Title: The Words That Took Us There. Ethnography in a Virtual Reality.
Author: Frank Schaap
ISBN: 90-5589-199-1
Publisher: Aksant Academic Publishers
US Distribution: Transaction Publishers

From the new back cover: Anthropologist Frank Schaap spent over two years participating in a text-based virtual reality or MUD (Multi-User Dimension). Participants project themselves into this MUD in the form of a 'character' and by playing this character's role they take part in an online world that is part fiction, part reality. The author explores the social and cultural conventions the participants use as the basis for the performance of their characters. Part of that performance is convincingly presenting your character as male or female and a substantial part of the analysis focuses on the construction of gender. Weaving fiction and theory together, the author explores the possibility of reading the MUD as a postmodern ethnography.

Yes, it's available online as well, from Amazon and Barnes and Noble for instance, Bol.com and Proxis in Europe and other places too I suppose. You should even be able to order it from your friendly neighborhood bookshop.

For some reason beyond my comprehension though, those shops insist on keeping the wrong subtitle listed, regardless of my publisher's and my own mails informing them that it's wrong. You still get the same book though. Feel free to mail Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bol.com or Proxis to inform them that they have the wrong subtitle listed for my book, you can copy and paste the above (correct!) information in your e-mail. Maybe they take action if enough people contact them about it.

Table of Contents

A short sample chapter is available by clicking on the Cybersphere link below.

Acknowledgements ____ ix
Glossary ____ xi

Introduction ____ 1

Chapter 1: Setting the Scene ____ 6

Arriving ____ 6
Cybersphere ____ 13
Dialing In ____ 16

Chapter 2: Constructing Dialogue and Gender ____ 26

Speaking of Text ____ 26
Performing Gender ____ 32
A Swish of Lace ____ 38

Chapter 3: In the Sphere ____ 41

Names ____ 41
Descriptions ____ 46
Meet the Rabbit ____ 73
Role Playing ____ 81

Chapter 4: Not an Ethnography ____ 102

Code ____ 102
The Real Body ____ 109
The Last Job ____ 124
Rewriting Illusion ____ 129
Disconnected ____ 137

Notes ____ 138
References ____ 148

Cover & Original Art

Paul Wynns, one of the players of the role-playing MOO I played on and where I did my research, was so kind to lend one of his drawings for the cover of this book. His homepage is here and features more of his drawings, inspired by manga and the cyberpunk genre.

Designer Jos Hendrix took this image and turned it into the cover of The Words That Took Us There. A pdf version of the cover is available for download here and it features the full cover, back and front.

It seems a long time ago now that I asked Paul if he wanted to draw the cover of my MA thesis. I'm very happy he said yes, because as you can see below, he produced a very striking image. Personally I think it would have made a great cover (it did so on my thesis), but the new one is pretty cool too.