Fiction meets tech

I admit I am a voracious fiction reader – mostly of books my mother would not approve of me reading. While I do like a graceful writing style and am growing increasingly intolerant of clumsy novelists, I still like in large doses sex, mayhem, murder, mystery and, well, more sex, murder, mayhem and mystery. I appreciate any genre –sci fi, historical fiction, thriller, technical manual – that includes sex, mayhem, murder, and mystery.

In my article on e-books, I speculated:

From reports of developing technologies, one may safely conclude a true e-book:…
Will change the nature of “fiction.” Many writers may experiment with text that is customizable by the end user for both artistic and commercial purposes. The reader may substitute the name of his or her current inamorata or inamorato for the protagonist (or murder victim). The latest Stephen King can be set to mild, scary or terrifying, or Harold Robbins to suggestive, lurid, or … well, let’s not go there. Video games and fiction may merge and the skills and choices of the reader/player may determine the outcome of the plot. Today’s most highly rated video games are plot-driven. Metal Gear Solid: the Twin Snakes is an example, according to my gamer son.

What great fun for those of us who are not literary purists. (Although I have enough English major in my bones to think that an electronic book in which George lets Lenny live or Beowulf gets bested by Grendel’s mom would somehow lead to the eventual collapse of civilization.)

It’s fun to see a couple other folks thinking on the same lines:

Once we have cheap e-books, the medium by which we read will also be a medium by which can write and respond. Reading will cease being a solitary act and will become a social one. You can see this already with blogs. David Weinberger's JoHo the Blog

Can the Sims or Second Life be considered a work of on-going fiction? Is e-mail correspondence ever literature? Are there novels in blog form in existence? (Dickens, after all, made his fortune by serializing his novels.)

Julia  Keller in her article,  Plugged in Proust, Nov 27 Chicago Tribune, writes:

Literature, like all genres, is being reimagined and remade by the constantly unfolding extravagance of technological advances. The question of who's in charge -- the producer or the consumer -- is increasingly relevant to the literary world. The idea of the book as an inert entity is gradually giving way to the idea of the book as a fluid, formless repository for an ever-changing variety of words and ideas by a constantly modified cast of writers.

English teachers beware!

 
Are hypertext minds be more likely to read hypertext novels? How would you like your favorite recreational reading material to take advantage of electronic publication? Or would you just as soon it didn’t? 

Comments

[Barry]

I wonder, is the idea of shared reading an echo from the pre-Gutenberg era when manuscripts were shared over generations, including annotations? Annotating as a public practice is soemthing that will be made possible again with networked e-books. There's a beta version of a browser-based reader that supports annotation at http://www.hylighter.org

[Laura]

"Are hypertext minds be more likely to read hypertext novels? How would you like your favorite recreational reading material to take advantage of electronic publication? Or would you just as soon it didn’t?"

Please god - NO! For academic/professional reading, annotations and links are great. But for personal, private, enjoyment? I can't imagine anything more annoying than reading other people's comments ("oh, come on Holmes, you really expect me to believe *that*?") or links that distract me from the text. And any annotations I make are pretty personal, and not something I'd share with others.

I'm also not enthused about the e-book revolution as it applies to personal reading. I love lending books to friends (provided they take good care of the book), and refer often to them when I'm recommending books (via book talks, blog, whatever). Having an e-format will make that sharing more difficult. This is one time when the "new, improved" just won't work as well. It's not just a question of pixels and resolution and portability, but as an object books just WORK. Even old books.

[Genevieve]

It's already happening, if you look at fanfiction as a genre. When I started reading fanfiction thirteen years ago, it was published on the web just like a book -- you finished your story, and published. Now, at sites like fanfiction.net, people publish a chapter at a time, and the comments they get influence the direction of the story takes. In many ways this leads towards rambling stories, with no clear climax or focus. (Yes, I'll admit I search for completed stories to read, not caring for the serialization aspect.) But writing stories is very much a social event at many writing communities.