Abstract
Told through a series of interrelated documents (including emails, text messages, newspaper clippings and blog posts), Annabel Smith’s interactive digital novel The Ark epitomises the contemporary hybridity of the dystopian genre. Designed to be fully immersive, the story can be engaged with across media, enabling readers to ‘dive deeper into the world of the novel’ and challenge how they experience dystopian texts. Taking a Text World Theory perspective, I examine the implications of this challenge, investigating the impact of transmedial storytelling on world-building and exploring the creative evolution of dystopian epistolary more broadly. In analysing both the ebook element of The Ark and certain facets of its companion pieces (which take the form of a dynamic website and a smartphone app), I investigate the creation of the novel’s text-worlds, considering the process of multimodal meaning construction, examining the conceptual intricacies of the epistolary form and exploring the influence of paratextual matter on world-building and construal. In doing so, I offer new insights into the conceptualisation of ‘empty text-worlds’, extend Gibbons’ discussions of transmedial world-creation and argue for a more nuanced understanding of dystopian epistolary as framed within Text World Theory.
Highlights
Told through a series of interrelated documents, Annabel Smith’s interactive digital novel The Ark epitomises the contemporary hybridity of the dystopian genre
As evidenced by the development of new epistolic forms such as ‘Twiction’ or ‘E-pistolary’ (Gheorghiu, 2014), the parameters of what constitutes an epistolary novel have changed, with contemporary definitions encompassing the broader spectrum of document-based narrative
With many dystopian worlds inhibiting writing (as in Orwell’s (2013 [1949]) Nineteen EightyFour or Dalcher’s (2018) Vox), and others presenting future worlds that are so advanced that the concept of paper-based correspondence has become obsolete, the ‘compositional deixis’ (Stockwell, 2002) of documented communication is in itself world defining
Summary
The ‘death of the letter’ has been notably prefigured in contemporary culture, with the rise of digital technologies and the prevalence of synchronic messaging superseding. . .] and doing so with the hope or expectation of a response’ (Stanley, 2015: 242; see Stanley, 2011, 2013; Stanley et al, 2012) Under this remit, electronic methods of correspondence such as instant messaging or blogging can be viewed as epistolic by design, and narratives comprising such forms can be categorised within the periphery of the epistolary novel. The novel can be paired with a complementary smartphone app, allowing readers to upload their own material to the Ark by contributing their personal images, videos and fanfiction to the archive Such materials actively expand the narrative world ‘by filling its gaps, constructing a prehistory or posthistory, and so on’ (Doležel, 1998: 207; see Gibbons, 2017; Ryan, 2008), and inviting readers to construct a narrative that is, in part, their own. I offer new insights into the conceptualisation of ‘empty textworlds’ (Gavins, 2007; Lahey, 2004), extend Gibbons’ (2017) discussions of transmedial world-creation and argue for a more nuanced understanding of dystopian epistolary as framed within Text World Theory
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