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The Novel as Software
LukePieStalker writes "Former English professor Eric Brown has published the first work in what he claims is a new literary category called the 'digital epistolary novel', or DEN. 'Intimacies', based on an 18th century novel, requires the DEN 1.2 software. The program's interface has windows for mock e-mail, instant messaging, Web browser and pager, through which the narrative unfolds. For those wishing to create their own works in this genre, Mr. Brown is marketing composition software called DEN WriterWare."
I know this is going to sound silly, but I read the title as "The Novell as Software"! Did anyone else make that mental typo, or "mypo"?
I'm not Seth Finkelstein. I still speak the truth.
Great: first of all there's no link in the NY times article to find where this guy's homepage is. Then I go to google, and the first link is a guy named "Eric Brown" who's an FBI top ten wanted person. But hey, this Eric Brown has published a guide to all Eric Browns on the net. Thank you!
Maan
am i the first one to think "novel as software" and think DUH!!! ??
Art imitates life!
Interesting concept. Sometimes it would feel nice to virtually live another life in such a detailed manner. This one is making me sleepy.
Now if only Microsoft could do something with this.....
*naps in his cube dreaming of malware-infected reading materials*
Interesting idea. But new literary category? Please.
I imagined a choose your own adventure novel online. If you pick the machine gun turn to page 36 if you pick the rocket launcher turn to page 54.
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
Really, this seems very much like the concept of .Hack//Sign.
That game takes place in a massively multiplayer online RPG; the events unfold through happenings in the world, posts to the message board and e-mail. It seems like this "novel" is very much the same thing, but perhaps more in depth.
In either case, as far as literature goes, there's no need to have people clicking around to get to the next part. That, to me, says "game". This can just as easily be accomplished in a book with a bit of narration.. it seems just an attempt to shift the style of narration.
-DrkShadow
but, you know, some professors just need to stir up a little press to get raises and/or funding. especially professors without any actual skills
Huh? Oh, yeah...
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
Does anyone else remember a PC game from the 80's called "Portal", which was more of a science fiction narrative that 'played' by reading 'updates' like this?
For that matter, this was a storytelling technique used in some 19th century classics, such as "Dracula" and "The War of the Worlds", which were narrated through news items, letters, journal entries, etc.
Portal was a great Sci-fi novel that I read back on my trusty C-64 back in the mid 80's. It was kind of like reading a series of emails and logs, and every so often it would provide you with "resarch material". Ah the good ole days.....
How is this any different from Interactive Fiction. Its form being epistolary (letter formed novel, like Dracula) doesn't matter - this whole idea is till basically interactive fiction...or am I missing something here?
I'm skeptical about his approach of building it as software. I played with a similar idea a couple years back, but I just replaced the letters and journal entries of the traditional epistlary novel with emails and chat logs (with the device of an older sister out of town who gets emailed the news to fill in the wholes left by not having journals).
More modern epistles makes sense, but I don't see how I can print this out as a book, which, old fashioned as I am, I prefer.
I remember reading DEN 2 in Heavy Metal about 20 years ago.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The epistolary form requires the reader to put additional effort into understanding the author's intent. It died out as a viable form more than a hundred years ago as authors realized their readers didn't want to put that much effort into reading. So they came up with the "omniscient narrator." (Hey, cool, now I don't have to think at all, the author is telling the story as if he were god, so I can trust everything he says!)
I doubt that people today are much more interested in putting effort into their reading than they were 100 years ago.
My predicition is that the DEN will not revolutionize writing.
Read any good sonnets lately?
There is a large portion of Iain M. Bank's "Excession" that is told as a series of communications between distant and powerful AIs. The joy of these pages is that they read pretty much like a cross between IRC logs and usenet digests. The same petty cliques and tendancies are on display. Even a sort of "TINC" concept is there.
Each message is topped and tailed by a fictional, futuristic header and footer with an addressing mechism, timestamp, location and the like.
I recommend it to all.
Now we're going to get tons of crap "books" which are really just lame attempts to show how people do stuff on computers... Good god, when will people realize that trivial actions on a machine are not LITERATURE??
This reminds me of those crap Reality TV shows that were all the rage a little while back (Survivor, et. crap.)
I can't believe this made /. and none of my submissions have been picked up!
I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking this right now...Hello...HEllo...Anyone...?
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.
WTF?!?
-m
#
# Modus Ponens
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Holy shit, don't people even read the blurbs anymore?
The software doesn't work like EA's old Majestic game... it's a self-contained program that creates a fake interface to the story's "emails".
A novel as software would use something like the Shakespeare Programming Language, but for novels instead of dramas.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
This FAQ will tell you everything you ever wanted to know and more about literary and other art forms based on displaying a variety of browser pop-ups to the viewer.
From the article:
And I couldn't agree more. I don't see this style as being appealing to me. Neat concept, but it's not quite "it"
topreacher@signature.slashdot.org 1% rm -rf sig
The key here is "Mr. Brown is marketing composition software called DEN WriterWare."
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
I also noticed that the amount of posts are really down recently for a lot of these stories. Some of them less than a hundred posts??
Maybe people are finding things other than slashdot to talk about!! Oh the horror!
Seriously, I think people are just on vacation and don't have computers around them (Odd concept, eh?)
Hey, that's an idea for a poll, when do you go on vacation! (Or have we already done that)
A long time ago (1986 I think), Activision published a game called Portal, and C64, PC, Amiga, Mac, etc. It is an interactive novel where an intelligent computer pieces together the story of why nobody is left on the Earth. The pieces come as memos, effectively e-mails, and you can browse other parts of the system for various bits of information on characters, events, etc. It's very absorbing and is obviously predates this "new" thing by nearly 20 years!
There are other excellent games from around the same time like The Fourth Protocol which, although much more interactive, effectively work in the same manner via an icon-based system. A brilliant game, by the way, highly recommended.
And I mean it, this is a stupid gimmick and will be forgotten in a week. Why did it make frontpage?
Griffin and Sabine (and the followups) did this with dead trees back in the late 80's early 90's. The book contained a series of letters, postcards, etc. between the two main characters. And unlike all the novels that were written in letter form before, the letters and post cards were physical objects in the book.
It's one of those oh-so-clever ideas that gets done once just to show it can be done, then is never done again because it's not that great of an idea.
There was even a video game like this. I think it was Majestic, http://www.gamezone.com/gamesell/p16652.htm , that I'm thinking of. You could give it your beeper number and it would call you, etc. A one person LARP.
How do Slashdotters feel about pirating novels? Is it "free advertising" or "sampling?" Just curious.
Software novels for computers? I'm sorry but this won't sell before AI.
...where you were sent e-mail, pages, called at work and home, on your cell phone, faxes, etc. Each event was a clue to a mystery, or an indication you had to go look for something.
I seem to recall the game folding itself up and going away immediately after the Trade Center Tower Attack.
Other than the phone and fax events, this sounds quite similar, and I suspect it may end up with some of the same flaws.
The primary flaw that I see with this is that I personally have no problem reading bits and pieces out of dozens of books, often several different books by the same author. This is purely my decision, and I am in a mindset for that book when I go back to reading it, because I choose to be. Getting IM's, e-mail, etc as "Novel" content, seems to me to be eliminating the reader's election to get back into the frame of mind for properly processing the content, and I suspect will end up being ignored.
Then again, I could be wrong.
-Rusty
You never know...
If all his works sound this appealing, then I'm sure he'll be making tens of dollars in no time.
Anyway, Griffin and Sabine has done the series of letters as a story already, and in grand style, I might add. The novelty novel. With paintings and cursive handwriting and little pasted-in envelopes.
Frankly, I can't think of anything further from the romantic ideal than ASCII. Of course, I can also think of several relationships which began on-line, so who am I to judge?
-FL
Don't we already spend enough time looking at our computer screens? Looking through a bunch of faux emails and webpages to "read" the story just doesn't sound appealing. Instead it sounds like a recipe to keep people in front of their computers even more than they already do.
Now, the one thing I don't see any indication of, but that several people have mentioned, is the ability to alter the story by how you respond. This DEN looks pretty cut and dried to me - i.e. the sequence of emails and webpages is preset to tell the story - it isn't something you as the reader respond to. Maybe I missed something because I didn't read the NY Times article (won't register) - but looking at his own site should have been more informative.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
More information about the novel, the software and the author can be found here.
It's not a bad read actually, even if the idea is not exactly new...
I'm sorry, I don't think that a novel in this form is going to be popular bedtime literature... it requires effort from the reader. Of course, there were many popular text adventure games, so it's not like there will be no market for this.
Just don't forget that interactive books aren't in vogue anymore. What's so different about this?
I mean, I love to read, many generes - from Terry Pratchett over Tad Williams to Karl May
But when I'm faced with interactive fiction I always get the feeling to have to "split up".
"So were all the subtile hints true? Is the conspiracy real? For Yes, go to page 56, for No go to page 241"
I somehow cannot stand such books. Sorry.
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
Yet another contribution to that age old conundrum. Other posters have weighed in on whether they like it or not, and whether it is even a new genre citing similar approaches going back over a hundred years.
..." That said it all.
An Anonymous Coward dismissed it entirely saying it was not even literature. Isn't it, though?
The one point that caught my eye was the last sentence. "Mr. Brown is marketing
Is it art, or marketing ploy? Considering that even television commericals are considered by some to be art, one wonders.
I've always been in the "art for art's sake school." The fact that Mr. Brown is marketing his 'genre' diminishes the value of his 'literature', at least for me. But does that mean that it's not art?
This sounds more like reading the past events of an ARG than a novel.
arrrrrrr, me likes a good pirate novel to while away the time on a long third watch!!!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The LJBook thing turns your blog into a PDF archive/book suitable for printing... It's produced by LaTeX and looks quite good...
It's highly similar when people use their blog as a journal like livejournal's users...
Oh God, I've gotta go, one of "Them" just came into the library...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
For those interested in such things, there is also "Shuteye Town" by R. F. Laird, author of the puzzlingly odd and brilliant "Boomer Bible". Unhappily it is all MS Word files so I've never been able to explore it correctly and can only report this at second hand.
Everybody's mentioning Griffin and Sabine (or however you say it). If you actually like this style, look for Exegesis by Astro Teller. The story consists of a series of emails between an emergent AI and its unwitting creator. Nothing special in terms of story or character, but that particular aspect does make it stand out as different from the rest.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Since all this week it has taken me no less than 10 minutes to log into my PC because our Novell servers have been AWOL, I'm starting to think Novell software suX0rz!!!
Majestic died long before Sept 11. It only lasted a couple months after the initial release. The few people who tried it didn't like it.
Based on what I've heard, it was a bad idea, not much fun and required a massive time investment.
That, and I'm sure all those phone calls and pages added up in cost, both both the publisher maintaining it all and the people "playing" the game.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Jos Claerbout, in teaching himself OOP, has written one of the more creative and instructive tutorials on OOP design hosted at Stanford. The work is admittably rough around the edges and may be too short (nothing a good publishing editor couldn't have polished up). But, it remains valuable for those who tend to be more right-brained thinkers, rather than left, and who wish to participate in software engineering. Sadly, the author has passed away at a young age, but he's left a useful legacy for the rest of us. I've come to appreciate his humor by reading his college entrance essays.
= 9J =
Nice going prof, but you are tunnel visioned.
'The novel as software' has long existed in the form of interactive computer games - dare we go back to nethack, maniac mansion and the various other unfolding adventures of the genre.
Maybe a better approach would be something like one of those tests that adapts to your previous answers, except the user would have to rate sections of the story and it would serve up alternate paths based on what the reader likes (more action, suspense, plot twists, romance, *action*, etc.)
They could read the story hundreds of times and have hundreds of possible path's and endings.
Back in probably the early to mid eighties (maybe a bit before that?) when D&D was getting big, some publishers got the bright idea to combine reading with a touch of role playing and started putting out the "Choose your own adventure" novels. AFAIK, that is how the choose your own adventure novels came about.
These were stories writen in a non-sequential order. You had to flip to another page at the end of a section. Sometimes you had more than one choice.
Some instructional material wa written this way. It got rather annoying. I prefere the "expanded outline" type. You only go into the detail you think you need.
The devil did his work by appealing to one's intellectual arrogance- "I'm too smart for that". Sounds familar? The devil has lots of opportunity in the modern world when knowledge is a prized commodity.
Yet another instance where the PLATO system was first, with at least two instances of literary works done as digital epistolary novels, that you had to "read" by "experiencing" them online. This would have been circa 1975-76.
Download file is WinDOS only. No thanks.
No electrons were harmed creating this post, though some may have been subjected to electrical and/or magnetic fields.
The program's interface has windows for mock e-mail, instant messaging, Web browser and pager, through which the narrative unfolds.
Just browsing through the table of contents...
Chapter I: John deletes his spam
...
Chapter II: John closes a million popups
Chapter III: John deletes more spam
Chapter IV: John cybers **hotChIcKa69**
Chapter V: John deletes more spam and sets up a new mail client
Chapter VI: John closes more popups, installs Mozilla
Chapter VII: John deletes more spam, puts his fist through the monitor
Chapter VIII: John goes to the hospital
Was Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse, a hypercard stack (or rather set of stacks) designed as a whole free-exploratory mystery. Really still brilliant stuff, and a hint at the possibilities of hypertext before EastGate defined it into a certain narrow and dull scope. Some links: http://www.eastgate.com/catalog/Funhouse.html http://www.kith.org/logos/wander/10.west/Buddy.htm l
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0285.html
Actually Majestic was pretty interesting, I paid up the $10/month fee for two or three months to try it. The game would IM you, email you and phone you with prerecorded messages and you had to do interenet searches to find information that would take you on to the next "puzzle". THe problem was that the plot wasn't very interesting and their were built in time delays so you couldn't just plow through the puzzles like in most interactive puzzle-based games. Ultimately I suspect this led to the failure, but it was an interesting concept and the technology was executed well in Majestic.
It's not like me to smack new technology but, c'mon, how far could somethig like this go?
It seems that it's the type of technology that'll wind up wearing a big t-shirt that says: "If you've seen one of me, you've seen it all".
If I wanted to look through a bunch of email and follow a soap opera-like story I'd go to work.
Whenever you read this sig someone's refrigerator light turns on.
People interested in this might also be interested in some interactive fiction.
http://www.ifarchive.org/
The one point that caught my eye was the last sentence. "Mr. Brown is marketing ..." That said it all.
Was it Mr. Brown or the submitter of the article that put it in terms of "marketing". perhaps you should think about that first.
While Mr. Brown certainly has found an unusual albeit geeky medium for literary expression, I doubt that he has uncovered a new genre. In 1994, Chronicle Books published "Gryphon and Sabine" by Nick Bantock. I submit that this work of fiction was the first epistolary novel. Follow this link for more info about "Gryphon and Sabine": http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0811806960/ qid=1082147684/sr=2-2/ref=sr_2_2/002-8089876-64000 12#product-details
Of course, you don't need software to write an epistolary novel...or even an e-pistolary novel.
There was a rather fun gaming product that came out a couple years back called De Profundis , which involved roleplaying by writing letters back and forth. Sadly, it came out shortly before Hogshead went out of the gaming business, so it's not widely available anymore.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Literature is one of the last places we can reach for a ad-free enviroment. Now, if they start calling this game a novel, you can be sure people will be shown lots of ads and stuff "relating" to the storyline. Just give me back my dead trees, I'm very happy with them, thank you.
Cozinha para as massas (e para geeks)
It seems to me that Galatea 2.2 was actually about an attempt to get a neural network to parse a literary novel into an English essay of approximately the same calibre as that produced by a graduate student.
Well, that and Richard Powers getting over his break-up with his wife.
Excellent book, but I don't remember anything about this interactive epistolary novel stuff.
lysergically yours
but to anyone (all 10 of us? haha) who played Majestic this is kind of a weaker version of that. In Majestic the game would contact you using real AIM, real emails, fake webpages, videos and would even call your house. None of this simulated crap. However I really applaud people trying to move this genre of interactive fiction forwards. While some people just won't "get" why you would wanna do any sort of work just to "turn the page" it's basically about immersion. With a game like Majestic, the fact that you had no idea when the game was gonna call or e-mail or IM you made it even more exciting. Some people may have thought that game was stupid but I think it was an amazing attempt and f**k EA for shutting it down like they do so many original projects only to put out another 2003,2004,etc edition of their sports franchises.
Here's a list of other email narratives: http://huminf.uib.no/~jill/txt/emailnarratives.htm l