The Book Singularity
Proponents of the Singularity 
believe that humans will one day transcend biology. There are different versions, but one theory is that humans will all become uploaded into digitally stored data strings, existing in a purely virtual environment.
I'm skeptical
about that.
But another Singularity Event does appear to be nigh. The Book Singularity. Books will transcend their traditional physical form, and become not just different, but more than they were.
Is the Book Singularity at hand? Libroid thinks so, and has some alternatives for the hyper-book future:
This is standard enhanced book stuff. Okay, I'm saying "standard" even though enhanced books are far from standard yet! But this part was not new to me. However, this was:
Nonlinear books aren't entirely new. Remember the old Choose Your Own Adventure
books? Ah, the memories.
Joe Konrath has written a send-up of one of these, what he calls, "Write Your Own Damn Story" Adventure
which he claims will, "push ebook technology to the boundaries of reading enjoyment, or something like that."
Much as I love 'em, these kind of books do have one drawback, which is that they break the fourth wall. That works for some stories, especially funny ones, but usually I like to immerse myself in the world of the book. I like the feeling it is all "real" on its own terms, that there is a certain way it "actually" happened.
However, the "round book" idea is different from the choose-your-story idea. The round book can still assume there was a "true" history, a "way it really happened." The illusion of fact, the fourth wall, can remain intact. All that changes are the order in which you discover them. It's as if you were given an easy option to watch Lost
in either the order shown or actual chronological order, or some other order in which the events make actual sense. (And if you figure out what that is, please tell me.)
believe that humans will one day transcend biology. There are different versions, but one theory is that humans will all become uploaded into digitally stored data strings, existing in a purely virtual environment.I'm skeptical
about that. But another Singularity Event does appear to be nigh. The Book Singularity. Books will transcend their traditional physical form, and become not just different, but more than they were.
Is the Book Singularity at hand? Libroid thinks so, and has some alternatives for the hyper-book future:
Enter Libroid, which creator Neffe -- a veteran journalist for Germany's Der Spiegel magazine and author of a best-selling book on Charles Darwin -- hopes will beat its own path to success.
The program, which currently runs only on Apple's iPad tablet computer, splits the traditional book page into three columns, allowing authors space to annotate their text with footnotes, images, maps, videos and web links.
Libroid delivers the book's core text in the middle of the page. Two smaller columns on either side carry the extra content. Page numbers are abandoned in favor of a percentage bar that tells readers where they are.
Interactive elements allow readers to make their own comments on virtual book clubs that can be linked up to the text. It also offers authors the possibility of updating their own work (something that U.S. author Jonathan Franzen might appreciate after the wrong draft of his latest novel was published in the UK).
With Libroid publications also allowing readers to flit between different translations of the text, Neffe said he believes the added extras, plus a lower price tag, will set it apart from standard e-books.
Though circumspect about its chances for success, he said it does have several major selling points, not least the potential to generate a new medium for fiction writers who, he says, are already lining up to try it out.
This is standard enhanced book stuff. Okay, I'm saying "standard" even though enhanced books are far from standard yet! But this part was not new to me. However, this was:
Neffe agrees, saying although he has been bombarded by suggestions from authors, he is choosing carefully. One winning idea, he says, is the "round book."
"Round books are those with no beginning and no end. Experienced authors tell me they have problems because every linear story has centrifugal forces that try to get out from the center.
"There is a well-known author in Germany who writes crime stories. He wants to randomly mix chapters so you would be the judge in the criminal case.
"You get nine different reports from witnesses and when you shake it up, they will mix up, so you always start with different one. Every reader is having a different experience."
Nonlinear books aren't entirely new. Remember the old Choose Your Own Adventure
books? Ah, the memories.Joe Konrath has written a send-up of one of these, what he calls, "Write Your Own Damn Story" Adventure
which he claims will, "push ebook technology to the boundaries of reading enjoyment, or something like that."Much as I love 'em, these kind of books do have one drawback, which is that they break the fourth wall. That works for some stories, especially funny ones, but usually I like to immerse myself in the world of the book. I like the feeling it is all "real" on its own terms, that there is a certain way it "actually" happened.
However, the "round book" idea is different from the choose-your-story idea. The round book can still assume there was a "true" history, a "way it really happened." The illusion of fact, the fourth wall, can remain intact. All that changes are the order in which you discover them. It's as if you were given an easy option to watch Lost
in either the order shown or actual chronological order, or some other order in which the events make actual sense. (And if you figure out what that is, please tell me.)
Comments
One possibility is that the enhanced book will be an entirely new medium, like games or televisions shows, for its own kind of story telling. Maybe people will say of the enhanced book, "I didn't like it as well as the book," as they do of film adaptations.
The other possibility is it will play out more like another genre, as Choose-Your-Story books are a genre of book.
One thing is certain, storytelliing will not go away. We are a storytelling species. Even if we become post-human as the Sigularists would have us believe, that is one thing I suspect would remain...
But now, of course, I'm distracted by thoughts of voting for Cthulhu.
Ebook formats may make non-linear books easier to hop around, but the real change is that more writers are writing non-linear, chronologically challenging (not to be confused with chronologically challenged) books. Books with complex PoVs. Books that tease the reader in various other cognitively challenging ways.
I was thinking of this when I read your review of Tinkers. It is not just literary nor just genre books that are experimenting with things like this, it's across the board. This is an extremely interesting development which doesn't get a lot of comment in the media the way tech changes do.
We may have discussed this before, about Beowulf, but I think modern lit crit reads more complexity into older works than is actually justified. Not that these works weren't wonderfully innovative for the time, but if a modern literary critic were reading a genre fantasy about a hero who slays a monster, they wouldn't leap to assume deeper layers of meaning -- even though the modern fantasy author was much more likely to have been striving for layers than the authors of Beowulf.
I think the complexity modern readers bring to the Illiad or Beowulf is a mark of modern readers having hundreds if not thousands of other books to read those stories against. And that is also what modern writers have, and use, and rely on, when they write. The writers can assume their readers know a whole host of tropes and genres, and can play against the weight of these expectations.
I also think it's dangerous to rule out the idea of Homer thinking "wouldn't it be cool if..."
But you know, I'm not a literary historian, so I don't really know. I doubt that writers of the past were just sort of innocently stumbling onto formal innovation while moderns are more informed and deliberate. How many readers or writers do you know who've had anything like a good classical education and have got anything like a deep awareness of the history of their own genre, even? I think people just experiment in order to tell stories, just like Homer did, and that we modern folk aren't any more sophisticated or innovative than our forebears were.
But again, maybe it's just because I haven't seen anything I consider innovative lately so I too readily discount the idea. I forget that the universe is mostly unknown to me, that there's a lot going on that I will never know about.
I don't think writers of the past were "innocently stumbling onto formal innovation while moderns are more informed and deliberate." I agree with you that most modern writers are ignorant of anything much older than thirty years (depending on their age).
But I think the trend toward greater innovation and complexity is real, even so. Because even the hack writer who has never read Homer, is still reading other writers who are indebted to Homer.
It's the, "If we see further it is because we stand on the shoulders of giants," idea. There are gobs of books on writing, characters, PoV, worldbuilding, description, everything, and where did all these tips and rules come from? From generation upon generation of previous genius. (Even if those geniuses did not actually follow those "rules.") Lowly hack writers inherit this bounty, and more informed writers can return deliberately to the sources.
Homer was no doubt brilliant and I have no doubt he put a great deal of thought into his work. But at the time the act to writing rather than speaking aloud an epic was pretty innovative in itself. He didn't have access to centuries of previous written literature, nor the literature of thousands of other authors, nor the literature of other cultures....
You say that you haven't read anything that innovative recently, but I am arguing that most of what you've read, if recent, probably IS innovative in the long view of things. Given the last ten thousand years of literature. Oh, wait. I guess there's only been five thousand years of literature.
Wow. That's kind of mindblowing, when I think about it. We've only been writing books for 5000 years. And only really been writing novels for 500 years.
*sheepish grin*
I'm trying to figure out why I'm so firmly attracted to the idea that innovation has been a constant through the 5000 years you mention. Part of it is, I know, a reaction against people who make the ahistorical claim that there was a sudden change for the worse in fiction around 1950, shifting away from an alleged natural progression in the artform and moving from "naturalism" to "experimentalism." Or something. I have a headache and I think I'm sounding very cranky here while I'm just, you know, interested in the topic and opinionated.
But when you consider that modern authors are (a) building on everything before them, and (b) much more numerous (more people on Earth + higher literacy rate = more writers than ever before in history) there is more overall accumulated innovation.
There may also be (c) more self-conscious innovation today. That is, perhaps Homer was aware of doing something new -- he would have had to have been, I think -- but today people are much more aware of living in a period of change. Today we expect the future to be different from the present because we know the present is different from the past.
I don't know if this translates directly to literature, though. Do people expect literature to be different? I mean, obviously the Book Singularity people do, but they also expect human brains to turn into robot gods.... I don't think most people have a sense of literature as being dynamic and in fact it bothers them.
Mostly, I don't want to be digitized data. Cthulhu would be pissed.
I guess I am making the argument that the arts are changing as much as tech is -- why assume only science and technology has all the fun?
Creative arts are becoming more diverse, more complex, more widespread and more accessible. I think one of the most interesting thing about the arts is that it can be both more complex and challenging (interesting only to small group of people) and yet also more accessible (interesting to a large group of people), though those are not necessarily the same works of art....
But I also think that: (a) it's a lot harder than it seems, and therefore (b) will take a lot longer than another ten years and (c) the change is more likely to be gradual than one big burst (aka the "Singularity").
However, I welcome books that explore the possibilities.