Difference between revisions of "Thomas Pynchon Wiki:About"

Latest revision as of 08:21, 26 August 2013

The Pynchon Wiki was inaugurated on November 21, 2006, the same date Against the Day, Thomas Pynchon's sixth novel, was published. It was created by Tim Ware, who also built and maintains ThomasPynchon.com.

We have established wikis for all of Pynchon's novels, but not yet for some "uncollected" works. So far, in addition to Inherent Vice (2009), there are wikis for Against the Day (2006), Mason & Dixon (1997), Vineland (1990), Gravity's Rainbow (1973), The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) and V. (1963).

Pynchon Wiki runs on MediaWiki, a wiki software package licensed under the GNU General Public License. It is written in PHP and uses either the MySQL or PostgreSQL relational database management system.

Special thanks go to George Mandella and David Kipen for either inspiring, encouraging or helping to facilitate this project, to all the registered users — especially the Early Adopters (and especially Erik Ketzan) — for picking up the ball and running with it, to Kasimir Gabert for technical assistance, and finally to the developers and programmers at WikiMedia.org who created MediaWiki software. Wikipedia rocks!

Also a heart-felt thanks to Professor Don Larsson who graciously allowed us to repurpose his Companion's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow for the Gravity's Rainbow wiki, and to John Diebold and Michael Goodwin who allowed us to kick-start the Vineland wiki's page-by-page annotations with the content from their Babies of Wackiness – A Reader's Guide to Thomas Pynchon's Vineland website.

And, natch, many thanks to Mr. Pynchon for the gifts that keep on giving!

Stay tuned, as always...