Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of the novel and what the digital age holds for it. What has forced this conversation with myself is the fact that I’m about to publish a historical novel, set in ancient Greece. I’ve been working on it for some time. It’s called The Mysteries, A Novel of Ancient Eleusis and will be published in three volumes, the first two of which will be published shortly with the third to follow in a couple of years. Like many avid readers, I love books, and in many ways, I’m horrified at the prospect of having them disappear in favor of the metal/plastic container of zeros and ones. We’re not going to give them up without a fight.
What I believe will actually happen is that the digital world will eventually seduce us away from the limited, antiquated world of black ink scrawled on wood pulp. They will seduce us with the addition of features only attainable in the digital world. I’ve been plotting against myself and my readers by planning some additions to the paperback form of The Mysteries. I’m supposing that the reader would actually be interested in the ruins of the ancient sites wherein my novel takes place. When my character Melaina enters the Underworld, the reader of an eBook could click on an icon that would activate a short video clip of the ancient grotto that in 480 BC was called the Gates of Hades. When the Pursians overrun and burn the Temple of Artemis at Brauron, the reader could click on another icon and see the ruins of Brauron, where the girls’ dormitories were located, the ancient stoa, and the location of the tomb of Iphigeneia. I can tell the readers of my paperback where to go on the Internet to locate these videos, but somehow, it just won’t be the same as clicking the book itself and having the video pop up so that your eyes never have to leave the page. A paperback just can’t compete with that sort of presentation, so I’m planning a digital edition of The Mysteries.
I’m looking into Apple’s iPad thing. I don’t actually believe iPad’s iBookstore and reader can measure up to this yet, so it’ll take an app to get the job done. The Kindle certainly isn’t up to this task, and Amazon is scrambling like crazy to update its machine to go beyond current E-Ink constraints. But ten years down the road, eBooks will have an advantage that will pull most of us away from the printed page for the first time since the Epic of Gilgamesh was chiseled onto a clay table in 2,700 BC. I imagine that people back in Homer’s day didn’t believe that papyrus would replace the rhapsode either, but it did. I’m still wondering if doing away with the rhapsode wasn’t a mistake. On with the future, I guess.
I’m off to write a little narration for my video clip of the ruins of Eleusis.
Novelsmithing