In the day of the internet with advanced web interactivity, talk of high-definition TV and cinema and even immersive hologram films in the horizon the question of how a book works seems to be both timely and a little archaic. Surely with role-playing games both online and on PS2 (and a dozen other consoles) the modern day equivalent of the story-teller around the campfire (or at the feast table) is about as relevant as discussing the Dodo’s wind-tunnel aerodynamics.

The experience of Amazon’s Kindle (which plays on the notion that you now may as well burn paper books) and the dearth of quality fiction seems to imply that the days of the book may well be numbered. As an author I am at the forefront of this a little because I both use new technology and have, in the past, experimented with eBooks (and still do through my website) and I am using the web to reach a global audience and talk to them in a way that would have been unthinkable even seven years ago (which in terms of the way time is counted on the internet makes it almost half a century ago). So the question is more than just a little relevant. Are traditional books dead?

I am going to be entirely disingenuous here and say that if that were the case then the Harry Potter phenomenon would have never happened. So that answers the question. Those who ask if the traditional book is dead fall, usually, in one of three camps: Producers (i.e. writers who cannot get enough sales), distributors (i.e. book sellers and publishers who want more sales) and journalists (who like to stir things up with sensationalist headlines).

To them readers never buy enough books. All things digital are either a challenge to be overcome or competition to be beaten and today’s audience is simply too stupid to realise that the only way to entertain themselves is to stick their nose in a book and immediately go out and buy another one the moment the first one is finished.

I am obviously in the first camp though the fact that I have self-published this book now also puts me in the second. Do I need more sales? Yes! What I really want is every second person on the planet to fork out their dosh and just buy my book but that is the sales person speaking. I am also a reader myself and I know that books that work have a power of their own that far exceeds the vision of their creator (which might make them a little like our world).

A good book, for instance, has the ability to overcome the limitations of its delivery (whether it is paper or digital) and take the reader somewhere where they experience a part of themselves that usually stays locked by the demanding presence of everyday life. A good book has the power to unlock layers within us that change our perception of our world and our place in it and often change our lives in small but important ways.

Fiction, in any format, whether it is a crime novel, or a science fiction one or even fantasy fiction is a key that unlocks the dimensions we would rather keep up locked tight. A good book (which means it is well written) has the power to transport us outside ourselves and make us judge and jury of our own direct actions as well as the global actions of those around us. It has the power to become a magnifying lens, making galactic distances seem like nothing and focusing on the details of our world where God (whatever perception of God there may be) resides and beauty exists.

Words which have been expertly written are like stones with a gravity all of their own falling into the stillness of our soul. They disturb the surface, set up ripples which may synch as well as cancel each other out, all with unpredictable effects and they, also, help us plumb our depths.

In view of all this I guess the answer as to whether books are dead is obvious because the question borders on the oxymoronic. It’s akin to asking if breathing is outmoded. Story-telling, in many forms has always been with us and it will always be so. Story-telling takes many different forms and it has deep effects in each of them.

There is story-telling in poetry as there is story-telling in songs (even hip-hop and rap which end to sometimes grate). There is story-telling in computer games (and anyone who has played Final Fantasy or even Resident Evil will testify to that). I once became enamoured of a simple samurai game where contestants showed up and fought graphically to death. A simple one-level game, no history and the ability to train your contestant outside the arena to acquire new skills and get better. Compared to a modern interactive game it was like using stick figures on a blackboard and yet I found myself asking about the contestants’ motivation, their personal history that would lead them to come and risk all in a duel to the death. The reason why they chose to live like this. In my head it unleashed a chain of events where I felt the seeds of a book which I have yet to write take hold and begin to sprout and in that instant I also felt immersed in a world and culture where life and death and excellence took on new meaning and respect became something you gave to those you fought even if you killed them, or they killed you.

All that from a simple computer game.

Are books dead? No. Will they ever be? No!

They may mutate as our technology grows and develops and maybe, 10,000 years in the future some cultural archaeologist will be reading my words (Vanity! Vanity! Writers suffer from that defect no mater what we say) in a mental screen that also translates them to sound inside his head using some sort of extendable mental net that plugs him into the universal etheric knowledge database that binds the many worlds of the universal Consortium.

He could be absorbing them in chemical form via a pill for all I care. To care about the delivery method rather than the content is to become a chef who wonders if the china he chooses to serve his dishes in actually improves the taste.

Storytelling will be with us as long as we remain human because it is part of our psychological make up. We need to unlock other levels, experience other worlds, think about other realities and then apply the knowledge that the experience gives us to our world, subtly changing it, improving it, making it fitter for us as humans.