The wisdom of crowds

Ulule is one of those crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter or Indiegogo where a publisher can raise investment for new projects from the people who are best placed to judge whether there's a market: the customers themselves. And this month, Megara Entertainment are looking to fund a French edition of the Sokara supplement to Greywood's Fabled Lands RPG.

Megara have set a total target of €1500, and as I write this they are more than a third of the way there. Depending on how much you invest you can get a bunch of goodies to thank you for being one of champions of Sokara. For more information, take a look at the Sokara page on Ulule. Don't delay - the offer only lasts until May 17.

Frankenstein: the SFX interview - part three

Continuing the interview with Stephen Jewell of SFX magazine about my Frankenstein not-quite-gamebook, due out on iPad and iPhone on April 26.

Stephen asked, “Why did you choose Frankenstein for your story?”

Mainly because Frankenstein is one of those novels that everybody thinks they know but that few people have actually read. It’s such an amazing idea, and a gripping story, and it still has power today, but we need modern retellings to help us find a way in. How do you feel about Frankenstein? Probably that it’s kind of dated and that its claim to fame is that it inspired stories like Blade Runner, Terminator, Robocop – and Archetype, to take a very recent example. Yet it is the original and genuine, it’s just that we’ve lost touch with it because of the stodgy old-fashioned prose. And by the way, I am not intending that as a blanket criticism of 19th century literature, which I love. But Mary Shelley is no Jane Austen or Emily Brontë. And if, because of that, people aren’t reading Frankenstein, that’s a shame and I want to fix it.

I believe that by recasting it in an interactive format, which allows each reader to find a route through the story at their own pace and to focus on the things that interest them, that it can come to life again and reach a wider audience than would ever dream of picking up the original book. The fact is that Frankenstein is an amazing, mind-blowing story with a really rich subtext of repression, alienation, exclusion, the divided self, and hidden desires. If you’d never heard of it and it came out as a movie tomorrow, everybody would be talking about it. It would be the media event of the year. That’s what I’m aiming to recapture with my version: the excitement and even the shock that audiences felt when it first appeared.

Hey, monster, leave that kid alone!

If you live in the United Kingdom, you might want to pick up The Observer newspaper today as it has a review of my interactive Frankenstein novel. To be honest, the reviewer loathed it, but when it comes to being talked about, I'm with my fellow Magdalen alumnus Oscar Wilde: there's only one thing worse...

The review does make a specific complaint about not being able to affect the story. That's actually a misconception on the reviewer's part, so I'd better set the record straight. The scene she mentions is when the monster encounters Victor Frankenstein's little brother, William. In the original novel, he strangles the boy. In my version, that outcome is not at all inevitable. However, it isn't based on an old-style gamebook choice: "Strangle the boy Y/N?" Rather, all of your choices affect the monster's alienation, as well as Victor's empathy towards other people, and his trust in your counsel. And those hidden factors influence where the story goes. That means that certain decisions may seem unavoidable when you reach them, but in fact you have been shaping your destiny all along.

This is fundamental to the style of interactivity in Frankenstein, because choices have long-term consequences. Who, after all, makes an arbitrary spur-of-the-moment decision to kill in cold blood? "Would you like to strangle the boy? And do you want fries with that?" Certainly the monster is not that kind of dispassionate Ripley-style murderer. It is his entire history that builds to that moment, and when it happens (if he does kill the boy, that is) it should be with a feeling of, "Oh God, what have I done?"

I am looking forward to people talking about their individual experience with Frankenstein (available here). "The monster murders people because Victor tried to destroy him," one will say. "Nonsense," says another, "Victor didn't try to destroy him; he tried to save him." "But the monster gets the blame for murders he doesn't commit," another will say. It's that Rashomon what-really-happened effect that Orwell talks about in his essay on historical truth. Thus, Frankenstein is built on a form of interactivity that allows outcomes to be surprising and yet inevitable - and that is what we should ask of all good stories.

Lord Mortis has risen! (again)

We're interrupting our series on the forthcoming Frankenstein book to bring you the latest news of another great gamebook app, the iPhone version of Megara Entertainment's visually stunning Keep of the Lich Lord, which aficionados of the gamebook genre will be aware was originally published as Fighting Fantasy #43 back in 1990. This is a thoroughly revamped edition, with new material by author Richard Hetley, who has relocated the action to the world of Harkuna.

If you're experiencing a slight sense of déjà vu, that's because, yes, I did already post about the new Lich Lord app. But that was the iPad version; more people have iPhones - and if you don't, I'm sorry, but we are trying to make sure that all the rest of our gamebooks will come out on all platforms. (And anyway, iOS is best, so there.)

There's a review on App Advice here, and you also get a sneak peek at this fabulous picture by the awesomely creative Maria Nikolopoulou, one of Megara CEO Mikael Louys's team of talented Megarettes. At $4.99 Lich Lord is cheaper than the original book was over twenty years ago - and now with the addition of almost a hundred brilliant full-colour illustrations. And this weekend you can get it at the special price of 99 cents. Yes, 99 cents. So why are you still reading? Go get it here (UK) and here (US)!

Urbane fantasy free on Kindle

A universe away from the Gothic tragedy of Frankenstein, never mind the swashbuckling epic adventure of Fabled Lands, there is the tradition of urbane (sic) fantasy pioneered by Saki and Lord Dunsany. Such stories usually belong to the category that SF academic Farah Mendlesohn calls liminal, in that the weird elements are presented as matter-of-factly as waking up to find deer crossing your back lawn. That wyvern perched on the chimney pot opposite may be no less alarming than a tiger on the loose from the zoo, but it's no more peculiar either. We all know how easy it can be to stray over into the Twilight Zone.

If urbane fantasy is your cup of Earl Grey (dash of lemon if you don't mind, old chap) you can pick up a free Kindle copy of A Minotaur at the Savoy (US edition here) until midnight on Friday. This little volume, as regular readers will know, is a tie-in with the world of the Mirabilis graphic novel, fleshing out the background by means of fifty tall tales woven around the postbag of the Royal Mythological Society. For example:

Dear Prof Bromfield and Dr Clattercut

Recently I was taken by a friend to a restaurant in Fitzrovia. As we were settling down over whisky and cigars after the meal, I glanced at the menu and noticed that the à la carte listed Dodo Véronique. Intrigued as I was, I had by this time already put away a dozen oysters, the onion soup, a smoked haddock dish, two helpings of beef wellington, a lemon soufflé, a plate of almond biscuits, a bottle or two of Chateau Yquem and three large brandies. Also, I’d had a bit of a gyppy tummy earlier in the week, so at that stage I really didn’t feel up to fitting anything else in. I now rather wish I had, as I went for a bit of a walk to see if I could find the place again and there’s no sign of the street. I remember it had a little blue sconce of flame over the door, and a sort of curtain of ivory beads to keep the fog out. My friend has gone on a trip to Venezuela so no use asking him.

Sincerely, Edward Plunkett, The Attican Club, Pall Mall

Dr Clattercut replies: O rara avis in terris!

Prof Bromfield: Latin? You’ll have lost most of our readers right there, old man.

Dr Clattercut: I merely remarked on the pang of missed opportunity. Who knows how long before Mr Plunkett will again find himself in a restaurant with dodo on the menu?

Prof Bromfield: I doubt if there’s honestly any cause for regret. From what I hear, dodo is a tough, gamey sort of fowl. No use cooking it like chicken. Dodo meat is more like what you’d get on a year-old pheasant: tough if served pink, and dry if overcooked. Much more sensible to put it in a curry or a spicy Mexican dish. A Véronique sauce would be all wrong. There’s your explanation, Mr Plunkett – you can’t find the restaurant because it’s gone out of business.

Dr Clattercut: Perhaps the words of another rare bird, the Swan of Avon, will offer some consolation: “Things sweet to taste prove in digestion sour.”

Frankenstein: the SFX interview - part two

Today, the second of journalist Stephen Jewell’s questions for SFX magazine about my interactive version of Frankenstein, gorgeously designed by graphic-and-code digital-era typesetters, Inkle Studios, and published by Profile Books.

Stephen asked, “How will your Frankenstein differ from reading or viewing other films and books of Frankenstein? Also, how will it differ from traditional video games? Would you call it an e-book as such?”

It is a book, but it’s certainly not just another ebook. How is it different? Well, comparing it with games first of all: in a game, typically your interaction is mostly with the environment and your goal is to solve problems. That’s a huge over-simplification, but bear with me. In Frankenstein, you’re interacting with the character on a very personal level and your goal is to forge a relationship with him. You do get to influence how things turn out – by making suggestions to Victor Frankenstein, for instance – but you’ve got to gain his trust, and in any case he’s a free agent. He won’t always do what you say.

Looking at the novel, the thing there is that the original book can be pretty off-putting. It’s a great concept but it’s difficult to wade through Mary Shelley’s prose and all those long agonized Goth-boy monologues as Victor tells you how hard done by he is. And for modern readers that tends to leave you on the outside looking in. You don’t connect, which is why a lot of people only know the story from movies. The novel is hard going.

The new version is very much more personal, emotional, and immediate. Instead of the long, telling monologue in Mary Shelley’s original novel, my goal has been to set up a dialogue with the main character. You get to know Victor Frankenstein a lot more. You can really engage with him and find out why he’s doing what he does. And you should come away feeling like you’ve experienced the story immersively, right there along with Victor.

Frankenstein: the SFX interview - part one

Last month I completed the manuscript of my new interactive version of Frankenstein and in very short order, thanks to the coding brilliance of Joe Humfrey and Jon Ingold at Inkle Studios, the thing was a working app that could be shown to journalists. The scoop went to Stephen Jewell at SFX magazine, and he has kindly given permission to run my answers to his questions in a series of blog posts in the run-up to Frankenstein’s release on April 26.

First question: Stephen asked, “How did the project come about?”

I have a company with Jamie Thomson called Spark Furnace that specializes in the overlap between stories and games. Jamie and I between us have got forty years’ experience in books, videogames, TV and movies, so whenever possible we like to pick projects that can draw on all of those. We’ve been talking to publishers about interactive stories for quite a while, and Michael Bhaskar at Profile Books is one of the few who really gets it.

So the next question is how do we de-ghettoize it – because we’re acutely aware that a lot of people just tend to dismiss SF and fantasy and games as not worth their time. We wanted to make the literary snobs sit up and take notice, so how better to do that than by punking up a beloved classic? (That’s meant ironically, by the way, as I kind of am one of those literary snobs.)

Having agreed that was the approach we wanted to take, we made a list of about two dozen books we felt could really get a new lease of life from the interactive treatment, and it turned out that Frankenstein was everybody’s first choice. Then what looped the loop for us was that Michael knew the guys at inkle, who have a markup language that lets us write the kind of gamebook we used to do in the ‘90s and their engine turns it into an iOS app. So it’s a perfect storm of technology, content, marketing and publishing.