The Unbinding: A new serial novel from Slate. Read here. Details:
On Monday, March 13, Slate will launch an exciting new publishing venture: an online novel written in real time, by award-winning novelist Walter Kirn. Installments of the novel, titled The Unbinding, will appear in Slate roughly twice a week from March through June. While novels have been serialized in mainstream online publications before, this is the first time a prominent novelist has published a genuine Net Novel—one that takes advantage of, and draws inspiration from, the capacities of the Internet. The Unbinding, a dark comedy set in the near future, is a compilation of “found documents”—online diary entries, e-mails, surveillance reports, etc. It will make use of the Internet’s unique capacity to respond to events as they happen, linking to documents and other Web sites. In other words, The Unbinding is conceived for the Web, rather than adapted to it.
Related: Alas, our Big Bros in D.C. are making The Unbinding far, far more timely than I’d care for it to be–given their eagerness to spy on Google seaches. Still, the issue isn’t just whether the feds should spy on Google, but also whether Google on its own should be able to snoop in such detail on us. (Via if:book, which in the bargain offers a few digs at the noninteractive Flash/PDFish presentation of Slate’s novel.)
[…] The Unbinding: New online serial novel in real time Slate has announced "a new serial novel, The Unbinding, by award-winning novelist Walter Kirn, exclusively on Slate. Installments of the novel will appear in Slate roughly twice a week from March through June." You can find the novel online here , including chapter downloads in .pdf format. You may need Macromedia’s free Flash player to view the site. It is written in real time. Sort of like the tv show 24, except I assume they mean that, for example, when an installment comes in 5 days from now, it will represent things that happened 5 days later in the story. From the original project announcement, "The Unbinding, a dark comedy set in the near future, is a compilation of ‘found documents’