Color me gobsmacked: Personal Effects: Dark Art, the transmedia supernatural thriller novel I wrote with Jordan Weisman, is required reading for an English course at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
The class is ENGL 376MM: World Building, and is taught by Zach Whalen, an assistant professor in the department of English, Linguistics and Communication. More on Whalen in a moment — first, get a taste of what this class is all about:
Our goal will be to [explore] world building within the expressive practices supported by New Media technologies, and we will proceed by examining texts that imagine Virtual Reality technology or Alternate Worlds. The culmination of this will be to collaboratively design and deploy an Alternate Reality Game of our own.
Students are also required to become active bloggers during the course, build and describe a virtual world, and research — and make a class presentation about — a specific ARG campaign.
Dude, I so want to be in college again, just to take this class.
Dr. Whalen definitely has the chops to rock his students’ socks: He teaches in the area of New Media Studies, and his research focuses on videogames. According to his website, he earned his Ph.D. “by completing a dissertation on the textuality of videogame typography. Also, in 2008, Vanderbilt University Press published Playing the Past: History and Nostalgia in Video Games, the collection of essays I co-edited with Laurie N. Taylor.”
His book looks awesome. I just bought it on Amazon.
Especially flattering is that Personal Effects is required alongside Neal Stephenson’s classic, Snow Crash. (SC is one of my favorite novels.) Also on the reading list is the very insightful This is Not a Game: A Guide to Alternate Reality Gaming by Dave Szulborski.
I can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that my novel will be read in a college classroom — but I’m absolutely jazzed by the news. I’m very proud of Personal Effects and the “out of book” experience we created for it, and am humbled Dr. Whalen felt it was worthy to include in his curriculum.
Most important, I’m delighted that teachers like Whalen understand the cultural significance of this emerging form of storytelling, are embracing it, and are sharing their knowledge and enthusiasm with their students.
Pardon me. I must do the Snoopy dance now.
–J.C.
(A grateful shout goes to ARGNet’s Michael Andersen for tipping me to this on Twitter!)
Good work, fella! Quite an accolade, there – you must be very proud. Well done
Congrats, J.C.! That’s great news!
Congratulations, that is way cool. Hey, maybe they’d have you out do to a lecture for the class! If so, you’ve got a place to stay with us in Virginia
That is MOST awesome, dude!
I do hope you realize what a herculean effort of will it is to keep from shouting HOT DAMN!!!! at the top of my voice.
That is such marvelous news–and I for one hope it also reminds St. Martin’s of what great properties they have.
Wow. My friend Hutch…the object of scholarship. So quintessentially cool.
Congrats to you and Jordan on academia discovering your awesomeness and using it as a teaching tool.
I own the book myself,and I understand the out of book experience but when can I purchase the book for my iPad?
@Jimi: As far as I know, the publisher has no plans to make the book available in electronic format.
I read this shit book based on the review of it by Scott Sigler. When I was finished, I stopped listening to Scott Sigler podcasts for months. He lost a lot of credibility with me for his recommending it. The book is an epic fail. I was excited to read it, to “get into it” and the characters. To feel scarred. Instead I feel cheated, out of both money and time. It is a waste of ink, paper and plasic. The bonus material didn’t enhance the story AT ALL. It was just shit in the cover that made the book fold funny after removing and replacing it. And the story, I wanted EVERYBODY to die by the end. I kept reading it, hoping the next chapter would be where the story got “good”. It never does. And now, it’s college read material. WTF?!?!?! My only hope is this book will be like the movie “Colors” was for John Singleton. A young author who is forced to read this crap at school will say “that was awful, I can do it better” and writes the “Boys ‘n the Hood” of interactive horror lit.
P.S. Don’t drink the kool-aid people, this book SUCKS.
Wow. Tell me how you really feel.
Re: Lemmings
Not so much, amigo. Most of the class seems pretty stoked about Dark Arts, myself included.
I’m one of the students who’s going to be reading this novel (haven’t yet… college. Lots of work. You know the drill!) and at the very least the format has ALREADY taught me volumes about the way the idea of a text is evolving and expanding. Also YEAH FIDDLY BITS, every book should have them. They add to the experience by enhancing HOW you experience the world of the book. Anybody with an imagination would agree.
Also, I’ve got to say that I’M pretty jazzed that a class I’m in got a shout-out on your blog.
Haley, you rock. Thanks for chiming in here. I hope you enjoy the book!
Hey J.C.
For the most part we’ve enjoyed the novel.
A few of us were blogging about the transmedia experience on our classes website if you’re interested in taking a look.
The url, incase you don’t already have it, is http://worlds.zachwhalen.net
Thanks for the tip, Kris — and for the link!