Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Lost? Or just confused....

A few years ago -- well, perhaps 20 or 30 -- a British TV company did a bit of research and found that those who watched the silver screen often couldn't tell the difference between re-enactments of events and actual events, caught on film.

In other words, when questioned about a TV documentary which had included some acted-out versions of events which had never been filmed live (perhaps the arrest of some spies, say), the viewers often thought that they had been watching the real thing. Fact and fiction can easily get blurred in the minds of those who are watching TV while they eat their tea. Which is one reason, I suppose, why you now see little labels at the top of your screen saying Re-enactment, or Reconstruction, or words to that effect.

It's getting to be a bit similar in the book world. I say that because Gary Troup, it seems, has written a novel.

Gary Troup, who he?

Gary Troup, he a fictional character in Lost, that's who he. And Lost is a made-up TV story. It ain't true, OK? But that doesn't stop the Hanso Corporation taking full-page ads in the American press to object to the way in which they are portrayed in Gary's novel. And it doesn't stop our Gary having a web site of his own either.

And it doesn't stop people speculating on how the internet might be used to attract readers to a whole new interactive fiction/fact thingummy-whatsit, and all like that. And before long you'll be telling me it's Tuesday, when I know perfectly well we're still in May. Unless, of course, you happen to be reading this in June.

And why does the clock at the Hanso Foundation change to OB:EY whenever it hits 15:04, or 15:08, or 23:15? That's what I want to know.

Answers to all these imponderables may be found in the Scotsman (link from booktrade.info). Or perhaps not.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The Hanso Foundation is fictional too. It is all part of a game that the producers of Lost have made up for the fans.