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The Mongoliad
About a week ago at the SF App Show, an alpha version of something called The Mongoliad was presented. The description shows promise:

The Mongoliad is a sort of serialized story, created by Neal Stephenson, and written by Neal, Greg Bear, Nicole Galland, and a number of other great authors. It will be told via custom apps on iPad, iPhone, Kindle, and Android, and will be something of an experiment in post-book publishing and storytelling.

Besides Kaedrin favorite Neal Stephenson, the project also seems to be attracting some other high profile talent like Greg Bear. The use of New Media apps to deliver the stories gives pause, and I have to wonder if this is being optimized for the form factor of the medium, or if it's just because that's the hot new thing to do... Details of the project are a bit scarce, buy you can find some info at the Subtai Corporation page as well as their Facebook page. The overview on the Facebook site gives a little more info on the setting and the plan for populating the world with stories...

The Mongoliad is a rip-roaring adventure tale set 1241, a pivotal year in history, when Europe thought that the Mongol Horde was about to completely destroy their world. The Mongoliad is also the beginning of an experiment in storytelling, technology, and community-driven creativity.

Our story begins with a serial novel of sorts, which we will release over the course of about a year. Neal Stephenson created the world in which The Mongoliad is set, and presides benevolently over it. Our first set of stories is being written by Neal, Greg Bear, Nicole Galland, Mark Teppo, and a number of other authors; we're also working closely with artists, fight choreographers & other martial artists, programmers, film-makers, game designers, and a bunch of other folks to produce an ongoing stream of nontextual, para-narrative, and extra-narrative stuff which we think brings the story to life in ways that are pleasingly unique, and which can't be done in any single medium.

Still not sure if the New Media route is the best way to distribute this sort of information, but it at least seems like a better medium than the standard dead tree novel. The other piece of info that's come out about the project is that it will apparently be seeking fan submissions:

Very shortly, once The Mongoliad has developed some mass and momentum, we will be asking fans to join us in creating the rest of the world and telling new stories in it. That’s where the real experiment part comes in. We are building some pretty cool tech to make that easy and fun, and we hope lots of you will use it.

It's an interesting concept, and not something I can think of seeing before. There have been various experiments in serialized novels being released on the web, but I can't think of anything massively successful and nothing quite this ambitious has been tried. Stephenson's involvement pretty much guarantees that I'll be trying this app out, but I have to admit to being a bit skeptical about the fan-fiction aspect and the post-book ambitions. I think it's a worthy effort though, and I'm glad to see people of this caliber willing to experiment with new forms like this.

Another funny note about Stephenson, from Subutai's team page:

He is also the Company’s armorer, in charge of developing and producing helmets, gauntlets, and other such protective items as may be required.

Heh. Other members of the team seem to have their own funny quirks as well. If nothing else, it's an interesting idea, and I'm looking forward to it...

This post is part of the Kaedrin Weblog. It's been categorized under Arts & Letters , Neal Stephenson and was originally published in June 2010.

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