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."

Comments

A first in a new genre?

[__aawavt7683]

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

Re:A first in a new genre?

[harrisj]

What I was hoping for from the title of the story was something like Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers. To sum up part of the story there, a professor has a smart AI which drives an interface allowing the user to engage in realistic emails to literary characters. So, the user is able to figure out the story interactively and be part of their own epistolary work (not just read someone else's letters). Obviously, we aren't anywhere near that, and I guess the disappointment leaves me underwhelmed.

It seems like the innovation here is that instead of chapters, the user has days of the week they can click on to look at the formatted messages. And the vaunted interactivity is that the user can read the story out of sequence, not really in a nonlinear fiction sense (that can be hard), but really just in the same way I can skip forwards and backwards in a book if I want. Wow. I agree that while the interface is cute I suppose, the style really is more like a "game" version of a book. You might as well try interactive fiction instead.