Who is Luther Blissett?

Birth of a Folk Hero

"Luther Blissett" is a multi-use name, an "open reputation" informally adopted and shared by hundreds of artists and social activists all over Europe since Summer 1994.

For reasons that remain unknown, the name was borrowed from a 1980's British soccer player of Afro-Caribbean origins.

In Italy, between 1994 and 1999, the so-called Luther Blissett Project (an organized network within the open community sharing the "Luther Blissett" identity) became an extremely popular phenomenon, managing to create a legend, the reputation of a folk hero.

This Robin Hood of the information age waged a guerrilla warfare on the cultural industry, ran unorthodox solidarity campaigns for victims of censorship and repression and - above all - played elaborate media pranks as a form of art, always claiming responsibility and explaining what bugs they had exploited to plant a fake story.

Blissett was active also in other countries, especially in Spain and Germany.

December 1999 marked the end of the LBP's Five Year Plan. All the "veterans" committed a symbolic seppuku (samurai ritual suicide).

The end of the LBP did not entail the end of the name, which keeps re-emerging in the cultural debate and is still a popular byline on the web.

Q is a novel by Luther Blissett first published in Italian in 1999. The novel is set in Europe during the 16th century, and deals with Protestant reformation movements.

"Luther Blissett" was a nom de plume for four Italian authors (Roberto Bui, Giovanni Cattabriga, Federico Guglielmi and Luca Di Meo) who were part of the "Luther Blissett Project", which ended in 1999. They now write under the name Wu Ming.

The novel has been translated into Danish, Dutch, English (British and American), French, German, Greek, Korean, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Basque, Czech, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish and Serbian. All of the editions keep the original copyright statement, which allows for non-commercial reproduction of the book.

https://www.lutherblissett.net/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_(novel)