"Smart Genes" A Failed Experiment in Crowd Novel Writing

Writing a novel through the net

Kristin Gorski interviews Rick Heller from "Smart Genes" via email

An investigation! According to BoingBoing and others there was once an open source novel called "Smart Genes." What happened to this site?

After some digging, Kristin Gorski was able to contact Rick Heller, author of "Smart Genes" to ask him about his work on the crowdsourced novel.

Kristin Gorski: Are you indeed the author of “Smart Genes”?

Rick Heller: Yes, I created the Web site opensourcenovel.net for my novel, “Smart Genes.”

I don't consider the experiment to have been a success.

Basically, I had written the novel as a conventional science fiction novel, and tried to get an agent for it, unsuccessfully.

When I found out about wikis, I thought I would put the novel (most of it--not the last 100 pages, but I emailed the final pages to anyone who requested them)

I though I could get some criticism or editorial help out of it. I think it's hard for a group to create, but easier for a group to edit.

I did get links from Scripting News and Boing Boing, so the site was not a secret. But the changes made were not significant.

The main positive contribution was from a German-speaking person who edited a German language e-mail I had in the otherwise English-language text.

Probably the most active user was a vandal who figured out that the wiki software I used wasn't secured properly for anonymous users -- it allowed one anonymous user to rollback changes made by another anonymous user, assuming they were the same user. This user extensively rolled back anonymous changes and ended up destroying some changes that were made to the point that they could not be recovered. I later contacted the wiki's author about this problem.

After a year, I let the domain name expire. The novel is still unpublished.

Follow-up questions answered by "Smart Genes" author

Kristin Gorski: That's pretty brave of you to put your own work out there and open it up to total strangers. What was your frame of mind about the Web in 2004? What other Web endeavors were you involved in?

A: I had done blogging, and I attended the Berkman Center's blog meetings and attended the first two Bloggercons. That made me think about new ways I could put my ideas out.

Q: What was the novel "Smart Genes" about?

A: It's a comic caper novel about genetic engineering of the brain.

Q: Have you worked on it since then? Do you still want to get it published?

A: I would still like to get it published, but I have turned to other projects to get them published first--a book length memoir, for instance, which is not online--and hope to pull the novel off the shelf afterwards.

Q: After your mainly negative experiences, how do you view the Web now? Are things better or worse in 2007 than in 2004?

A: I would separate the Web into the politically oriented and the non-politically oriented. With regard to non-political Web sites and blogs, I think they provide value and continue to provide a terrific source of information at one's fingertips.

But the part of the Internet that has become the most talked about by mainstream media is the political blogs and Web sites. They have increasingly become a cesspool, with shouting and ad hominem attacks crowding out reasoned discussion. I've pretty much stopped reading political blogs, and almost entirely stopped reading comments. Despite a few cases of successfully fact-checking mainstream media, I think political blogs are mostly a blight. I have stopped blogging about political issues.

Q: What were you doing then (school, job, etc.)? What are you doing now?

A: The experience of blogging, however, plus the downturn in the software field, where I have worked, caused me to apply to graduate school in journalism. I'm still writing software on a part-time contract, and now writing freelance articles from newspapers and magazines--but factually based, with limited editorializing.

Q: Are you still writing? If so, what are you working on?

A: I have an article in the April 2006 issue of Free Inquiry magazine on the neuroscience of pain. I'm also shopping a book proposal on a memoir about pain, touching on the neuroscience of pain.

Q: How did the "Smart Genes" experience affect you as a (sci-fi) writer?

A: I enjoy writing fiction, but it is a hard sell. Now that I'm writing newspaper articles, I write something, and it gets published. That's very satisfying.

Q: Would you ever work on another online collaborative effort? Do you think the online collaborative novel set-up will ever work?

A: I think the basic structure of a novel or other creative fiction needs to be generated by one person, or a small number of people in contact in real space. I think collaboration could work to fill out the scenes of an already-outlined work. It could also work to fill out research, as if a writer wants to write authentically about a foreign location that they have only a cursory knowledge.

Q: Are you glad you tried this out? What (if any) lessons did you take from it?

A: I did enjoy setting up the novel on a wiki. Sometimes it's fun to do something even if there is no explicit return on one's effort.

Q: Was the anonymous vandal who destroyed your wiki ever unmasked? Did he/she/they ever show up again?

A: I was not able to identify the vandal. After I figured out what happened, I believe I was able to disable rollback, so it could not happen again. As far as I know, the vandal never returned to the site.

Q: Do you think "anonymous" still has its place in Web culture?

A: I don't think being "anonymous" contributes very much, except the time-savings of not having to register, and remember a password.

Q: What's your opinion on wikis now?

A: I've seen other people's wikis vandalized as well. I like Wikipedia, but as a journalist now, I would only use it as a source of leads, not as a reference. If I ever did another wiki, I would not allow anonymous changes.

Q: In your opinion, what's the "anarchy/order ratio" to online collaborative work? (All anarchy/no order? 50/50?)

A: There is probably a life cycle. Brainstorming and anarchy at first, then increased order as time goes on.

Q: Any advice for would-be collaborative novelists?

A: I think a small, tight-knit collaboration would probably work better than being open to the entire world.

Q: What is your blog Transparent Eye about? Why this focus?

A: I originally had a blog called “Smart Genes.” I started writing about sience (this is back in 2002) but there weren't many science blogs back then, so I started writing about politics, where more of the action is.

My current blog, Transparent Eye, is focused on the neuroscience of pain and suffering. This is the subject of my memoir. It's not related to the novel, except that the novel was inspired by brain science.

Q: Do you know about the collaborative novel "A Millions Penguins?" If so, what is your opinion on it?

A: Never heard of it.

Q: Anything else you'd like to add?

A: You ask intelligent questions. Good luck with your piece, and send me a link when it's published.