FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

What is this thing?

The Mongoliad is a serial novel, the kind of thing that Charles Dickens wrote. It's also an experiment in fiction and technology... Fast Company said that we may be "the future of the novel." The Mongoliad is set in the thirteenth century of a universe very much like ours, a world we call "Foreworld." We publish chapters every so often (about weekly), and every chapter has associated discussions and other ways for readers to interact with each other and with us. Sometimes we'll also have graphics to share as well, or movies, or music. There is a user-editable 'Pedia with information about Foreworld-related topics, general-purpose user forums, and soon we hope to have easy ways for people to contribute their own stories, art, and music to our shared Foreworld experience.

Who are you guys?

We are a bunch of friends whose main shared activity was originally the study of Western Martial Arts (WMA). It just so happens that some of us are writers, programmers, artists, .... We call ourselves the Foreworld Cabal. Among our writers are two guys whom you may have heard of: Neal Stephenson and Greg Bear.

What are Western Martial Arts?

You've probably heard of karate and kung fu, right? Not those. Western martial arts is the study of fighting techniques which originated in Europe, i.e. "the West" as opposed to "the East." In the years before the spread of firearms, there were many highly-developed traditions of fighting with (for example) swords, but for a few hundred years nobody was practicing them actively. Over the last fifteen or twenty years, various folks have begun to find and translate original manuscripts from which we have been able to reconstruct what some of these traditions were probably like.

What about non-Western martial arts?

Many of us do some of those as well—we're generally fascinated with the mechanics and strategies of fighting. Among our members we have holders of dan ranks in aikido, tang soo do, kyudo, and other arts.

What is the difference between The Mongoliad and Foreworld?

Foreworld is the name of the shared universe created by the rest of the Foreworld Cabal. Foreworld is almost like the world we live in. It could even be the world we live in, perhaps. The Mongoliad is the name of the first novel set in this world.

Where are you going?

We were thinking about heading to the park later to practice our zornhaus. What about you?

Will The Mongoliad ever end?

We are very much thinking of The Mongoliad as a novel, albeit a novel with extra elements to it. The novel's story will come to an end at some point, and we intend to publish it as a paper volume at that time. However, it is only the first volume in a fictional world in which we already have more than a few other volumes planned, and which we will happily write if there is enough interest. You can think of it like a TV series, where The Mongoliad is Season One, and where Season Two might have some of the same characters, elements, and settings.

When is new content posted?

A new prose chapter is typically posted Wednesday (sometime after those of us in Pacific Standard Time manage to crawl out of bed and push the sekrit sequence of buttons which flips the right bits). Other content may be posted intermittently, but it will be filed under its appropriate chapter heading. There is an RSS feed for content, but it does require you to be logged in at the site to show you all the content.

The story has already started. If I subscribe now, will I be behind everybody else?

Whenever you subscribe, you get access to the entire published portions of the current volume of The Mongoliad—which is the first volume right now. (We expect it to take us about a year to complete that volume.) You'll get new chapters and other stuff at the same time that all of the other subscribers get them, so you won't be behind at all... except that it'll probably take you a while to read everything until you catch up!

What happens after my subscription ends?

If you choose not to renew your subscription, you still have access to the items which you received as part of your subscription when it was active; you just don't get any new Premium material. You'll have access to the 'Pedia, blogs, and some forums as well, and will be able to continue using any mobile apps you have purchased. At the time of this writing, some app platforms such as the Kindle do not allow us to continue providing access after a subscription expires, but even in that case you will have been able to download items to your computer to read there or print yourself.

Why don't you use DRM?

We put in a lot of effort on an ongoing basis to ensure that the best value our fans can get out of our stuff is by participating interactively with us and each other, and enjoying our interwoven content in context, in the way it was meant to be enjoyed. So, we think that if people take our content without our permission, their experience will be suboptimal, and given our modest prices, we think most people will be happy to pay us, thereby enabling this experiment to keep evolving. That said, the bits that can be copied and pasted and put into a torrent are still going to be fun, and people are going to end up redistributing those bits without our permission and against our wishes. However, we still don't use DRM.

The biggest reason is that DRM is futile, and we don't like to waste our time doing things that aren't going to be effective, and which are just going to annoy our legit supporters. Our concentration is on providing great experiences and great customer service to our customers, and we trust that those people who really appreciate what we are doing will become our customers. Because it's part of our ethos to be constantly producing and expanding and improving our work, the pirated content people may find elsewhere online will be static and out-of-date copies; we think that when people find this stuff it may give them a taste of what the full experience is like; hopefully, that taste will be enough that they'll want more, and in seeking out more, will become happy (and paying) customers of ours. We like that.

However, we don't believe that pirates are doing us any favors, and our not using DRM is not an invitation to cadge our stuff. Because of the way intellectual property law in this country (and most other jurisdictions) works, we are obligated to defend our copyrights, trademarks, and other IP—otherwise we lose them: if we find piracy we will try to stop it; if we find unauthorized use of our IP at commercial scale and/or commercial intent, we will come after it with vigor, because we have to. Please don't make us have to be jerks, and please enjoy our nice, non-annoying, DRM-free content.

How do I upload a file?

Just navigate to whichever wiki page you'd like to attach it to and click the link on the right that says "Upload attachment". You'll see a page with a button that says "Browse". Press the button and choose the file, then click the button that says "Upload" and it should send the file to the server.

After the file is uploaded, when you go to the page to which it is attached, you'll see a link to the file in the right-hand sidebar. Actually that link is to the file's page; clicking it will take you to a new wiki page which, if the file is displayable, will display the file. If the file is not displayable, it will contain a link which will allow you (or anyone) to download the file.

If you want to make a link to a file from a wiki page, allowing the user to download the file, it looks like this: [[File:Path/To/Wiki/Page/thefile.pdf]]. The preceding assumes that the wiki page to which the file is attached is "Path/To/Wiki/Page".