The Twelve Borodines (v. anglaise)
|
THE TWELVE BORODINES AND INHUMAN RESOURCES: A LITERARY MACHINATION
Intrepid literary publisher Alto and innovative game studio Affordance are pleased to present a new interactive fiction. The Twelve Borodines, a collection of physical artifacts, and Inhuman Resources, an immersive narrative game, are two parts of an extraordinary “literary machination”—just the first of many curiosities for adventurous readers forthcoming from Finnegan Motors.
This unprecedented collaboration gathers twenty leading Canadian writers working in French and English. Giving each author creative license to make the story their own has yielded a work of rare complexity and scope. Based on a universe imagined by Antoine Tanguay and Nicolas Dickner
With contributions from Alex Leslie, Anakana Schofield, Anna Leventhal, Casey Plett, Catherine Leroux, Charles Sagalane, Christiane Vadnais, Claudie Létourneau, Daniel Grenier, Dimitri Nasrallah, Dominique Robert, Hector Ruiz, Kaie Kellough, Kiev Renaud, Marie-Andrée Gill, Mélikah Abdelmoumen, Neil Smith, Pablo Strauss and Mary Thaler (translation), Paige Cooper, Saleema Nawaz, Sean Michaels and Zsuzsi Gartner
In 1922, Gertrude Borodine founded a secret anti-technology society bent on transforming the world. Upon her death, rather than disband or appoint a successor, the society sought to extend its influence by replacing its founder with a lookalike of the same name. Through a number of bizarre twists of fate, multiple Gertrude Borodines have emerged over the years. Increasingly radical splinter groups have extended their reach into every facet of victims’ lives. One such group developed into SmyrnaCorp, a corporation that players get to know all too well in the narrative game Inhuman Resources. One constant: wherever you pick up the trail of Gertrude Borodine, people disappear.
The Twelve Borodines is an eclectic collection of artifacts, from news clippings to personal notes and correspondence, photographs, sketches, medical reports, blog posts, and more. Based on these compelling raw materials, it is the reader’s task to assemble the story. This is not conventional storytelling: narratives unfold in the background and readers must make deductions, as in any investigation. A close examination of the traces that have come down to us through time reveals connections and threads that slowly weave a narrative.
In the vein of well-loved book objects like Zachary Thomas Dodson’s Bats of the Republic or the formal experimentations of McSweeny’s, The Twelve Borodines is an otherworldly literary object, a cabinet of curiosities perfect for enjoying along with Inhuman Resources or on its own.
---
How far would you go to change the world? If you had the chance to leave your loved ones behind and disappear, would you do it?
The year is 2054. The artifacts collected in this anthology are all that remain of the Borodines and the Smyrna Association, predecessor of SmyrnaCorp, a secretive conglomerate with questionable practices.
These artifacts reveal a long-lost history which may hold the seeds of a fresh start. The collection takes readers on a journey through anonymity, false realities, disappearance and reappearance; an invitation to delve into a future past through a spellbinding collection of literary and visual works.
---
INHUMAN RESOURCES
A LITERARY MACHINATION
With contributions from Alice Guéricolas-Gagné, Anakana Schofield, Ariane Gélinas, Catherine Leroux, Christiane Vadnais, Claudie Létourneau, Kiev Renaud, Pablo Strauss and Mary Thaler (French–English translation), Sean Michaels, Sophie Voillot (English–French translation), William Pépin, and Zsuzsi Gartner.
Inhuman Resources combines the best of anti-capitalist satire, psychological horror, storytelling, and choose-your-own-adventure novels.
Game players are employees of SmyrnaCorp, a “human resources” firm whose true business seems to be reinforcing its grip on global power. Players spy on colleagues’ computers, wrangle data, watch videos, and solve puzzles in the quest to uncover the secrets of SmyrnaCorp without getting lost in red tape. As the investigation progresses, they uncover increasingly disturbing truths: a culture of doppelgangers, memory alteration and destruction of data, and a wholesale reconstruction of history... Within this virtual universe, the philosophy initially advocated by the founder, Gertrude Borodine, has been warped to justify violence, horror, and moral duplicity.
With hundreds of paths to follow and multiple outcomes, Inhuman Resources redefines the narrative experience: every decision taken by the reader shapes the development of a unique scenario. Featuring twenty original texts from notable Canadian authors.
NB : Les prix indiqués sont sujets à changements sans préavis.
