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A virtual reality simulator may seem an unlikely home for writers, says Robert Coover, but they鈥檙e using it to invent a new art form

Is e-literature the future or is it destined to lie on the fringes?

Throughout the eras of tablet, scroll, manuscript, codex and printed book, the oral tale has lived on in the form of gossip, anecdotes, jokes, public oratory and barroom banter. There is no reason to suppose that the extended complex linear narratives of book technology, so treasured, will not also persist, whatever the delivery mechanism. But that mechanism is now primarily digital; printing presses, along with most physical apparatus of analogue human communication, are destined to become museum relics.

It is no surprise that new literary forms are emerging in creative response to this new technology, forms that may in time replace those of book and film as the readers鈥� choice. That the power of the word 鈥� not to mention that of the author 鈥� seems diminished may be only transitory. As literary artists move toward the medium and acquire the tools, the power of the skilled scribe returns. One can anticipate powerful storytelling voices among them.

Your students explore 3D literature in 鈥渢he Cave鈥�. How does that work?

The Brown University immersive virtual reality facility, known informally as , was installed at the turn of the millennium, and very shortly afterwards our writers were in it. The challenge was to see how the literary word might fare in immersive virtual reality, convinced as we were that virtual reality would inevitably be recognised as a viable narrative medium.

Cave technologies differ widely but the common element is immersion. It is like going to a 3D IMAX movie and being able to step inside it. You wear special 3D glasses, but also sensors by which the computers track each movement and gesture, reacting to them in preprogrammed ways. We also carry various navigational tools somewhat like video game joysticks, used in our case to facilitate spatial hypertext fictions, poems, conceptual literary art and theatrical pieces. Indeed, writing for the Cave is probably closest to writing for the stage, and projects developed within it can be highly theatrical. Works for the Cave are utterly unique, without analogues in other media, though traditional literary values remain.

Do writers in 3D need to be tech savvy?

In the early days, programmers were needed for each creative gesture, but a few years ago three students created a take-home tool called a 鈥渢ext editor鈥�, with which anyone, with or without computer skills, can create sophisticated spatial hypertext artworks for the Cave using text, sound, image, models, movement and hyperlinks. At present, the focus is on the word, using it to define the space as much as operate within it.

Will writing and coding eventually merge?

Writing and coding are unlikely to merge except as an esoteric medium shared only by coders, but the writing of code has become a form of creative writing. It is certainly an invaluable tool for writers in the digital realm.