Bernhard Drax: Welcome to Second Life

Draxtor Despres operates in many dimensions, he took me on a tour of the virtual reality world, ‘Second Life’, and spoke all things metaverse, writes Heather Martin

The ‘Second Life Book Club’ is a very personal project for Drax, here represented by his avatar Draxtor Despres (Bernhard Drax)

I was in London. He was in Munich. We were lounging side by side in deckchairs overlooking the ocean. “We should teleport to Rachel’s place,” he said. So we did.

We were in the virtual world Second Life, where Bernhard Drax, known in Second Life as Draxtor Despres©, operates in many dimensions. First and foremost he is a user or “resident”, a fully paid-up enthusiast, with friends he hangs out with and islands to populate as he chooses. Second, he’s a student, having first ventured into Second Life 15 years ago as a radio presenter and then, in-world, learned the skills that saw him emerge as a filmmaker and “documentarian”. Third, he produces most of the social media videos for parent company Linden Lab. Last but not least, he hosts the weekly Second Life Book Club, featuring writers from Matt Ruff and Charles Yu through Larry Niven to Heidi James and Jonathan Lethem.

It was Lethem’s ocean we were looking out over, or rather the set Drax created for him. Apparently Lethem chose to manifest as a yellow duck. James was an eagle. Niven, on the other hand, adopted the persona of mediator, from his novel, The Mote in God’s Eye.