THE MANGA MAN BACKGROUNDER
- Sentient T-shirt Futurewear (QR Code Fashion Tip)
- The Futuristic Vision of Alexander Besher
- How to Download QR Code Reader Software (if you need to)
QR Code Fashion Tip #1: "Wear this Book!"
From Sentient Tattoos to The World's First Multimedia Novel Published on a T-Shirt
For Alexander Besher, the San Francisco-based journalist, futurist, and Philip K. Dick Award nominated author, it was no great leap to envision the advent of epidermal programming in his 1998 futuristic thriller Mir (Simon & Schuster) to designing a sentient T-shirt that anyone can wear today and be instantly wired into the future in realtime.
In Mir, sentient tattoos were able to move around from body to body and hyperlink the novel's characters to the physical world as well as to the digital world of Omnispace, the future incarnation of Cyberspace.
Besher's latest novel The Manga Man takes this concept a quantum step forward. For one thing, it's not a traditional book. It doesn't come in hardcover or paperback, but as a T-shirt that you wear on your back.
Its meta-multimedia platform features [an original music soundtrack by Seattle-based electronic composer William Collin Snavely (aka Diagrams of Suburban Chaos); a short film by San Francisco-based director Nara Denning, pioneer of the "neo-silent" film movement; a discussion of the post-Zen themes of Butoh (the Japanese "Dance of Darkness" aesthetic and philosophy) which run through the story, with an .mp4 collection of international Butoh dance performances; along with an audio book excerpt and a sneak preview of the graphic novel version of "Manga Man" scripted by Besher and illustrated by the prize-winning Italian graphic novel artist Daniele Serra.
The "Manga Man" T-shirt wearer can share the story with anyone who has a camera on their mobile phone. All they have to do is to take a photograph of the QR/2D (2-dimensional "quick response") barcode on the front the tee, and they'll be instantly linked to a server that delivers cell phone screen-formatted narrative right into their hand.
"It's like science imitating science fiction," Besher says. "The interactivity doesn't stop there either. The Manga Man is a 600-page epic tale that's filled with thousands of futuristic ideas that are incubating within the plot, just waiting to be hatched in some R & D lab near you."
The world that Besher has created in this 21st century alternative fantasy noir thriller is populated by an evolved species of humankind known as the Omni sapiens. "They're an upgraded version of us," Besher explains. "The main difference is that their entire body and consciousness operate like a walking, living, breathing super search-engine."
Here's Besher's description of an Omni sapiens in The Manga Man:
"Striding down the road, he'd point his finger at anything that caught his eye and demand to know the reason for it, the season for it, and whether or not it was a tasty morsel for his malnutritioned consciousness. Each time he aimed his index finger, it gave him a thrill to see those tiny illuminated butterflies flutter out of his fingertip like a parade of pilgrims homing in on the holy dew of knowledge. They told him everything, even the dietary minutiae behind each image that he swallowed.
"Reality calories: 40. Calories from B.S.: 30. Total Truth: 3g. 5%. Saturated simile: 2g. 10%. Illusion: 15 mg. 5%. Enlightenment content: 15 mg. 1%. Total Non-sequitur: 1g. 0%."
Of course, The Manga Man delivers a rippingly good yarn as well as a cool looking T-shirt with art designed by the renowned Italian graphic novel artist Danielle Serra.
"It's a real back-turner," Besher says about his novel. "The protagonist is a half-human, half-digital super-hero whose mission is to stop the evil warlords who want to clone the universe."
"Fittingly, The Manga Man T-shirt comes in different sizes from small to medium to large so that everyone can get into the story," he adds. "As with my Rim Trilogy of novels (Rim, Mir, and Chi; HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster), I go to all lengths to capture the interest of the reader. There's love, romance, and sex as well as murder, mayhem, and mystery. And it all takes place in the Future that is Now. You can pass my T-shirt novel down to your grandchildren. Not only is it a collectible, but it's an instant classic in the pantheon of wearable literature."
The Futuristic Vision of Alexander Besher
How prescient is Alexander Besher's work? In April 2008, John Clute, editor of the classic reference work Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, observed in his Science Fiction Weekly column: "Virtual reality and the world have begun to converge into Singularity as has been foretold us (in) Alexander Besher's Rim books." In April 2008, Gizmodo, the online tech gadget guide, paid tribute to Besher's 1994 novel Rim whose protagonist wore a pair of data-recording Ray Bans sunglasses, when it reported on the University of Tokyo's development of "cyber goggles that record and tag your world for future reference." Again in April 2008, Live Science.com reported on the discovery of the "Organic Internet" ("Bugs Use Plants as Telephones"), that caused one reader to comment: "Has anyone read that cyberpunk novel from the nineties, Chi, by Alexander Besher? His book is about this private eye who discovers the portal to Nature's own organic Internet called ‘Greenspace.' The main server was located somewhere in the jungles of Borneo." It should come as no surprise, therefore, that Besher's novels are routinely reviewed by the internationally distinguished UK-published New Scientist weekly magazine.
How to Enter the Meta-Multimedia Portal of QR/2D Code With Your Mobile Phone
To date, only the Nokia 3G smartphones--such as the Nokia E71, Nokia N95, and Nokia N96 models--come with QR Code scanner software already installed and ready to use.
Mobile phones of any brand that are equipped with a camera can access multimedia content on .mobi sites by downloading free QR Code scanner software from the Internet.
A very fast and widely available QR Code reader is supplied by 3GVision.
- On the Mobile Web: Go to www.i-nigma.mobi on your mobile. i-nigma will automatically identify your handset type, download and install i-nigma.
- By SMS - Text the word i-nigma to: +44 7781 489340 (or 07781 489340 in the UK). You will receive back an SMS containing a link to the i-nigma software download site.
