
How J.J. Abrams Created a Reading Experience Unlike Any Other - thefalcon
https://www.ceros.com/blog/meta-narrative/
======
cocktailpeanuts
Is it just me or did anyone feel like this website was trying too hard to
"create a reading experience unlike any other" of their own? It's like a no-
name comedian introducing a world-star comedian for tonight's show, and trying
to one-up him (and miserably failing)

They had one job: convey the story of how "J.J abrams created a reading
experience unlike any other"? They failed, because I got motion sick and just
closed the browser. I would rather read this through some other website when
it resurfaces.

These hipster UIs for the sake of themselves need to stop. I thought this was
only trendy for a year when NYTimes did it and died off, but apparently some
are still doing it.

~~~
LukeShu
> "They had one job: convey the story of how ..."

It seems to me that that wasn't actually their job; that their job really was:
Convince marketers that they are doing a good job of conveying the story of
how J.J. Abrams created...

Ceros is "Interactive Content Marketing Software." Whether or not they
actually do a good job of marketing "S." is irrelevant; they just need to
convince would-be marketers that Ceros did a good job of marketing "S.", and
that the marketers should pay for a similar treatment of their own product.

When convincing someone that you are doing something well, it helps to
actually do it well, but it isn't a prerequisite.

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combatentropy
It amazes me that they could make it in bulk for $20
([https://www.amazon.com/Ship-Theseus-J-
Abrams/dp/0316201642](https://www.amazon.com/Ship-Theseus-J-
Abrams/dp/0316201642)).

Among the pages are cards and other items that the two fictional readers
shared or saved.

~~~
morsch
How well does the Kindle adaptation work, I wonder.

(Also, thinking this would make a nice parent for my father, but the German
edition was a limited run; $130 used, $180 new, jeez.)

~~~
braindouche
There isn't a kindle version. There is an iPad App version that I can
recommend highly.

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Xoros
Had anyone read The House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski ? A book in a book
in a book. I feel some similarities with this one.

~~~
brandur
I've read it. I liked the premise for The House of Leaves and really _wanted_
to like the book, but to be honest, the whole experience felt a little
gimmicky to me. I got to parts that were obnoxiously annoying to read (e.g.
the shrinking tunnel), and the story didn't really feel worth it.

S. has some of this too (the handwriting in the columns takes time to make
out), but because the quality of narrative and the overall refinement of the
product were so high, I didn't mind. Given a choice between the two books, I'd
certainly start with this one.

~~~
finnh
By "the shrinking tunnel" do you mean the section where fewer & fewer words
appear on each page (and the rest of page is blank)?

If so, that's funny - that's one of my favorite parts of the book, and
something I refer to often when talking about the book. The reason I like it
so much is that it's at a very tense/dangerous moment, and normally in those
situations it's impossible to actually read the content in exactly the order
written - instead, my eyes will saccade forward and give my little
subconscious "hints" at how the tension is resolved.

By placing only a few words per page (by the end, just one word per page),
House of Leaves kept me in a state of fairly breathless anticipation for the
whole time I was reading that part. Danielewski managed to get a film-like
control over the pacing, which I thought was brilliant.

------
omaranto
I take it this website did display text for other people. I wonder what it
said... I only got a series of alternating dark and light grey rectangles to
scroll through, without any text. Thinking maybe there was a problem with the
CSS and the text was there but not visible, I pressed ctrl-A ctrl-C to copy
all the text and pasted it into an editor: I only got the header and footer,
there really was no article!

~~~
jdlshore
Same here, using Firefox. Worked fine in Chrome. The site's a bit overwrought.

~~~
LukeShu
To add a datapoint: it worked fine for me in Firefox (well, Iceweasel) 53,
once I told NoScript to allow ceros.com.

------
briga
'Unlike any other' might be a stretch. Writers have been playing these sorts
of meta-narrative games for decades now. Nabokov's Pale Fire comes to mind.
House of Leaves is another example.

~~~
josinalvo
It is funny, how we started to use comparisons to mean just adjectives. E.g.,
'like no other' -> 'really good'.

Funny, and semantics breaking.

How _could_ we write a title that just said 'the book is really good' and
still felt compelling?

~~~
willismichael
A distinctive reading experience?

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criddell
I've just started reading this book. As an object, it's pretty neat. My big
complaint is that all of the stuff they've put into the pages can fall out and
that ruins the experience quite a bit. I wish they had an index for all the
cards and other things so that I could put the book back together.

Edit: if the site doesn't link for you, go to Amazon and search for _Ship of
Theseus_. That's the book the article is about.

~~~
wanderingstan
Thankfully someone did make an index for the all cards and inserts in the book
and where they belong: [http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1589916-insert-
inventory](http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1589916-insert-inventory)

To my knowledge, the "meta book" is named "S". That's the name on the book
cover. OTOH, inside the cover is "Ship of Theseus" which is the made-up book
that the made-up meta characters are writing in the margins of. It looks like
Amazon now allows you to search for either.

~~~
criddell
Thank you for posting this.

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EpicEng
Fancy site... too bad it takes 30 seconds to load. I almost jumped ship.

~~~
lvoudour
I didn't believe it so I timed it. Took 15s for me, which is still absurd
given the fact that civ 5 takes about the same time to generate a new game.
Fancy or not it's just a website. I'm not an expert on the subject (web dev)
so could someone explain why more and more websites have significant load
times when all they do is load a few images and text? Is it a server issue, a
dev issue or a browser issue?(pretty sure it's not a bandwidth issue)

On the subject, the whole concept reminds me of House of Leaves, only the
later is definitely more weird

~~~
munchbunny
Back in the day this would happen because somebody needed to load a whole
Flash applet. Web 2.0 was supposed to take us away from that.

I suspect the main reason people do it is because progressive loading has the
potential to leave your page half-rendered, which looks bad. So you block the
whole thing until you can present it in its entirety.

But it's the web. We're used to pages half-loading, and we're used to starting
to read text before everything has been loaded. The right way to fix that
problem is to make your design more lean, not to stick everything behind a
15-30s loading spinner.

~~~
lvoudour
Since mobile browsing is so prevalent, you would expect websites to be more
optimised for mobile cpus/bandwidth and therefore very fast on ethernet
connected desktops. But more and more I find sites that take so much time to
load I feel I'm back to dial-up days. This blog doesn't even have ads. It's
absurd considering the fact we can stream full HD content in several devices
on the same connection

~~~
throwanem
People develop on localhost or local servers, and don't think about what
happens when the RTT exceeds a millisecond.

------
Overtonwindow
It's a beautiful project and extremely intriguing, but I found the book to be
incredibly boring, and everything else a bit difficult to follow and read.
Definitely requires a lot of patience.

------
mercer
> He’s no stranger to mysterious and complicated plots—planned from the very
> beginning, and designed from the ground up, to keep viewers guessing.

If anything this is the main problem I have with Abrams: his 'mysterious and
complicated plots' become a lot less fun once you realize that their only goal
is to keep you guessing without much of a pay-off.

This doesn't _have_ to be a problem, provided that the plot offers enough in
itself. But when a substantial part of the plot revolves around the mystery,
there better be a reward!

I've been enjoying The Leftovers, which was created by the other dude who
worked on Lost. At this point, nearing the end of the show, I could still live
with never having an answer to the central mystery. But this is primarily
because 1) the showrunner repeatedly said that it's not about the mystery, and
2) even though the show is walking a fine line, the mystery is still secondary
to the individual characters' journeys.

<spoilers!>

The first (and perhaps second?) season of Lost are still among my favorite
seasons of any show ever. But I feel they're tarnished by the convoluted,
mystery-in-a-box, answers-that-lead-to-more-questions, ever-more-ridiculous
later seasons, and a finale that we were explicitly told wouldn't be the case
way back in the first season!

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emn13
Unzoomably HUGE font. I don't think I've ever seen a title as large as this
body text.

Unreadable.

~~~
eru
Resizing the window was the only thing that worked for me. (Without resorting
to hackery.)

Really weird.

------
jansho
This looks super interesting. Like putting mini books in the margins of a big
book, plus the novelty factor of the book design itself.

But would it have the same delicious effect that Mr Abrams had when he first
found said book that inspired his project?

> _" It made me smile, this optimistic romantic idea that you could leave a
> book with a message for someone."_

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scandox
I saw a copy of this sitting on a table in a bookshop in Dublin a couple of
years ago and picked up and read it for a while. I would have liked to have
loved it and maybe as a teenager I still would have been able to invest it
with the a little bit of the real magic it seemed to lack for all its
technical accomplishment...but I guess I've exchanged those powers for
something else - or just lost them.

The thing that still amazes me is how words themselves - without any other
props - can still engender the kind of mystery and sense of romance which they
were aiming for. Even when we're used to entertainments with far more sensory
power.

------
colordrops
J.J. Abrams is self-important and overrated. His works are predictable and
uninspiring. He has become a name to attach to anything slightly fantasy or
sci-fi oriented in Hollywood regardless of how much actual work he has put
into the project. He's trying to be the next Spielberg but he's just a pale
shadow.

I don't like being so negative but he's pulled the wool over too many eyes.

~~~
jclulow
Is it possible, just maybe, that at least _some_ people who enjoy his work are
adults who can decide for themselves what they like, and aren't the victims of
some elaborate confidence trick?

~~~
colordrops
It's possible but I am just expressing my opinion as one among many.

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earlyriser
Is this like a grown up version of "Cathy's Book?
[https://www.amazon.com/Cathys-Book-Found-
Call-650-266-8233/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Cathys-Book-Found-
Call-650-266-8233/dp/076242656X)

------
joshuaheard
J.J. Abrams's TED talk on the mystery box is worth a listen.

[https://www.ted.com/talks/j_j_abrams_mystery_box](https://www.ted.com/talks/j_j_abrams_mystery_box)

~~~
deanCommie
It's great when someone describes to you their entire philosophy and you
realize "I should never pay money for anything you ever create, because I
clearly will be disappointed."

Alias - fool me once. Lost - fool me twice. Fringe - fool me thrice.

(Each one - questions answered by new questions)

And yet I totally just bought this book. Sounds cool.

------
weeksie
Related: if you like meta-narratives, I would highly recommend House of
Leaves.

~~~
adamwk
Or Lolita ;)

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plink
Does the book conclude with the revelation that the reader endured purgatory
while reading it?

~~~
hinkley
Too soon.

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mcguire
1\. A blog with a loading spinner?

2\. Well, J. J. Abrams and some writer.

3\. Is J.J. flipping us the bird in that picture?

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throwaway7645
Ship of Theseus was a lot of fun...i got busy though....need to start it back
up!

------
ashurbanipal
Like Bats of the Republic, similar idea.

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mondaybot
hell, slow to load and what ? ELI5 or ELIdrunk

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Arzh
This website has a reading experience unlike any other, by that I mean it has
none since it work load.

~~~
munchbunny
I thought it was just a video buffering, but then I scrolled down and the
loading wheel followed me.

Why can't the text just load first?

~~~
spc476
Because there is no text. I used Firefox's "View->Page Style->None" and there
is literally _no text_ from the article on the page. I did, however, find
this:

    
    
        SECURITY WARNING: Please treat the URL above as you 
        would your password and do not share it with anyone. 
        See the Facebook Help Center for more information.

