Bad Robot is set to make an impact on the literary world with J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst’s upcoming S., a multi-tiered reading experience that made headlines last month when a mysterious black and white teaser trailer for the project hit the web. ComingSoon.net caught up with Abrams on the Star Trek Into Darkness Blu-ray release red carpet and learned a bit more about what to expect from the October 29 release.
“In all fairness, the book was written by Doug Dorst,” Abrams modestly points out. “It was based on an idea that I had that we developed together, but I don’t want to take credit for writing the book. He wrote the book and it is an extraordinary thing that he’s done.”
The specifics of the book’s plot are still largely shrouded in mystery, but it has been given the following official description:
One book. Two readers. A world of mystery, menace, and desire.
A young woman picks up a book left behind by a stranger. Inside it are his margin notes, which reveal a reader entranced by the story and by its mysterious author. She responds with notes of her own, leaving the book for the stranger, and so begins an unlikely conversation that plunges them both into the unknown.
The book: Ship of Theseus, the final novel by a prolific but enigmatic writer named V.M. Straka, in which a man with no past is shanghaied onto a strange ship with a monstrous crew and launched onto a disorienting and perilous journey.
The writer: Straka, the incendiary and secretive subject of one of the worlds greatest mysteries, a revolutionary about whom the world knows nothing apart from the words he wrote and the rumors that swirl around him.
The readers: Jennifer and Eric, a college senior and a disgraced grad student, both facing crucial decisions about who they are, who they might become, and how much theyre willing to trust another person with their passions, hurts, and fears.
“It’s a book that, when you get it, comes out of this sleeve and looks like an old library book,” Abrams continues. “When you open it, you see that not only is it an old library book, it’s a novel and that people have written in the margins. You realize that it’s two people writing to each other and that the book was used as a means of communication between these two. It’s an investigation into this mystery and also a love story. Kind of a play on top of a book. There are these pieces of ephemera. Postcards and photographs and maps and letters and things that are actually physical in the book and actually come out. It’s not like any book you’ve seen before, I think. It’s pretty amazing not just what Doug has done but also Little Brown’s Mulholland Books.”
S. will hit store shelves on October 29. If you missed either of the two trailers, check them out below. Star Trek Into Darkness, meanwhile, is now available to own on DVD, Blu-ray and digital formats.
