At th week's London Book Fair London publisher Faber trailed a 'fully immersive' version of John Buchan's classic adventure 'The Thirty-Nine Steps', a bespoke e-book exploring how the digital format can be used to rethink conventional narrative.
Originally published in 1915 as a serial in Blackwood's magazine The Thirty-Nine Steps introduced the first action hero, Richard Hannay. It has already been adapted several times for film and television so is no stranger to new technology.
This interactive visual version was produced as a result of the publisher teaming up with two software publishers and a developer, collectively known as The Story Mechanics to create a 'fully playable, fully immersive product' which it is believed will break new ground in digital reading.
The app, borrowing techniques from gaming, will include classic stop-frame animation and be accompanied by original silent film music which will allow readers to 'unlock dozens of achievements and items to collect on their reading journey and explore hundreds of hand-painted digital environments and context from 1910s Britain.'
Also embracing innovative ideas in presenting fiction Iain Pears, author of The Dream of Scipio and An Instance of the Fingerpost is publishing his new book Arcadia in digital form, also with Faber, in the autumn with a conventional print version to follow next year. Pears' novel is inspired by quantum physics and written in 'nodes' mapped on to a graph constructed after consultation with an Oxford Professor of Mathematics. Arcadia is not an interactive novel. The aim is to create an infinite number of ways in which the story can be read. One result of the new format according to the author is to get the story beyond the constraints of time and get rid of causality. The novel is being constructed in partnership with a software developer and digital designer and will be rewritten for the print version. The team are excited that this is not simply a digital 'bolt-on' to a print novel but conceived from the outset in a digital format. Does this spell the end for the solo novelist?
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