Friday, June 22, 2007

Harry Potter and the Deadly Hacker

The hacker, who calls himself Gabriel, said he had religious reasons for revealing the names of two key characters who allegedly die in the final pages of J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."

Bloomsbury, the London-based publisher of the Harry Potter series, deepened the mystery by refusing to say whether the ending published by the hacker was a hoax. Scholastic, the book's American publisher, also declined to confirm or deny whether the ending had been spoiled.

"There is a lot of material on the Internet. You can't believe everything you see," said Kyle Good, a Scholastic spokeswoman. "The only way we'll know for sure what happens is to read the book July 21st."

I think that this is just another fan-fiction publicised in a different manner. Given the number of fan-fictions available for the last book on the internet, no one would have liked to read this (Alert: might be a spoiler) one but this is a smart strategy, I must say.

JKRowling once wrote on her website :
We’re a little under three months away, now, and the first distant rumblings of the weirdness that usually precedes a Harry Potter publication can be heard on the horizon. I want the readers who have, in many instances, grown up with Harry, to embark on the last adventure they will share with him without knowing where they are they going. Some, perhaps, will read this and take the view that all publicity is good publicity, that spoilers are part of hype, and that I am trying to protect sales rather than my readership. However, spoilers won’t stop people buying the book, they never have - all it will do is diminish their pleasure in the book."
With a month to go until the book's release, Potter-mania is starting to build to a fever pitch. Read authentic information about the book here.

Update: Walmart has started "Harry Potter and the Walmart Pledge". Join their worldwide pledge and make the promise that you will keep the magic and not share the story's end!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I don't believe it, actually. Sure, it’s possible — probably even easy. But the posting just doesn’t read right to me