I was asked a few weeks back where interactivity began, and what difference it has with ‘active engagement’, and in a very short conversation with myself I realised that it began at point zero, at the decision to read something. Critics and writers debate the issue, and the designers of ARGs and web-fictions seem to fight to make their hypertext-heavy tomes stand-out, and they all strive to highlight the differences between what can be achieved on digital information that cannot be achieved on paper. But they miss the crucial similarity, I think: if you can’t get someone to read, you may as well not bother. Now, I have one major criticism of the internet as a presentation tool for writing: it’s vile to read through – and that may change in the futures with the advent of liquid paper (or whatever stupid name they have given it nowadays (I like to imagine reading a newspaper by staring into an over tray filled with liquid, and tilting the tray to turn the page, but that’s just me)), but I doubt it. People won’t forsake paper because it’s so lovely. It’s paper! So, how do we harbour that interactivity that we are so desperate for in our lives? When does (buzzword coming!) Novel 3.0 (that’s right, 3!) begin?

Well, life is like a Fighting Fantasy novel: you never know what’s coming next. Except, you actually do: in a Fighting Fantasy what’s coming next is another page, just as it is with all other books. And then another page, and another, until finally, you’ll reach the end, and close the book. Well, what is what’s been missing is the other bits? Here’s a basic interactivity lesson. By picking up the book in the first place, the reader has made a choice. The cover/blurb/marketing/word-of-mouth combo? It informs their decision. Opening the book to read page one? Another choice. Choosing not to put it down before the end of chapter one? Another choice. Fine, so the questions (“You have reached the end of the page. If you wish to continue, please turn over. If not, have a nice cup of tea and watch Entourage.”) aren’t printed there for you, but you can give up, stop reading. It is a choice. It is, in the truest sense of the word, interactive.

Sure, you could argue with that – it’s stretching the point, really, isn’t it? Is watching a film interactive? - but how is it less more linear than choosing which page you read next? In Fighting Fantasy, you used to choose whether to hit the orc with your sword or not, and you drove the story that way. And there was a right and a wrong answer – the wrong one would drive you to death. So you backtracked, and chose the right answer, because you wanted to know where the story went. It was linear as hell. If you chose to leave your character dead after page four, well, that was your choice. It wasn’t a good choice, I don’t think, as you lost the story. So, you invariably backtracked. And looking at the example of “interactive fiction”, as in, “You are in a room with a chair and a window to the North”, and you tell it where you want to go, well, that’s surely only as interactive as the writer’s make them? And I’ve been writing one – an experiment I’ve been trying – and it’s bloody hard, and, ultimately, just as linear as a printed novel (if not under a veil of free will). I mean, fine you give the reader/the player the chance to pick up a candle or not, but if they don’t they can’t see what’s in the room with them. Or maybe they pick it up but don’t light it? They have no choice, or they can’t see what’s in front of them. And you can bet that they will either have matches, or have been forced to pick some up earlier in the game.

So what choice do you really have? And why are these players termed as ‘players’? Why aren’t they just ‘readers’? And when you ask that question, where does being a ‘reader’ stop? Does playing Gears Of War – a linear story that requires that you fight a war over five levels with no freedom of progression or choice, only requiring that you use great hand-eye co-ordination to successfully shoot creatures – does playing it instantly drag you further away from this concept of an interactive novel? I mean, sure, its closer to a film, and I would never dream of suggesting otherwise, but that level of interactivity is insanely high compared to the non-linear choice of picking up a candle, and Gears is the least linear game that I can think of. So, what would be a true example of interactive fiction? Well, something like B.S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates makes a good case for itself (with the pages published unbound, and readable in any order that the reader likes, even though it is arguably to the detriment of the story itself). It was innovative at the time – I think it’d probably still be innovative now, were such gimmicks not horrifically overused – and it represented a true break from conventional novel structure. I imagine that, as a reader of the time, when presented with the novel, one had to sit down, arrange the pages, work out where to begin. Your choice to begin with a random page meant that you dictated where the rest of the novel went. You instantly made more of an interactive choice than choosing whether to blow out a candle when you finally make it through a door to the north.

And so, to the internet. Is it more interactive than paper novels? Well, it can be. It should be, if we’re honest. But for the most part it gets suffocated by grand ideas. I still pick up novels I have never heard of based on their covers, and I reckon I discard a third as many as I finish (usually because of bad writing, such is my incessant snobbery). But I am making that choice. I am putting them down, closing them, much as I would a film I disliked or a game that bored me. And I choose to turn the pages with the novels that I do persevere with. I make the choice to read chapter two, or to partake in the literary puzzles it presents me with, or to read the end first if I so choose (which I never choose, incidentally – why would you do that to yourself?). And that’s how I am most interactive.

So, where does Novel 3.0 start? Well, it starts in the spin-off. Jonathan Lethem has recently published a novel that is sort-of about filesharing, and he is sort-of making it public domain (in that, in five years, people will be allowed to use his characters and text however they see fit). Now, this relies on people liking the novel enough to want to use the characters and novel – and, frankly, caring enough to use it in this way when there is absolutely no financial or real-creative gain to be had in the long run. But it’s a noble idea (though so much of it is marketing and spin, I don’t know how Lethem will feel if his characters appear in a novel that sells better than his one has, possibly doing things that he would never have dreamt of doing to them). And so authors are adding non-linearity to their novels, adding paths that they didn’t see coming, and allowing the reader to wrestle more control away from their hands. But all these additions are still gimmicks. It’s more interactive than turning a page, but the ultimate choice, the choice to follow or not, to continue or turn back, that’s still the hardest part.

by: James Smythe

Smoking and talking, they all passed in a clump past the last trees on the grounds, a few perusing the paper, some with headphones on, jogging half-in-place, in pace with the rest still, which that’s still a very strange sight. If you’re going to jog

No, it was cloudy yesterday. The sun’s just peeking out now. Doesn’t explain the stench though.

The clump comes to its standstill at the mile-high entrance to the yard. They would be here a while. No one inside ever accounted for the traffic coming in all at once, so merging at the front remains slow to a stop at this hour. Lunch too, and at the end of the day. Everyone elides with everyone else, forming three neat single-file lines trudging forward towards the forks in the hallway leading to various parts of the yard. He’s going forward to the end, he’s been here so long. But it did put the down payment on his house, didn’t it? “Really, the complaints these days, you’re lucky to have this!” I know. I know.

The trudge speeds up mightily as everyone dissipates and pours into their various compartments. You’d think they were all happy to be here. I guess it’s not bad. Could be much worse. Much worse. Has been much worse, the other place. Let’s not, not now.

There’s a foreman behind his door on the metal grates they pass along to get to their stations. The machine, The Mass, is running and ready, whirring its first, making the first electricity noises of the day. They hide the wires mightily around here, you couldn’t follow the current if you tried. Presumably it heads out to the power station a few miles out on the bay if you follow it far enough, and then into the bay itself and washing out into the ocean, currently whooshing and splashing on rocks, which doesn’t stop to start again. Passing alongside long ductworks, that same water or something like it gushing through with a hum and thudder into the smelting site where his fellow man is getting boiled alive by errant splashes. Everything goes red in there. Down grated stairs, it gets hotter by The Mass. Past a control panel with unmarked levers and buttons. Past the conveyer, dormant. Past a structural element, blackened against one’s fingers. Over cracks in the underfoot cement and puddles of liquid. He’s gotten used to the smell. It smells like the yard now. Morning light comes in through the windows, white against the frosted panes now, bluer in the evening from the other side. Best part of the day. It’s very refreshing. At his spot, he puts on gloves and stares up at a ton-wide square of metal coming directly down on him.

Everyone standing, waits. The waiters get last breaths in, final thoughts before the slate wipes clean and the orders come from the left, or from above. Foreman exits his foreman place, trudges down the stairs without looking at anyone, checks his watch, and without looking at it pulls the lever. A whirring, lever through current, whirrrrrr, louder, oscillating faster and faster and faster. It hits a certain sound, a real sound, rattling through his head at a learned frequency, feels just a certain way, and it’s coming. He looks up.

The metal coming straight down on him shakes and shimmies, side to side and slowly unbraces itself from its mooring above and it begins to come straight down. He looks up

HOOOOWHAMP. Emphatic end, command from above. WHOOOOOOOH. Measured ascent, questing voice. He looks down. Square of metal has formed a cavity, foot high, two long. VHOOOOO and it’s gone. HOOOOOWHAMP. The ground rises to meet it and the air displaces to greet it. WHOOOOOOH. And why do you continue to stare? I do only as I’m told. Square of metal, same as before, only not the same VHOOOOO. And here we go again. He’s been placing the metal gently under its doom, a final tenderness fo HOOOOOWHAMP. Seek and ye shall find, ask and ye shall WHOOOOOH. Find. Square of metal. VHOOOOO. To the left: one with a mallet; to the right: one on a button. The metal vhoooos away and the one on a button is in action. One with a mallet pounds on four corners and vhoooos it down the line. Nothing to see farther down save darkness and some yellow and orange and puffs of steam every fifteen minutes.

He’s remembered something about home, something supermarket, something magazine? He’s forgotten. HOOOOOWHAMP. Demands, demands. VHOOOOO. Who’s raising such a din over there?

A man’s yell, galling, perforated, and a few more waft down the line, direction mallet. HOOOOOWHAMP. The metal is fine, good dimensions, everything VHOOOO fine. Mallet looks at him, eyes wide, then back down left, then down at his metal, pound pound pound pound. Hoooowhamp, must be nothing, but that racket over there continues. The belt shakes up and down just slightly BBAPBBAPBBAP on the conveyer, metal vibrating about, shifting hooowhammbbp just slightly. He removes the deformed mutant and awaits the next for more potential. Vhoooommbbp it would’ve fallen from the belt itself, now wouldn’t it. Shameful what’s going on down there, hoooowhammbbp, they’re ruining it.

Upon a shifting of air suddenly, he feels a breeze overhead, vhooooombbbbbppp, and wonders where the roof’s gone. It’s there—be brighter otherwise—but whither this new air? Another, direction mallet, he can almost hooowhammbbbbbbpp see it. PPING off direction button, and button puts up his hand to guard his face, ducking laterally away from an unseen. Everyone searches the skies for bombers or pigeons or peregrines. Take cover! PPIPEEOW and vhooooommbbbbbbbpp and the belt has a tear now, horizontal and moving down and up like a fault line and it all shakes, hoooowhaaammmbbbpp. A cloud cover moves in and another fighter whirrs overhead, and vhooooommmmbbbbppp, they’re getting so close now. Direction mallet hunches over and pulls his shirt over his face, running out, direction button. Direction button follows his lead, hooooowhaaamm-bbbbbppp, CRRRRRKKEEEEK, and on the floor a path of metal sheets follows out direction former-button. Through the new fog, vhoooo-ooo—ooommbbbbbbbb, men emerge waving their hands in front of their faces and heading out, former-button, wherever that leads. A great gun-metal leg stands idly, pillared, on the belt, and ssssssCRRRRRRRRRRNK

[Jeff Siegel is an artist, writer and other things. His site The Private Sector features all of those things and more.]

Madiha Siraj is a San Diego artist, born in 1989. Her childhood included an interest in books on tape, tiny pre-finished boxes from Michael’s and an avid interest in the Jurassic Park films. All of these things helped inadvertently breed her interest in art at an early age.  Her art is self described as “an attempt to piece together elements, such as subject matter and colour choices, that don’t necessarily work together in a conventional way.” Her work has a disjointed dream-like quality that aims to create a storyboard for the audience to interpret and explain. Her style is heavily influenced by street art, surrealism and abstraction.