The Neal Stephenson/Greg Bear/Nicole Galland/Mark Teppo online serial novel I first mentioned a while back has officially launched. The home page is here. The free preview content, including a teaser chapter, is here. The FAQ is here. The page with my name on it is here.
[UPDATE: The Mongoliad website closed some time ago. But the complete Mongoliad Cycle is available in print or ebook.]
Attention Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, Nicole Galland, and Mark Teppo fans:
The Mongoliad is a rip-roaring adventure tale set in 1241, a pivotal year in history, when Europe thought that the Mongol Horde was about to completely destroy their world. The Mongoliad is also the beginning of an experiment in storytelling, technology, and community-driven creativity.
Our story begins with a serial novel of sorts, which we will release over the course of about a year. Neal Stephenson created the world in which The Mongoliad is set, and presides benevolently over it. Our first set of stories is being written by Neal, Greg Bear, Nicole Galland, Mark Teppo, and a number of other authors; we’re also working closely with artists, fight choreographers & other martial artists, programmers, film-makers, game designers, and a bunch of other folks to produce an ongoing stream of nontextual, para-narrative, and extra-narrative stuff which we think brings the story to life in ways that are pleasingly unique, and which can’t be done in any single medium.
Very shortly, once The Mongoliad has developed some mass and momentum, we will be asking fans to join us in creating the rest of the world and telling new stories in it. That’s where the real experiment part comes in. We are building some pretty cool tech to make that easy and fun, and we hope lots of you will use it.
People will be able to get The Mongoliad over the web and via custom clients for mobile devices – we’re going to start out with iPad, iPhone, Android, and Kindle apps, and will probably do more in the not too distant future.
Stay tuned. Fun stuff coming!
Because of my looming deadline for The Mirage I’m not one of the writers on the serial novel, but I do have a seat in the secret treehouse and have engaged in sword fights and pop-bottle-decapitating contests with many of the principals, so I can say with firsthand knowledge that yes, you want this.
The official Mongoliad website is here, and the Facebook page is here. The email sign-up page is here.
[UPDATE: The Mongoliad website closed some time ago. But the complete Mongoliad Cycle is available in print or ebook.]