The Mongoliad
Application splash screen for The Mongoliad
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| Author | |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Middle Ages, Mongol Empire |
| Publisher | Subutai Corporation |
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Publication date
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2010 |
| Media type | Smartphone, Web, Print |
| ISBN | (paperback) |
| OCLC | 764354919 |
The Mongoliad is a fictional narrative set in the Foreworld Saga, a secret history transmedia franchise developed by the Subutai Corporation.The Mongoliad was originally released in a serialized format online, and via a series of iOS and Android apps, but was restructured and re-edited for a definitive edition released via the Amazon Publishing imprint 47North, both in print and in Kindle format. Fan-submitted Foreworld stories are published via Amazon's Kindle Worlds imprint.
The serialized edition was intended to be distributed primarily as a series of applications ("apps") for smartphones, which the Subutai Corporation viewed as a new model for publishing storytelling. At the project's core is a narrative of adventure fiction following the exploits of a small group of fighters and mystics in medieval Europe around the time of the Mongol conquests. As well as speculative fiction authors Neal Stephenson (chairman of Subutai), Greg Bear, Nicole Galland, Mark Teppo and others, collaborators include filmmakers, computer programmers, graphic artists, martial artists and combat choreographers, video game designers, and a professional editor. In a departure from conventional fiction, much of the content of The Mongoliad was in forms other than text, not bound to any single medium and not in the service of the central narrative. Once the project developed momentum, the Subutai Corporation envisioned fans of the work contributing, expanding and enriching the narrative, and the fictional universe in which it takes place.
According to Jeremy Bornstein, president of the Subutai Corporation, the genesis of the project was in Stephenson's dissatisfaction with the authenticity of the early modern sword fighting scenes he had written into his Baroque cycle of novels. Stephenson gathered a group of martial arts enthusiasts interested in studying historical European swordfighting, and this eventually resulted in some of the members of this group collaborating on a set of stories that would make use of accurate representations of these martial arts. The collaborators decided that the project need not limit itself to the traditional novel form and began developing ideas on how to produce it in different media while retaining the caliber that would be expected of a new work by authors such as Stephenson or Bear.
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