Nextpunk

I have given serious thought to changing the font for my posts on this blog. I'm tired of hypothetical readers having to wait until the end of a post, waiting to find out which author they've been reading. Since Narraptor has turned into a being of pure energy, I think it's important to rebrand myself as soon as possible.

In a similar vein, I've scoured Blogger's suggestions on how to boost readership. Playing chess and saying as little as possible figure prominently. Changing the entire site into a viral metagame based loosely on Michael Crichton's Next was not, but it ought to have been. My pitch: A series of four websites of avid readers who live in an alternate world where the last twenty years of science fiction have never happened. They become increasingly convinced that the mindblowing ideas of Next could not have been made up by a mortal man, and instead are thinly disguised nonfiction from their own future. Readers of the blog communicate with the writers by solving obtusely designed puzzles, and answering phones. The tension mounts as the gene harvesting raptors hunt down our heroes one by one, leaving us to wonder who will be... next.

The game will come to an abrupt and unsatisfacotry ending on the day Next comes out in paperback, and the game's winners would receive a free wallpaper featuring a barcode riding a monkey.