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Home | Blog Fiction
Post Blogospheric Fiction
Sfsite.com has an entertaining science fiction story called Plumage from Pegasus written by Paul Di Filippo. The story takes place in a post-blogging world where ex-bloggers, like Cory Doctorow, roam the streets trying to get flesh-and-blood "hits" for their sites and show photographs of cool gadgets and cool stuff to people passing by.
I HAD TO run a few errands downtown, but I hesitated to go.
What if I ran into bloggers?
Ever since the total, irretrievable collapse of the Internet in a chaos of viruses, worms, spam, terrorism and busts by the FBI anti-porn squad, that archaic species of human had become a bigger street menace than mimes, Jehovah's Witnesses, or panhandlers ever were.
It is a good read and it is a short-short so it doesn't take long to read. Hopefully, this is not what bloggers will ultimately become.
Posted on January 17, 2006
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Jenny Jet Combines Blogging, Texting and Fiction
NorthJersey.com's Web Watch reports on a new website called JennyJet.com that is offering a new service which combines blogging, text messaging and an interactive science fiction plot. The story stars 17-year-old CMIA (Central Mobile Intelligence Agency) agent Jenny Jet who is investigating a government conspiracy to cover-up an alien invasion.
The story line revolves around "Greys," aliens working to decipher the human genetic code in their underground lab; "Reptoids," which plot war with the Greys and domination over humans; and "Feds," the hapless humans trying to keep the lid on secret meetings with the Greys.
Subscribers receive daily Short Message Service updates and can contribute to the story by blogging online and sharing theories with other subscribers.
The Jenny Jet blog and texting adventures are a service of SMS Media Group. Gary Brooks, the creator of Jenny Jet, also plans other Jenny Jet content like books and games.
Posted on November 7, 2005
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Fictional Weblog Shows Flu Pandemic Risk
For all those who have attacked fictional blogs unnecessarily here is a fictional blog that has value. Declan Butler, Nature's senior
reporter in Paris, has written a fictional blog about a pandemic outbreak of bird flu that causes chaos, death and panic. The fictional blog is set in the future (beginning December, 2005) and written by freelance journalist in D.C. Here is an excerpt:
The Commissioned Corps of the US Public Health Service, the nation's
uniformed force of health professionals, has just been mobilized. The
US Northern Command is in charge of the military response. Soldiers
are setting up triage centres, anticipating overflowing emergency
rooms and morgues. Images are coming in of tent cities being erected
in New York's Central Park. Wards are being installed in schools and
churches. Troops are on the streets. "There's going to be civil
unrest," a general informed me on the phone this morning.
This is fiction and it is a blog and it is both useful and interesting. A fictional blog used this way can help create awareness of an important issue that many are unaware of. In Southeast Asia bird flu has been a growing and serious problem for the past few years. Scientists do not have a cure for the disease and many health experts believe it could eventually lead to a terrible outbreak like the Spanish Flu outbreak in 1918. The CDC recently called bird flu the biggest threat to the world.
Posted on May 27, 2005
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Shel Holtz: Stop Defining Blogs
Blog purists insist that blogs are not media or content. Or that
blogs must have comments and trackback. Or that characters blogs are
bad or cannot be blogs. Meanwhile, Shel Holtz says it is time to stop defining blogs. Holtz says blogs are lightweight content-management systems capable of multiple uses.
I'm getting tired of people insisting that blogs are one thing but definitely
cannot be another. Sure, I know exactly what Searls is talking about: the type
of blog written by individuals (like, for example, this one). But that doesn’t
mean that General Motors is abusing the blogosphere by producting Fastlane,
which targets the consumer audience of automotive enthusiasts. I'll keep on
saying it: Blogs are lightweight content-management systems, and as such,
are applicable to any task the use of such a system accommodates. Consequently, we'll continue to see blogs branch out along several evolutionary paths. Some will be terrific, others will cause mass shrugging, and still others will be wretched. Those launched by organizations in order to help the company achieve business goals will require -- require --consideration of content targeted to audiences. That, of course, will not diminish the importance of the writing.
New forms of blogs are emerging -- the increasing popularity of blog fiction is just
one example. There are also cartoon, photo, audio (podcasts) and
video blogs. It is wrong to try and place restrictions on
blogs while they are still developing as a medium. It is time to let blogs
develop on their own without restrictions as bloggers and businesses find
more and more uses for them.
Posted on May 4, 2005
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Blog Fiction
Websites are starting to emerge to cover the growing trend of
blog fiction. Blogfic.com, which has links and resources about blog fiction, says there are two kinds of blog fiction: character blogs and serialized blog fiction. We have already discussed character blogs on BloggersBlog.com and you can read our past
coverage of character blogs here. Character blogs are written by real people pretending to be a character, such as the
Moose on the Moosetopia blog
or Up and Onward - the
confessions of a Super Hero.
Serialized blog fiction uses
the blog format to tell a story or novel. Authors can spread
the story out over multiple blog entries to try and build an
audience. FictionBlogs has a running list of blogs publishing fiction. Stephen King was one of the first to try serialized fiction online with his horror story called The Plant.
Readers paid $1.00 to download each installment of the story.
An article about the launch of The Plant in 2000 can
be found here.
Using a blog would probably be much easier than having readers
download each new installment. The Guardian had an
article about serialized blog fiction last year. The
article notes that one problem with blog stories or novels
would be that readers might arrive at the middle or near
the end of the story. However, a fiction blogger could probably
use cookies or logins to make sure new readers did not end up
reading the end of a story or novel first.
Posted on May 3, 2005
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