Opinion Henry Volans: digital fiction Stories not gimmicks


Many decry digital experimentation with fiction. But, Henry Volans argues, mainstream writers need to embrace new technologies that will complement rather than detract from the novel


New forms of digital fiction risk pleasing nobody. To many of those who’ve been practising the arts of experimental narrative for decades, publishers who come to the game only now are years too late. As one commentator recently put it, publishers’ entry to this area is “an opportunity to demonstrate how out of touch they are”. And for those who love novels just as they are, radical change is at best a distraction and at worst a threat to literature itself. So why bother? Until this year, we


have not. Novels are well-served by today’s e-book marketplace. Fiction of various genres dominates the e-book charts utterly. Knowing this, we have up to now focused on areas of publishing whose own e-book revolution has less momentum. We have proved that non-fiction, poetry and drama can be re-imagined for apps and the web with both a creative and a commercial benefit.


But there are good reasons why


fiction should not be left out. Firstly, the skeptics from the


avant-garde are wrong. Tere is little point in complaining that the literary establishment is only now discovering what some writers and academics have pursued since the 1980s and before. Te alternative is to encourage obscurity. Isn’t it a missed opportunity if digital fiction—that which is more experimental than conventional e-books—remains largely cut off from the best-known writers and the mainstream of readers’ minds? It would be ironic if the people most passionate about untapped potential in the form of the novel are the ones to hold it back by protecting the turf as their own, exclusively. Te skeptics from the other side—


the purists—are wrong, too. Tat’s because new forms will not replace the old but will complement them.


going away but protectionism around what we already have is no better than trying to secure a monopoly on experimentation”


Te linear novel is not going away. Protectionism around what we already have is no better than trying to secure a monopoly on experimentation.


Image from Faber’s Tirty-nine Steps app


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Satisfied customers Most importantly, fiction should not be left out because that would deprive writers and readers of new opportunities. For evidence of satisfied readers, look for example at the consistent five-star reviews for Profile and Inkle’s version of Frankenstein. When we publish Iain Pears’ new novel Arcadia this autumn it will be in app form first. Not as a gimmick, but because this approach allows Iain to write as he wants to. He is writing the book online in a custom-made web tool which allows him to plot each episode of his novel


Te linear novel is not


spatially, on a graph. Together we will put a simple, elegant interface on this, giving the novel life as an app. Te result will still be a story. It will still be read as text on a screen—only here the reader may determine how they approach it, whether following a character from start to finish or instead cutting across the half-dozen major threads, visually tracking progress on the way. Before then we will release a new


version of John Buchan’s man-on- the-run thriller, Te Tirty-Nine Steps. It has been made by Te Story Mechanics, part of Tern, a TV production company, and will be published and distributed by three other companies: KISS Ltd, a games publisher; Avanquest, a software publisher; and the third, Faber. Tis is to reach the widest possible audience: from core gamers online, including on Steam, the world’s leading digital game marketplace, via physical retail at Morrisons and W H Smith, to the iPad and Mac app stores as well as Android tablets. Te Tirty-Nine Steps is not a


game, nor a film, nor a conventional novel, but in some ways all three. It is a linear experience, fully and stunningly hand-illustrated, and it presents Buchan’s text in a way that I hope and expect will appeal to readers and non-readers alike. It uses brilliant voice acting, stop-motion-style animations, music and illustration to build an immersive story. Its greatest strength is the 1915 novel itself. Each of these releases will


stimulate debate. I don’t know how that debate will run, but I do know what matters most in it: let’s not kill off digital fiction too soon, especially not for the wrong reasons. Instead, let’s see if we can move it from the fringes to the mainstream. Far from pleasing nobody, there is something in new forms of fiction for everyone.


Henry Volans is head of digital publishing at Faber (Stand H800). He will be speaking today at the seminar, Digital Storytelling: Enhanced fiction, is there a future in it? at 11.30, Te Old Press Office, Earls Court 1.


10 THE BOOKSELLER DAILY AT LBF | 17 APRIL 2013


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