On the surface there seems to remain a big gap between books and technology. Books, a vestige of the good old days and an accepted, life-enriching pastime, face off against Technology and a future in which people have swapped their souls for a life in front of its screens, watching videos of pandas sneezing. It\u2019s an extreme view of two polarized worlds. And, whilst it\u2019s certainly taken a while for technology to infiltrate the world of literature, now that it\u2019s happened, books as we know them will not remain outside technology\u2019s all-pervasive dominance.<\/p>\n
And it has happened; with a huge, growing market for e-readers it\u2019s clear we\u2019re consuming our stories differently, but it\u2019s not just how we read them that\u2019s changing. The Internet has started to become part of the actual writing process, with its democratising ability to let anyone publish a story for public consumption. Whilst \u2018micro-fiction\u2019 has long been part of literary traditions, the emphasis on a decentralised publishing process, and a decidedly active authorship (whose own personal voices become more and more accessible to us through technology), \u2018tweeted\u2019 fiction highlights changes on all sides of the reading table.<\/p>\n
The Guardian<\/em>\u00a0responded to the changing conditions of literature with a recent challenge to 21 well-known authors (one of whom is AM Homes, who recently joined Jeanette Winterson in a sold-out talk on campus) to merge their story telling with technology and create \u201ctwitter fiction\u201d: novels in just 140 characters. We read this article on The Guardian<\/em> on Facebook, as did 1,518 other people. It\u2019s not just the bookfolk who have cottoned on to the power of freely public (self-) promotion and publication.<\/p>\n The stories range from the portentous to \u2018meta\u2019-technological aphorisms. And they all begin and end in just one breath\u2019s worth of words. Here\u2019s our pick of the best:<\/p>\n Geoff Dyer<\/strong> AM Homes<\/strong> AL Kennedy<\/strong> Simon Armitage<\/strong> India Knight<\/strong> Hari Kunzru<\/strong> SJ Watson<\/strong> As the worlds of dusty books and shiny screens collide, is the future of fiction lost? Twitter suggests not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[1193,3684,3783,3784],"coauthors":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7627"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7627\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7627"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nI know I said that if I lived to 100 I’d not regret what happened last night. But I woke up this morning and a century had passed. Sorry.<\/p>\n
\nSometimes we wonder why sorrow so heavy when happiness is like helium.<\/p>\n
\nIt’s good that you’re busy. Not great. Good, though. But the silence, that’s hard. I don’t know what it means: whether you’re OK, if I’m OK.<\/p>\n
\nBlaise Pascal didn’t tweet and neither did Mark Twain. When it came to writing something short & sweet neither Blaise nor Mark had the time.<\/p>\n
\nSoften, my arse. I’m a geezer. I’m a rock-hard little bastard. Until I go mushy overnight for you, babe. #pears<\/p>\n
\nI’m here w\/ disk. Where ru? Mall too crowded to see. I don’t feel safe. What do you mean you didn’t send any text? Those aren’t your guys?<\/p>\n
\nShe thanks me for the drink, but says we’re not suited. I’m a little “intense”. So what? I followed her home. She hasn’t seen anything yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"