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Danger After Dark 2010
The Philadelphia film scene has been going through some rough times of late. In early 2009, the two primary driving forces behind the festival had some sort of hissy fit. The Philadelphia Film Society and TLA Video decided to part ways. TLA vowed to put on the regularly scheduled Spring festival, now dubbed Cinefest, while the weakened PFS decided to relocate to the fall (since last year was the first, it was a bit small, but I actually had a much better time at the 18½ Philadelphia Film Festival than the earlier Cinefest). Quite frankly the details of the spat between PFS and TLA escape me, but it does seem to be putting the hurt on Philly film culture...

Earlier this year, TLA canceled the 2010 Cinefest, citing financial woes. The PFS stepped in and put together a 3 day free event, but that doesn't really qualify as a full fledged festival. Due to the last minute nature of the event and the fact that it was free (plus the fact that the featured films didn't seem all that special), I decided to avoid the crowds and wait for the fall festival.

In the meantime, my favorite part of the TLA festival seems to have broken off on its own. The Danger After Dark series made a name for itself by featuring all sorts of crazy horror, gangster and exploitation cinema. This year, they're piggy-backing off of the Philly QFest, a GLBT festival (though the themes of the DAD films don't seem to have anything to do with GLBT). 11 movies, 11 nights. Unfortunately, the schedule doesn't seem to inspire me very much, though there are some interesting films featured:

• Vengeance: I've already mentioned this as one of my Top 5 Most Anticipated Summer Movies, so naturally this is my most anticipated movie on the list. If it's made by Johnny To, I'm there.
• Dogtooth: I'm not really positive what this is about, but the premise seems promising:

  Three young adults - two sisters and a brother - have spent their whole lives within the confines of the family estate, and they know nothing of the outside world, from which they have been entirely sheltered: the grounds are surrounded by a massive fence, the phone is hidden from them, their only entertainment consists of home videos of themselves, and all references to the outside have been removed.

  Not sure what to make of that, but it sounds interesting enough that I might check it out.
• Gone with the Pope: A long-lost 70s grindhouse epic, released for the first time. It apparently concerns mobsters on a mission to kidnap the Pope (“I want a dollar from every Catholic in the world!”)
• RoboGeisha: The first in a pair of seemingly outrageous Japanese schlock-fests, this one appears to be about, well, a group of Japanese girls who are transformed into mechanized geisha assassins. Duh.
• Big Tits Zombie 3-D: The second of the aforementioned insane Japanese schlock-fests, the title of this one pretty much says it all, doesn't it?

So we've got one movie I am definitely interested in (Vengeance) a couple that sound interesting but which I'm not sure I'd love (Dogtooth and Pope) and a double feature destined for the I'm Not Scared Enough of the Japanese file. Perhaps if it didn't involve a trip into the city and parking and whatnot (and the fact that all the movies are on separate days, so I can't double up), I would see the films above, but at this point, I'll probably only see one or two of them.

I'm hoping at some point that TLA and PFS can kiss and make up or something, because this used to be a pretty great film town, but things don't seem to be looking up of late. I guess we'll see how the fall festival goes (after all, I did really enjoy the 18½ Philadelphia Film Festival last year), but maybe it's time to branch out and take a trip to Toronto or Austin (for Fantastic Fest)...



The Clockwork Orange Fallacy
I've been reading a science fiction novel called Diaspora, by Greg Egan. The novel is initially set about a thousand years in the future, which is enough time to allow Egan to postulate all sorts of things without really having to explicitly delve into the morality of gene-splicing or consciousness transferral, etc... However, those sorts of questions emerge anyway because we, the readers, are still living our contemporary lives, where these issues are as relevant as ever.

The novel begins in a "Polis", which is basically a network of artificial consciousnesses. Some of these are humans who have uploaded themselves, others are entirely artificial. Alternatively, there were apparently a lot of people who transferred themselves into human-shaped robots called Gleisners. Regular human beings are still around, and they're referred to as "Fleshers" (for obvious reasons). At this point, there are tons of genetically altered humans, to the point where many of the variants can no longer communicate with one another (another class of humans, calling themselves "Bridgers" have been bred specifically to solve the problem of communication). Humans without any sort of genetic tampering are referred to as "Statics", and don't seem to be doing well.

In the story, the industrious but apparently suspicious gleisners have discovered an odd astrophysical event which could prove disasterous to Earth (at least, to its fleshers). Two of the characters go down to the planet to warn the fleshers, but they're met with paranoia and disbelief. One of the characters, Yatima, is a completely random mutation from a polis (he has no "parents", even artificial ones), and he (or, I should say "ve" as they seem to be quasi-asexual, though even the artificial pronouns sometimes seem to have a gender connotation, but that's a different discussion) is having some trouble understanding the objections to his suggestion that anyone who wants to can upload themselves to his Polis. In the scene below, he's speaking with a static human and Francesca, who is a human bridger.

He gazed down at them with a fascinated loathing. ‘Why can’t you stay inside your citadels of infinite blandness, and leave us in peace? We humans are fallen creatures; we’ll never come crawling on our bellies into your ersatz Garden of Eden. I tell you this: there will always be flesh, there will always be sin, there will always be dreams and madness, war and famine, torture and slavery.’

Even with the language graft, Yatima could make little sense of this, and the translation into Modern Roman was equally opaque. Ve dredged the library for clarification; half the speech seemed to consist of references to a virulent family of Palestinian theistic replicators.

Ve whispered to Francesca, dismayed, ‘I thought religion was long gone, even among the statics.’

‘God is dead, but the platitudes linger.’ Yatima couldn’t bring verself to ask whether torture and slavery also lingered, but Francesca seemed to read vis face, and added, ‘Including a lot of confused rhetoric about free will. Most statics aren’t violent, but they view the possibility of atrocities as essential for virtue - what philosophers call “the Clockwork Orange fallacy”. So in their eyes, autonomy makes the polises a kind of amoral hell, masquerading as Eden.’ (page 119 in my edition)

The reference to A Clockwork Orange was interesting, as this isn't a novel that's been filled with pop culture references, but the concept itself is a common theme in SF (and, for that matter, philosophy). It's not hard to see why, especially when it comes to something like a Polis. What does morality mean in a Polis? A consciousness living in a Polis is essentially living in an entirely virtual environment - there are minimal physical limits, property doesn't really exist as a concept, and so on. The inhabitants of any given Polis are modeled after humans, in a fashion, and yet many of our limitations are not applicable. Some polises have a profound respect for the physical world around them. Others have retreated into their virtual reality, some going as far as abandoning the laws of physics altogether in an effort to better understand the elegance of mathematics. Would it be moral to upload yourself into a Polis? Or would that be the cowards way out and represent the evasion of responsibility that free will provides? Would one still have a free will if their consciousness was run by a computer? Once in a Polis, is it necessary to respect the external, natural world? Could anything be gained from retreating into pure mathematics? Egan doesn't quite address these issues directly, but this sort of indirect exploration of technological advancement is one of the things that the genre excels at.

Strangely, one of the things that seems to take on a more dangerous tone in the world of Diaspora is the concept of a meme (for more on this, check out this post by sd). The way ideas are transmitted and replicated among humans isn't especially well understood, but it can certainly be dangerous. Egan is pretty clearly coming down against the humans who don't want to escape to the Polis (to avoid disaster), and he seems to blame their attitude on "a virulent family of Palestinian theistic replicators". This sort of thing seems even more dangerous to an artificial consciousness though, and Egan even gives an example. These AI consciousnesses can run a non-sentient program called an "outlook" which will monitor the consciousness and adjust it to maintain a certain set of values (in essence, it's Clockwork Orange software). In the story, one character shows Yatima what's happened to their outlook:

It was an old outlook, buried in the Ashton-Laval library, copied nine centuries before from one of the ancient memetic replicators replicators that had infested the fleshers. It imposed a hermetically sealed package of beliefs about the nature of the self, and the futility of striving ... including explicit renunciations of every mode of reasoning able to illuminate the core belief’s failings.

Analysis with a standard tool confirmed that the outlook was universally self-affirming. Once you ran it, you could not change your mind. Once you ran it, you could not be talked out of it.

I find this sort of thing terrifying. It's almost the AI equivalent to being a zombie. If you take on this outlook, why even bother existing in the first place? I guess ignorance is bliss...

In case you can't tell, I'm very much enjoying Diaspora. I'm still not finished, but I only have a little more than a hundred pages left. It's not much of a page turner, but that's more because I have to stop every now and again to consider various questions that have arisen than lack of quality (though I will note that Egan is probably not a gateway SF author - he certainly doesn't shy away from the technical, even in extremes). I'll probably be posting more when I finish the book...



Internalizing the Ancient
Otaku Kun points to a wonderful entry in the Astronomy Picture of the Day series: The photo features two main elements: a nice view of the stars in the sky and a series of paintings on a canyon wall in Utah (it's the angle of the photograph and the clarity of the sky that makes it seem unreal to me, but looking at the larger version makes things a bit more clear). As OK points out, there are two corresponding kinds of antiquity here: "one cosmic, the other human". He speculates:

I think it’s impossible to really relate to things beyond human timescales. The idea of something being “ancient” has no meaning if it predates our human comprehension. The Neanderthals disappeared 30,000 years ago, which is probably really the farthest back we can reflect on. When we start talking about human forebears of 100,000 years ago and more, it becomes more abstract - that’s why it’s no coincidence that the Battlestar Galactica series finale set the events 150,000 years ago, well beyond even the reach of mythological narrative.

I'm reminded of an essay by C. Northcote Parkinson, called High Finance or The Point of Vanishing Interest (the essay appears in Parkinson's Law, a collection of essays). Parkinson writes about how finance committees work:

People who understand high finance are of two kinds: those who have vast fortunes of their own and those who have nothing at all. To the actual millionaire a million dollars is something real and comprehensible. To the applied mathematician and the lecturer in economics (assuming both to be practically starving) a million dollars is at least as real as a thousand, they having never possessed either sum. But the world is full of people who fall between these two categories, knowing nothing of millions but well accustomed to think in thousands, and it is these that finance committees are mostly comprised.

He then goes on to explore what he calls the "Law of Triviality". Briefly stated, it means that the time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved. Thus he concludes, after a number of humorous but fitting examples, that there is a point of vanishing interest where the committee can no longer comment with authority. Astonishingly, the amount of time that is spent on $10 million and on $10 may well be the same. There is clearly a space of time which suffices equally for the largest and smallest sums.

In short, it's difficult to internalize numbers that high, whether we're talking about large sums of money or cosmic timescales. Indeed, I'd even say that Parkinson was being a bit optimistic. Millionaires and mathematicians may have a better grasp on the situation than most, but even they are probably at a loss when we start talking about cosmic timeframes. OK also mentions Battlestar Galactica, which did end on an interesting note (even if that finale was quite disappointing as a whole) and which brings me to one of the reasons I really enjoy science fiction: the contemplation of concepts and ideas that are beyond comprehension. I can't really internalize the cosmic information encoded in the universe around me in such a way to do anything useful with it, but I can contemplate it and struggle to understand it, which is interesting and valuable in its own right. Perhaps someday, we will be able to devise ways to internalize and process information on a cosmic scale (this sort of optimistic statement perhaps represents another reason I enjoy SF).



Yet Another Link Dump
Apologies for all the recent link dumps. Time has been short. More meaningful content to return shortly. In the meantime, enjoy:

• 2 Guage Shotgun: When I was in high school, I really hated Biology. So after the class ended, my dad and I took my notebook up to our range. Fearing that the 12 guage shotgun wouldn't do, we broke out the 10 guage and proceeded to annihilate the notebook. Some scraps around the edges remained, but otherwise, it was pretty thoroughly destroyed. Now, these guys have a 2 guage shotgun and manage to pretty much vaporize half a board of clay birds. Supposedly the gun was mounted to a boat and used for hunting duck, but I don't really understand. What good is a vaporized duck (or a duck riddled with shot)? I guess if you have a large flock and a longer range, it would work, but still. Amazingly powerful gun.
• Cardboard Mechanics Installation: Sometimes when I watch these videos, I wish there could be an easy way to keep tabs on the people that made them. Did they ever amount to anything? What did they end up doing with their lives? In this case, it's clear that the creators have a pretty thorough understanding of mechanics and how to get things working, but what are they going to do with all that knowledge (besides make a video like this)?
• The History of the Typewriter: As told by Michael Winslow, of Police Academy fame. I have to wonder how close he actually is to the real thing (I wish they would've included that for comparison's sake, but then, I guess the video is long enough as it is).
• Super Mario Brothers with Violin: It's the white tux that really cements it. Still, pretty good for what is presumably an improvised performance... Also of note: Beatboxing Mario. It's amazing how many new viral Mario memes appear every week. Here, look at these Mario themed Filing Cabinets! What about Stop Motion Mario? Marathons! Dance Pads! iPads! Crossovers! I'm consistently intrigued by how much love Mario gets, even today, well over 20 years after the game originally appeared (though it's a bit telling that 90% of these things are referencing the first game and not the sequels, especially not 3d sequels...)
• The Most Badass Alphabet Ever: This is old, but still awesome. I won't ruin it by quoting anything, but it's great.

That's all for now.



Link Dump
Some more interesting stuff:

• Shortest Possible Game of Monopoly: It took them 21 seconds to play an entire game of Monopoly. The details of all 4 turns, in case you can't follow the video. [via Kottke]
• Kinect Dance Central: In case you don't feel enough like a total idiot playing the Wii, check out Kinect! Almost as funny, the description of the video: "nerd can't contain the funk" No, I suppose he can't.
• Tony Hawk Ride in Real Life: Worth watching mostly for the last 45 seconds or so of the video.
• Russian Versus Ads: Some Russian marketing company devised a series of hysterical low-fi animated videos in which two famous characters or video games are pitted against one another. For example, Mario vs Pacman. Contra vs Tetris. Jackie Chan vs Eye of Sauron. Great stuff.
• Food vs Inertia: Gravity wins.
• Kung Fu Institute: I have nothing clever to say about this one.

There you have it!



Animovie Double Feature
A couple more quick reviews of Anime movies I've seen lately.

• The Girl Who Leapt Through Time: This film opens by introducing us to Makoto, a young girl who doesn't seem exceptional in an obvious or traditional way, but during the course of a particularly clumsy day, she accidentally gains the ability to time travel. At first, she uses this extraordinary ability for superficial reasons: she skips back a day so that she can do better on a test, she skips backward to continue singing karaoke with her friends Chiaki and Kousuke, and so on. Naturally, things become more complicated. There's an element of the monkey's paw here, in that one should be careful what they wish for... even superficial uses of her new power can turn out to have wide-ranging consequences.
  
  
  The movie doesn't get carried away with this though, and one of the things I really like about this movie is that it doesn't let the fantastical elements detract from the human element. It's not a science fiction story - the time travel isn't particularly well established (and there are some open questions in the end) - but it uses those elements as more than just window dressing. At times if feels like more of a high-school comedy, albeit one that grows more serious as the story proceeds. Dramatic elements are intersperced as well. The typical high-school subjects of love and confusion about the future are explored a bit. I'm not entirely sure about the ending, but I liked spending time with these characters so much that it worked well enough for me.
  
  
  The pacing, more than anything else, is what keeps this movie on track. The introduction sets the stage well, and just when you're starting to wonder where the story is going, the time travel elements are established. This leads to a wonderfully light-hearted exploration of Makoto and how she copes with her new powers. And just when that starts to get cloying, the story shifts again as Makoto realizes that her new powers have impacted her relationships with friends and family. In particular, her friends Chiaki and Kousuke seem to be affected, and she just wants things to go back to normal. Interestingly, the time-travel is probably superfluous here - this is exactly the sort of thing that teenagers go through all the time. It all leads up to a climax that was much tenser than I would have ever expected at the beginning of the film. But it mixes all of this together rather well. There are still some open questions and potential plot holes in the end, but I have to admit to having a ton of fun with this movie. Recommended! ***
• Whisper of the Heart: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time enjoyed pretty favorable reviews in the otakusphere, but Pete wasn't too impressed. He says "If anyone wants to see a much better movie about the same thing, watch Whisper of the Heart." So I threw that in my Netflix queue and just watched it today.
  
  It's another school movie following a quirky girl and the people around her. Young Shizuku has been reading books at a voracious pace and she notices that every book she gets at the library has been previously checked out by the same boy... Despite Pet'es recommendation, I found it to be very different from The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. While I thought that The Girl Who Leapt Through Time had great pacing and was able to balance between it's various disparate elements well, Whisper of the Heart doesn't really have great pacing... because it doesn't need to. As a story, it's much more seamless and doesn't require any sort of balancing act. Now, I do think it's a bit too long, but in the end, it's a wonderful story. If the elements of the fantastical in The Girl Who Leapt Through Time bother you, then you probably would enjoy this movie much more. It's a much more grounded film, and everything in the movie falls neatly into place by the end.
  
  
  The thing I liked most about this movie was the way it captured the tentative nature of young teens as they try to figure out what they're going to be doing with their life. Even those who know exactly what they want to do have a certain hesitancy and insecurity about their future, and this movie really nails that feeling. I suppose it helps that Hayao Miyazaki was writing the screenplay, and you can certainly see his hand at work here (especially when you find out about the Baron). All in all, it's a very good movie, and one that will probably stick with me (though I suppose only time will tell).

This was an interesting duo to watch in close proximity. Strangely, I probably enjoyed watching The Girl Who Leapt Through Time more, but Whisper of the Heart is probably the better overall movie and it seems like the one that would stick with me longer. I think both are certainly above average features and well worth a watch, even if they're not really in your wheelhouse (I have to admit - the school drama has never been one of my favorite genres, even back when I was a student...)



Sequel Charts
This set of charts plotting the ratings of various film franchises is rather interesting. Some of them are just about exactly what you'd expect. For instance, the original Star Wars trilogy is very highly rated, and then if falls off precipitously when the prequels start. From there the series begins to climb again and surprisingly begins to reach the heights of the original trilogy.


There are a number of series that have even more pronounced and steady declines (Jaws, Planet of the Apes). Other series have a more chaotic progression. The even number rule for the Star Trek series is reasonably pronounced, except for part 10 (the reboot is not included, though I imagine it would be higher than the last two). The Indiana Jones series has a similar progression, except it's the odd number movies that are the best. I'm a little surprised at how low Die Hard 2 is in the series (it's at least as good as the other sequels). It's also a bit strange to see the latest Rocky and Rambo installments being so high. Perhaps that's because the source appears to be IMDB, and ratings there tend to favor newer movies for a while (after time, these movies tend to level out to more reasonable ratings). Interestingly, the Lord of the Rings trilogy features the most consistent ratings. There are a lot of series that have solid first and second installments, but the third movie is almost always a big decline.

Of course, the listed series are not comprehensive, so I took a few stabs at the missing series. Here, for instance, is the Friday the 13th series:


I have to admit that I'm a little surprised that parts IV and VI, which seem to be the fan favorites, are as low as they are. Of course, they're pretty high compared to most of the films around them, but still. I expected them to be a bit higher. Also, part 2 and the recent reboot seem extremely overrated. The reboot will most likely come down as time goes on (again, I think newer movies benefit from IMDB's system), but the love for part 2 confuses me. I suppose part 2 does have probably the best final girl in the series (and maybe of all time), but the story is crap and the ending is nigh incomprehensible. And Jason isn't even close to becoming an iconic character in that movie.

More series in the extended entry, including the likes of Halloween, Evil Dead, Dirty Harry, Bourne and more! And so we might as well continue the 80s slasher series, here's Halloween:


Mostly unsurprising. The one major outlier is part 3, which makes sense because that was the one that didn't feature Michael Myers.


This series is surprisingly stable. However, I think that the second one is a bit underrated, while the fourth through sixth might be a bit inflated. Also notable is the seventh installment, which rockets back up near the original. I'm not a big fan of New Nightmare, but it's definitely more interesting than most of the films in the series and the return of Wes Craven translates pretty well to higher ratings...


Another extremely stable series, though the second installment is clearly the best.


A pretty clear and definite decline in the series. Notable in that it's one series that hasn't really had a reboot (not that I want one - totally unnecessary).


Interestingly, this is the only series in this post to feature a third installment that has better ratings than it's predecessors. I have to admit that I'm a bit surprised by that. I really like Bourne Ultimatum but I wouldn't put it as that much better than the previous two installments.

Well, that's all for now. In other news, Flyers lost the Stanley Cup tonight. I'm glad they put up a good fight, but what a terrible goal to lose on... In any case, congrats to Blackhawks fans.



Link Dump
A busy weekend and the Flyers storming back in the Stanley Cup finals means less time than usual, so here's a few links that I've found interesting lately:

• Subway To Start Tessellating Cheese: Remember when I posted this comic a while back? It's apparently from 2007, and according to what appears to be an internal weekly newsletter, Subway will begin tessellating cheese on its sandwiches. A consumer triumph.
• Trailers From Hell: This has been around for a while, but it's well worth checking out for movie fans (it tends to lean towards horror, but it's not exclusively that genre). Basically, it consists of a bunch of famous directors doing a commentary on the trailers of their favorite films. While some well-known movies are featured, there are tons of obscure films as well. The people doing the commentary tend to be horror director mainstays, including Joe Dante, Kaedrin favorite Don Coscarelli, Edgar Wright, Eli Roth, John Landis, and a bunch of others.
• Johanna Blakely: Lessons from fashion’s free culture: Shamus posts this excellent 15 minute TED talk about how the fashion industry doesn't use copyright, and various implications to other areas of IP. Interesting stuff about a subject I'm always fascinated by...
• Heist!: An intriguing bank robbery in Buenos Aires that Hollywood should be paying attention to...

  On the afternoon of (Friday!) January 13, four gunmen walked into the Banco Rio in Acassuso (part of greater Buenos Aires) and took the staff and customers hostage. There was a tense six hour long siege by the police, expertly handled by the robbers - they let each hostage call home, so that family members showed up at the scene; the calculation was that the police would be more reluctant to storm the building immediately if hostages' relatives were watching. They made sure to release three hostages right away as a gesture of goodwill, but of course the three released included the security guard and police officer already in the building. While one of the robbers stayed on the phone, negotiating with police, the remaining ones got busy cracking open safe deposit boxes. Towards four in the afternoon, the police delivered six pizzas and some bottles of soda, the fruit of all those hours of negotiation, which the robbers passed along to the hostages. And then they went silent.
  
  After about an hour of no contact and no news, an elite police bank-storming squad stormed the bank, only to find a group of bewildered hostages sitting scared in the smoke. There was no trace of the gunmen.

  I love the cat-and-mouse games robbers play with the police in situations like this, and this one has a few exchanges of that going on...
• Pulsate: This thing had me transfixed for much longer than it should have. My favorite thing to do was to position my mouse in the center of the space and click several times in succession, creating a series of concentric rings. Then I'd move the mouse to one of the corners (quickly, as you have to do it before the original set of rings makes it there) and do another series of rings. Do it for a couple other corners and presto! You've got an Aphex Twin song.
• Soviet Space Center: A photo tour of a decommissioned Soviet Space Center. The post isn't in English, but the photos are great.
• Nothing New to Report: At first, I thought this was the same newspaper, over and over again, but there are probably tons of copies of the same one in use in Hollywood. I can almost guarantee it's due to the fact that someone had to clear all the stories in the newspaper once, and never wants to pay for the rights again. Understandable for what should be a throwaway prop.
• Duck Hunt Behind-the-Scenes: Pretty sure that's what happens.

That's all for now. Possibly something more substantial next week!



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...


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