Wednesday March 08, 2006

Books Unbound

Slate has announced the launch of a new fiction section, anchored by an online serial by Walter Kirn (Thumbsucker) titled The Unbinding. Yet another sign that online fiction is making a comeback? There’s even serious discussion about eBooks again, now that everyone has learned to pack media into an iPod. As with online advertising in the late ’90s, it might turn out that previous hopes for eBooks and online narrative weren’t wrong, just early.

According to Slate’s description, The Unbinding—which debuts on Monday—will take the form of “found documents.” Like early ARGs, it will be an example of what novelist Sean Stewart describes as “storytelling as archeology.” I’m anxious to see how it turns out.