Solar Flare: Science Fiction News

I’m a little late to the game on this one, but I think it’s worth a moment of your time. The Deadbooks Project is described as a Hyper-Serialization of the Dead Books SF/Horror series by Hasso Wuerslin. The project launched last week (thanks to N. E. Lilly for linking to it in last week’s Internet News).

And what is Hyper-Serialization exactly. Well the intent seems to be to combine narration, actors, sound and music together to tell a story over the course of 150 chapters. Since it’s not precisely a novel or a radio show, the producers came up with the description Hyper-Serialization to describe it.

The site has been live for about a week now and there are 7 demo chapters available for you to read/listen to. It’s an interesting project and I like seeing people try to push the boundaries of the medium a bit. I’m not completely convinced by the format though. But I’m going to withhold judgment until I’ve had a chance to read through more of it myself.

As a bit of an old fashioned cross platform purist though I really wish the design didn’t loudly proclaim that the site is best viewed in 1024 x 768. HTML design should be a little more flexible than that. But more to the point I’m trying to decide whether this is a format that will prove popular. It does demand more from the reader in terms of attention and participation. That could be a good or bad thing. There’s also of course the matter of whether the images and sounds are a high enough quality to emphasize the mood of the prose rather than detract for it.