the [[Nicholas' Cup]], a competition reserved to children who suffered a transplant, takes place. It has been held in [[Switzerland]] in 2001, Bormio in Northern [[Italy]] in 2003, [[Poland]] in 2005 and [[Rovaniemi]] in the [[Artic Circle]] in 2008. |
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To Nicholas Green has been also dedicated, twice, the [[Providian Relay]], a 199 miles relay that takes place every year in [[Northern California]]. |
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{{bquote|Hubertus Hendrik Bigend, born June 7, 1967, in [[Antwerp]], is the founder of the innovative advertising agency Blue Ant. He is the only child of Belgian industrialist Benoît Bigend and Belgian sculptor Phaedra Senyhaev. Much has been made, by Bigend's admirers and detractors alike, of his mother's early years with the [[Situationist International|Situationalist International]] ([[Charles Saatchi]] was famously but falsely reported to have described him as "a jumped up Situationist [[spiv]]") but Bigend himself has declared that the success of Blue Ant has entirely to do with his own gifts, one of which, he claims, is the ability to find precisely the right person for a given project. He is very much a hands-on [[micromanagement|micromanager]], in spite of the firms's remarkable growth in the past five years.<ref> |
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==External links== |
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''Spook Country'' Chapter 15: Spiv, pages 74-75</ref>}}|||''Spook Country'', p.74-75}} |
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*[http://www.nicholasgreen.org/ The Nicholas Green Foundation] |
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The book reveals that the correct pronunciation of "Bigend" is "bay-jend", though this is seldom used even by Bigend himself.<ref>''Spook Country'' Chapter 13: Boxes, page 62</ref> |
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*[http://www.nagc.org/Awards/green/greenawd.html National Association for Gifted Children-Nicholas Green Distinguished Student National Award] |
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== Critical impression == |
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{{US-crime-bio-stub}} |
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{{US-med-bio-stub}} |
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{{Italy-bio-stub}} |
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Bigend is described by ''[[Times Union (Albany)|Times Union]]'' reviewer Michael Janairo as a "hyper-connected, ever curious, multigazillionaire",<ref name=tu>{{cite news|work=[[Times Union]] |date=August 5, 2007 |title='Spook Country' a compelling thriller: Bigend returns for the next big thing. |first=Michael |last=Janairo}}</ref> and |
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Green, Nicholas}} |
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by [[biopunk]] writer [[Paul Di Filippo]] as [[amoral]] and [[egocentric]].<Ref>{{Cite news |title=Prophets and Losses |work=[[The Washington Post]] |publisher=[[The Washington Post Company]] |date= February 2, 2003 |first=Paul |last=Di Filippo |authorlink=Paul Di Filippo}}</ref> Other appelations include "imperious" (''[[SFGate]]''),<ref name=sfgate/> "enigmatic" (''[[St. Louis Post-Dispatch]]''),<ref name=stl>{{cite news |title=Spook Country |work=[[St. Louis Post-Dispatch]] |first=J. Stephen |last=Bolhafner |date=August 5, 2007 |accessdate=2008-10-09 |url=http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/entertainment/reviews.nsf/book/story/D36BFAEFD76CD9618625732D0060AD87?OpenDocument}}</ref> "pontifical Belgian ad mogul" (''[[The Village Voice]]''),<ref name=vv>{{Cite news|title=How Soon Is Now? William Gibson's Present Tense |first=Dennis |last=Lim |date=February 11, 2003 |url=http://www.villagevoice.com/2003-02-11/books/how-soon-is-now/ |accessdate=2008-10-09}}</ref> "filthy-rich man-behind-the-curtain" (''[[Seattle Times]]''),<ref>{{cite news |title=Futuristic fantasy lives now for author William Gibson. |work=[[Seattle Times]] date=August 6, 2007 |first=Mary Ann |last=Gwinn}}</ref> "untrustworthy corporate spiv" (''[[The Guardian]]''),<ref>{{cite news |first=Toby |last=Litt |title=Back to the 80s |url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/apr/26/fiction.williamgibson |work=[[The Guardian]] |accessdate=2008-10-09 |date=April 26 2003}}</ref> "accentless Machiavellian fixer with unnervingly white teeth" (''[[New Statesman]]''),<ref name=ns>{{cite news |title=Milgrim's progress |first=Anthony |last=Byrt |date=August 23, 2007 |url=http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2007/08/spook-gibson-bigend-tito |work=[[New Statesman]]}}</ref> and "information-sucking android-like advertising guru and godgame magus" ([[John Clute]], ''[[Sci Fi Weekly]]'').<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.scifi.com/sfw/books/column/sfw9468.html |accessdate=2008-10-09 |date=February 24, 2003 |title=The Case of the World |first=John |last=Clute |authorlink=John Clute |work=[[Sci Fi Weekly]]}}</ref> |
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[[Category:Deaths by firearm in Italy]] |
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[[Category:Transplantation medicine]] |
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[[category:People from Sonoma County, California]] |
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[[Category:1994 deaths]] |
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[[Category:People murdered in Italy]] |
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[[Category:American people murdered abroad]] |
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==Footnotes== |
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[[it:Nicholas_Green]] |
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{{note|a|a}}''[[Spook Country]]''<nowiki>'</nowiki>s ''Node'' was the inspiration of the real-life literary project ''[[Node Magazine]]''.<ref name="scary">{{cite news |first=Chris |last=Watson |title=William Gibson explores the science fiction of the here-and-now in his new novel |url=http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2007/August/05/style/stories/05style.htm |work=Bookends |publisher=''[[Santa Cruz Sentinel]]'' |date=August 5, 2007 |accessdate=2007-10-30 }}</ref> |
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== Citations == |
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{{reflist|2}} |
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== References == |
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*{{cite book | last = Gibson | first = William | title = [[Pattern Recognition (novel)|Pattern Recognition]] |authorlink=William Gibson | publisher = [[Viking Press]] | location = New York | year = 2003 | isbn = 0670875597 }} |
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*{{cite book | last = Gibson | first = William | title = [[Spook Country]] | publisher = Viking Press | location = London | year = 2007 | isbn = 0670914940 }} |
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* {{cite journal | last=Petersen | first=Per Serritslev | year=2005 | month=April | title=9/11 and the 'Problem of Imagination': ''Fight Club'' and ''Glamorama'' as Terrorist Pretexts | journal=Orbis Litterarum | volume=60 | issue=2 | pages=133-144 | doi=10.1111/j.0105-7510.2005.00830.x }} |
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* {{cite journal | last=Wetmore | first=Alex | year=2007 | title=The Poetics of Pattern Recognition: William Gibson's Shifting Technological Subject | journal=Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society | volume=27 | issue=1 | pages=71-80 | doi=10.1177/0270467606295974 }} |
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* {{cite book | last = Miller | first = Toby | title = Cultural Citizenship: Cosmopolitanism, Consumerism, and Television in a Neoliberal Age |chapter=What Is Cultural Citizenship? | publisher = Temple University Press | location = Philadelphia | year = 2006 | isbn = 1592135617 }} |
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{{Gibsonian}} |
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[[Category:Characters in novels of the 21st century]] |
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[[Category:Characters in written science fiction]] |
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[[Category:Fictional businesspeople]] |
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Revision as of 19:50, 10 October 2008
Hubertus Bigend is a fictional character appearing in the later novles of cyberpunk science fiction and literary author William Gibson. Bigend is the antihero of Gibson's Pattern Recognition (2003) and its sequel Spook Country (2007).[1]
Character history
Bigend is introduced in Pattern Recognition as the founder of the fictional "viral advertising" agency Blue Ant, from the perspective of protagonist Cayce Pollard:
She's here on Blue Ant's ticket. Relatively tiny in terms of permanent staff, globally distributed, more post-geographic than multinational, the agency has from the beginning billed itself as a high-speed, low-drag life-form in an advertising ecology of lumbering herbivores. Or perhaps as some non-carbon based life-form, entirely sprung from the smooth and ironic brow of its founder, Hubertus Bigend, a nominal Belgian who looks like Tom Cruise on a diet of virgins' blood and truffled chocolates.
— Pattern Recognition, p.6[2]
Bigend hires Pollard to track down the source of haunting film fragments known as "the footage" that have been appearing anonymously online,[3][1] though she loathes him and suspects that his motivation is mercenary;[4] the exploitation of the art as a marketable commodity.[5] In Spook Country, it is told that Bigend successfully harnesses the footage to sell shoes.[1]
Gibson did not anticipate Bigend appearing in Spook Country, but realised when writing about a non-existent magazine named Node—characterized as a European version of Wired—that it was "way Bigendian".[6][a] Thus, Bigend appears as the backer of the ethereal magazine,[3] Again seeking out the origin of a new artwork (in this instance locative), Bigend hires protagonist Hollis Henry for the ostensible purpose of writing a magazine article on it.[1] Of Bigend, Henry is told that "he doesn't want you to have heard of him".[1] To sate her curiosity, Henry accesses his Wikipedia entry:
She tried the link for his Wikipedia entry.
Hubertus Hendrik Bigend, born June 7, 1967, in Antwerp, is the founder of the innovative advertising agency Blue Ant. He is the only child of Belgian industrialist Benoît Bigend and Belgian sculptor Phaedra Senyhaev. Much has been made, by Bigend's admirers and detractors alike, of his mother's early years with the Situationalist International (Charles Saatchi was famously but falsely reported to have described him as "a jumped up Situationist spiv") but Bigend himself has declared that the success of Blue Ant has entirely to do with his own gifts, one of which, he claims, is the ability to find precisely the right person for a given project. He is very much a hands-on micromanager, in spite of the firms's remarkable growth in the past five years.[7]
— Spook Country, p.74-75
The book reveals that the correct pronunciation of "Bigend" is "bay-jend", though this is seldom used even by Bigend himself.[8]
Critical impression
Bigend is described by Times Union reviewer Michael Janairo as a "hyper-connected, ever curious, multigazillionaire",[3] and by biopunk writer Paul Di Filippo as amoral and egocentric.[9] Other appelations include "imperious" (SFGate),[5] "enigmatic" (St. Louis Post-Dispatch),[10] "pontifical Belgian ad mogul" (The Village Voice),[11] "filthy-rich man-behind-the-curtain" (Seattle Times),[12] "untrustworthy corporate spiv" (The Guardian),[13] "accentless Machiavellian fixer with unnervingly white teeth" (New Statesman),[14] and "information-sucking android-like advertising guru and godgame magus" (John Clute, Sci Fi Weekly).[15]
Footnotes
^a Spook Country's Node was the inspiration of the real-life literary project Node Magazine.[16]
Citations
- ^ a b c d e Park, Ed (August 5, 2007). "Shadow and act". Los Angeles Times.
[Hollis Henry] learns that Node magazine is a project of Hubertus Bigend, the zeitgeist-infiltrating force behind Blue Ant, a Belgian-based advertising enterprise that calls itself the "first viral agency." "He doesn't want you to have heard of him," one of Bigend's minions tells Hollis. He operates on the principle that secrets "are the very root of cool." The irony is that readers of "Pattern Recognition" have already heard of him, and there's something deliciously sinister in the fact that the antihero forms the most obvious link between [William Gibson]'s two most recent novels. Spoiler alert: In "Pattern Recognition," Bigend funded Cayce's search for the source of haunting film fragments appearing on the Web; here we learn that Bigend successfully harnessed that sublime technology (whose online scholars represented "the first true freemasonry of the 21st century") to sell shoes.
- ^ a b Pattern Recognition Chapter 1: The Website of dreadful night, page 6
- ^ a b c Janairo, Michael (August 5, 2007). "'Spook Country' a compelling thriller: Bigend returns for the next big thing". Times Union.
- ^ Shawl, Nisi (January 31, 2003). "'Pattern Recognition' is Gibson at his best". The Seattle Times. Retrieved 2008-10-09.
- ^ a b Berry, Michael (February 2, 2003). "Breaking the 'Pattern'". SFGate. Retrieved 2008-10-09.
- ^ Ellis, Warren (July 24, 2007). "Q&A: William Gibson discusses Spook Country and Interactive Fiction".
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - ^ Spook Country Chapter 15: Spiv, pages 74-75
- ^ Spook Country Chapter 13: Boxes, page 62
- ^ Di Filippo, Paul (February 2, 2003). "Prophets and Losses". The Washington Post. The Washington Post Company.
- ^ Bolhafner, J. Stephen (August 5, 2007). "Spook Country". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Retrieved 2008-10-09.
- ^ Lim, Dennis (February 11, 2003). "How Soon Is Now? William Gibson's Present Tense". Retrieved 2008-10-09.
- ^ Gwinn, Mary Ann. "Futuristic fantasy lives now for author William Gibson". Seattle Times date=August 6, 2007.
{{cite news}}: Missing pipe in:|work=(help) - ^ Litt, Toby (April 26 2003). "Back to the 80s". The Guardian. Retrieved 2008-10-09.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Byrt, Anthony (August 23, 2007). "Milgrim's progress". New Statesman.
- ^ Clute, John (February 24, 2003). "The Case of the World". Sci Fi Weekly. Retrieved 2008-10-09.
- ^ Watson, Chris (August 5, 2007). "William Gibson explores the science fiction of the here-and-now in his new novel". Bookends. Santa Cruz Sentinel. Retrieved 2007-10-30.
{{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in:|publisher=(help)
References
- Gibson, William (2003). Pattern Recognition. New York: Viking Press. ISBN 0670875597.
- Gibson, William (2007). Spook Country. London: Viking Press. ISBN 0670914940.
- Petersen, Per Serritslev (2005). "9/11 and the 'Problem of Imagination': Fight Club and Glamorama as Terrorist Pretexts". Orbis Litterarum. 60 (2): 133–144. doi:10.1111/j.0105-7510.2005.00830.x.
{{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - Wetmore, Alex (2007). "The Poetics of Pattern Recognition: William Gibson's Shifting Technological Subject". Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society. 27 (1): 71–80. doi:10.1177/0270467606295974.
- Miller, Toby (2006). "What Is Cultural Citizenship?". Cultural Citizenship: Cosmopolitanism, Consumerism, and Television in a Neoliberal Age. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ISBN 1592135617.