Rasenberger, Jim. “Book Lark.”
Vanity Fair May 1992: 124.
Short note accompanied by photos of William Gibson and of the first prototype for the Agrippa book.
[Full text of note; original in all italics:]
At six feet five and 150 pounds, William Gibson is the beanstalk giant of cyberpunk whose novels have transformed the sci-fi scene. Dennis Ashbaugh has weighed in on the cyber-scale with his massive replicas of DNA codes and computer viruses. After meeting last year, the Vancouver writer and the Manhattan artist began work on Agrippa: A Book of the Dead, a mind-bending collaboration that combines a series of Ashbaugh’s otherwordly etchings—which mutate when exposed to light—and a computer disk containing a Gibson tale programmed to self-destruct when read. Is enjoying Agrippa worth destroying it? Chuckles Gibson, “Anyone who would purchase such an annoying contrivance deserves the quandary.”