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June 17, 2009
Cory Doctorow and Idiots'Books
So we've been sitting on some exciting news for the past few weeks and are finally ready to share it with you all. We got a call from the folks at Tor.com a few weeks back asking whether or not we might be interested in a challenging project. We said yes.
Here's the scoop. The great and accomplished Cory Doctorow (journalist, author, activist, and BoingBoing co-editor) is coming out with a new book in the fall. The book, called Makers, is about a couple of guys who invent things out of discarded stuff. They have many adventures with disgruntled goths, kindly squatters, and lawyers from the Disney Corporation.
In addition to the hardback version of Makers, Tor.com is going to release the entire book on its website in 81 sections, starting in early July. Every three days for about six months a new section will be released for your reading enjoyment. And each of the 81 sections is going to be imagined and illustrated by Idiots'Books.
This gets more exciting, though. The folks at Tor thought of us, in part, because of the work we've done with recombining image and narrative in Ten Thousand Stories and the One-Page Wonders series. They were interested in seeing if it would be possible to construct the 81 illustrations in such a way that all 81 would come together to form one huge illustration, like pieces of a gigantic puzzle.
Robbi and I put our heads together and decided that it could be done. And we decided to take it one step further. Each of the 81 illustrations functions as one piece of a 9x9 grid that forms a huge, complex illustration when assembled, but each also functions as a "tile" that is drawn so as to be completely interchangeable with any of the other 80 illustrations. Any side of any tile can line up against any side of any other tile without loss of visual coherence. This means that a person with a printout of all 81 "tiles" could arrange them side-by-side in any configuration (and with the tiles turned in any direction) and create an entirely new illustration each time.
It's difficult to describe this in writing, but in a few short weeks you will be able to go to Tor.com and start reading the story and downloading the illustrations every three days. Additionally, the folks at Tor.com are in the process of developing an online game that will enable you to move and rotate the "tiles" in virtual space, creating new configurations and new illustrations each time you play.
Here is Cory Doctorow. You can learn more about him by reading his blog, Craphound.
Getting the opportunity to work with him is a genuine thrill.
Here he is in goggles and a cape. If you read his Wikipedia article, you'll understand why.
Much more on this to come. For now, we're just excited to get the word out.
Posted by bogenamp at June 17, 2009 09:28 PM