With the launch of the Hyper-Serialized, SF/Horror series, The Deadbooks, the novel isn’t just about words anymore; it’s become a mash-up of story-telling techniques, no longer chained to yesterday’s way of thinking.
For the last eight years, Hasso Wuerslin has been hunkered down at his computer, working on the Hyper-Serialization of his Deadbooks series. What’s a Hyper-serialization? You take a serial, in this case Wuerslin’s novels, and expose it to a mash-up of story-telling techniques from such mediums as film, TV, radio, print; a mash-up that could only exist because of the distribution freedom offered by the net.
“What if The Novel is not done evolving?” asks Wuerslin. “Take for example how books and movies relate. Books and movies can never go on a date. The book can’t join the movie in the theatre, and the movie can’t join the book in the book – even if it’s the same story. But on the net, they can bleed into each other. Same place. Same time. Same story. But a very different experience.”
The 10 hour, 1st season will feature 30 actors, and 40 musical groups from around the world. It will tell the story a mining scout ship, led by the gifted Shallen, who discovers an Earth void of human life… except for the memories of a long dead, Will Lant. Memories so powerful that they posses Shallen, revealing to him Lant’s final days. Days in which Lant was forced to live the lives of three alternate beings in a desperate attempt to rectify a terrible mistake. Now, like the spider, the ghost of Lant traps all passerby, in the hopes that one can achieve what he could not bring himself to do.
“There may be purists out there who think I’m trying to kill The Novel,” says Wuerslin, “but I disagree. Why shouldn’t the novel stretch out in new directions; transform into a new form of entertainment? As my mom always says, that’s why it’s necessary that people keel over, ‘cause if they didn’t, nothing would ever change.”
It’s already begun: Deadbooks
