AKICILJ/DW - Experimental books

[telophase]

The dean just dropped by to pick my brain about manga (briefly) and new forms of books. I remembered Shadow Unit, which I think counts as an experimental form of fiction, at least for non-fan-types, but I'm racking my brain trying to remember the titles and authors in another recent shared-universe series/books/what-d'ya-call-it. It had, for the most part, male authors, was fantasy, and I recall a lot of it was military/warlike in form. I seem to recall the Mongols being associated with it, and I dont' know if it's because it was alternate history tht involved them, fantasy inspired by them, or a combo of the two. I *think* it was born on the Net and they're now publishing books in that world.

Does this jog anyone else's memory?

EDIT: Found! The Mongoliad

Also, I pointed her towards several reviews on the Download the Universe blog, which reviews science ebooks, many of which are in app form that are interactive and multimedia, like Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomy, which contains all of Leonardo's anatomy notebooks in a form you can zoom into and manipulate a bit, and essays and videos by historians and scientists.

Does anyone else have ideas for new, up-and-coming, or experimental books/book formats? I don't think she's looking for new distribution ways so much as new types of books themselves (it's for a class she's guest lecturing in about, I think, new media). (I'm going to let her know a bit about the Digital Manga Guild's form, to see if crowdsourcing translations is of interest to her, but the content of many of the manga and books may mean she's not mentioning it to the class. XD)

Comments

[movingfinger]

Well, there's this and the efforts it led to, which may yet go farther than fooling around on Reddit.

[telophase]

Interesting, thanks! (I remember seeing the original post!)

[fridgepunk]

There's Cell Phone Novels, which are afaik the only commercially successful mainstream incidence of drabble fiction (though I suppose it's more a serial made of drabbles than drabble fiction per se), and also from Japan there's light novels obviously (which I'm not sure really count as it's more a reincarnation of the 19th/early-20th century illustrated novel format).

And the amateur scanlation projects probably bear a mention if you haven't already.

[vom-marlowe.livejournal.com]

There's a live-action graphic novel play thing being put on at our humanities center this fall.
http://www.lied.ku.edu/events/intergalactic-nemesis.shtml

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's interesting! Thanks! :D

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Probably The Mongoliad: Book One (The Foreworld Saga) (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005ML3B6W/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B005ML3B6W&linkCode=as2&tag=racmanbro-20)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

YES! Thank you, that's it!

[estara.livejournal.com]

Enhanced ebooks? Ree Drummond showed off an enhanced ipad version of her Children's picture book about Charlie the basset

http://thepioneerwoman.com/blog/2011/04/twenty-steps-to-writing-a-childrens-book/

Okay I can't find that particular post (there was moving of the images and some sound involved if I remember correctly), the previous link is simply about the actual way the children's book came to be BUT her second cookbook is on the ipad and has enhanced features which she explains here:
http://thepioneerwoman.com/the-enhanced-ebook/