William Gibson holds a special place in the hearts of geeks of a certain age. His writing communicated something urgent and important about the way technology was going, and still colours the way we think about the virtual spaces that are called cyberspace. His decision to promote his new book in Second Life was therefore heavily freighted with meaning. It did not disappoint, as it perfectly captured the beguiling appeal and horrible frustrations of current virtual worlds technology.

First of all, like budding fans of Harry Potter, you had to get there early. Because only about sixty people can attend an event held on a single simulator, or server, in Second Life, it was clearly going to be full up. I logged in about two hours early in order to bag a seat. The event’s organisers, virtual worlds services company Rivers Run Red and Jeremy Ettinghausen of Penguin books, kindly arranged a screening of a film about Gibson's work, "These maps have no territories," to while away the time.

The need to camp out early actually added a nice, Harry Potter-esque frenzy to the whole proceedings which I for one rather enjoyed. The crowd of avatars swapped gags and Gibson references, friends caught up – just as you would waiting in line in the real world. Then things got exciting: an error message appeared telling everyone that we were going to be forced to leave. We were all thrown into the air and left hovering over the water outside building we'd been sitting. We rushed back inside to recapture our seats, but alas some people lost their places, and had to go across to a simulcast at the Sky News building. (Hold that thought: that's people logging in to a virtual space, and having to go to another virtual space to get a virtual world re-broadcast.)

Finally things got under way, and Penguin's Jeremy Ettinghausen took to the microphone, explaining that there would be a short film, then a reading from Gibson, and then a Q and A session. We settled into our seats, a QuickTime logo appeared on the massive video wall in front of us – but the video wouldn't play. This was embarrassing. Here we all were, keen to get the endorsement of our cool virtual world from the Daddy of cyberspace himself, and we couldn't get the darn thing working. I was not the only one who was blushing.

With nicely British understatement, Jeremy apologised for the 'spot of bother' and announced that Gibson was in the building. Suddenly a large container, like the kind shipped on tankers, lowered slowly from the ceiling. Its doors opened, and out stepped Gibson's avatar. He took his seat in front of the microphone, and began to read from his new book, to huge typed applause. He spoke to us via an audio channel, and there was some amusement as he breathed into the mike before it was properly set up.

As with all book readings, it was hard to tune in at first – fans come because of the books they know, but then must listen to writing they don't. Gradually his reading worked its magic and we were transported into a scene in which the heroine was shown a strange new form of art in LA, in which a virtual reality rig overlaid images of historical tragedies onto real life street scenes – revealing the dead body of River Phoenix outside the Viper Room, his skin pale, his blonde hair recently dyed.

It was moving and fun to hear this. After the reading, the questions. These I always find excruciating at live book reading events: will the writer be asked where he gets his ideas? Whether he uses a pencil or a computer? Whether he realizes how insanely cool he is? I cower in embarrassment. However, in cyberspace the questions are sent via instant message and then relayed to the author, providing a useful dumb filter.

The big question on everyone's mind was of course how Second Life related to Gibson's original vision of cyberspace. This was code for, "Do you think we're cool and have we made you happy?" Gibson was nothing if not gracious in deflecting this question, and his answer underlined how radically different something like Second Life is from the dark, underworld vision of cyberspace in books like Neuromancer.

When pressed to imagine a real-world analogue of his version of cyberspace, he spoke of Japanese teenagers in basements hacking into corporate web servers to create their own illicit communications networks. For Gibson, his initial vision of cyberspace was a sort of electronic graffiti, a place of crime and darkness. Second Life's positive, corporate marketing spiel, "Your world! Your imagination!" could not be more different in tone and texture from this original dark vision. He spoke with bemusement of the impulse behind something like Second Life, a sort of Henry Ford-like optimism: "Let's go build cyberspace!" This was clearly an earnest capitalist dream that the drug-addicted mercenaries of Gibson's earlier fiction would have dismissed with a sneer.

In the end I had as much or perhaps more fun than if I had attended a book reading in the real world – surely a great endorsement of the potential of virtual worlds as a platform to bring people together to do interesting things. At the same time, the limitations of the platform, the technical glitches, the problems of scale, were also glaring. It's this curious glass half-empty, glass-half full quality that polarises debates around virtual worlds. Yet all in all I'm very glad I was there – and if I was there, then there's a new world to explore.

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Michael Parsons, now editor of CNET.co.uk, was once European correspondent for The Red Herring magazine, and spent five years working in Silicon Valley and worrying about technology. He can be reached at michael.parsons@cnet.co.uk

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