Sergey LukyanenkoWhile most e-fiction is not interactive yet, some audience participation is already blossoming in the blog world—where readers can comment on serialized chapters from newbie novelists.

Duh! I should have recalled that little fact earlier. Yes, reader are helping to shape fiction, not just nonfiction, even now; and young writers hungry for Web exposure aren’t the only adventurers open to these partial collaborations. Alexandre Rafalovitch, a TeleBlog reader in New York, kindly jogged my memory about this micro-trend when he mentioned a well-known Russian author named Sergey Lukyanenko who had consulted with his audience during a serialization (photo).

Now, here’s another tidbit—one that will help lead to my headline about writers as laboratory rats. Alex tells me via e-mail that when “Lukyanenko did the alternative chapters, one of the alternatives was disliked by nearly everybody but him because it used the heroes from older books (this was a third in the series) to basically pull a miracle. Russians call it ‘рояль в кустах,’ which does not translate but is roughly equivalent to Deus ex machina. In fact, much as I liked the author, I disliked the experiment because it exposed the underbelly of the writer’s process and—surprise, surprise—it ruined the mystique somewhat. That might explain why nobody really wants to do it. Certainly, I would not like to see Rowling’s spreadsheet with calculations on which Harry Potter character can die with the most financial benefit to the author.”

Only optional spreadsheeting, damn it!

Exactly, Alex. While I can imagine some writers eagerly delighting their particular fans, which will be easier with a plot-related voting option in dotReader, I’d hate for publishers to impose this system on unwilling authors. Still, it’s destined to happen for interested writers, at the least; and now let’s look beyond that.

What about customized authors—not the robotic variety but actual humans optimized not just to be writers but to be novelists of a certain kind, whether they be supposed literary clones of F. Scott Fitzgerald or those designed as best-seller creators? Alex has already commented on the exposure of “the underbelly of the writer’s process.” But can you imagine going beyond casual exposure—to the idea of writers as lab rats that scientists can study and then replicate? Will the day come when, to be admitted to a physical or virtual writer’s colony, you will have to agree to let future generations enjoy access to your literary papers, including all of your typo-ridden correspondence with your editors? Meanwhile let’s remember the present capability of academics to analyze writers’ prose and correlate such data with their brain functions or even the deterioriation thereof. Leave it, then, to some uber-marketers and product designers in the distant future to think, “Why just study writers when we can build them to specs?”

Unwittingly born to kill?

Much could be written about nature vs. nurture, and whether it is even possible to custom-breed talent into a human as if he or she were a Norwegian rat. Still, you can bet that some corporate types will try in time. Remember, some scientists have already identified certain regions of the brain which they deem to be responsible for such characteristics as empathy; might such areas be strengthened in the case of the better literary talent coming out of Huxleyish test tubes? And what to do about shoot-em-dead pulpers of the Mickey Spillane variety? Will their empathy regions be toned down, or at least modified to make these writer-rats identify with the perpetrators of violence rather than the victims? In fact, might the experiment go awry? Can’t you imagine a would-be Spillane-clone committing a murder in real life, not just in a sci-fi novel?

All of which leads to yet another question, perhaps the most fascinating. Certain authors, with ailments such as epilepsy, may in part have been able to write their classics because of, rather than despite, their health problems. Lewis Carroll, whom Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti, TeleRead’s e-book editor has studied closely, was an epileptic according to evidence that Sadi uncovered, and she cannot imagine Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland coming from someone without Carroll’s condition.

Adobe and the Accelerando scenario

Needless to say, in discussing writers as lab rats, I could go on to speculation about the era of direct brain-to-brain communications, a kind of Accelerando-style society where most all books will presumably be e-books because neurons and interplanetary memory banks avoid the limitations of dead trees. Will certain writers be bred and otherwise developed not just for general creativity and intelligence but for maximum efficiencies with whatever interfaces are in use? And what brain formats will be used to originate and transmit novelistic thoughts? I’ll now call on whatever empathy regions exist inside my own brain, and issue a plea on behalf of unborn writer-rats. Whatever society allows, we mustn’t let Adobe, Microsoft and the other usual suspects insist on proprietary formats for all writer-to-reader communications, or be able to perpetrate worse crimes. Can’t you see it now? “Brains by Adobe”—complete with whatever is the Accelerando equivalent of left-to-right scrolling? Oh, and don’t get me started on the joys of Accelerando-era DRM, or the possibilities of eternal patents and copyrights being applied to brains and their creations.

Question for sci-fi experts: So what fiction comes closest to the scenarios I’m laying out here? Don’t just provide titles. Explain your listings.

The TeleBlog’s latest contributor: I’m pleased to say that Alex Rafalovitch will be writing for the main part of the TeleBlog in the near future.

1 COMMENT

The TeleRead community values your civil and thoughtful comments. We use a cache, so expect a delay. Problems? E-mail newteleread@gmail.com.