Baroque Encodings: A Degenerative Novel
Baroque Encodings, by d-baker, is an entry from NaNoGenMo 2014. It uses two strategies: the first chapter is written by taking sentences from existing novels, swapping some words out, and stringing them together. The next chapter is made by feeding the first chapter into a Markov-chain-like algorithm, which is then in turn fed into the same algorithm to create the third chapter, and so on. The novel slowly degenerates, but in a way that focuses its output rather than the more common dissolution into noise.
The final chapter repeats the themes built up in previous chapters, in a post-singularity tale of nature transubstantiated into the machine. The characters spontaneously generated by the text end up taking on a life of their own. The arrival of the prototype in the first chapter inexorably leads to the world of ocean-colored nanotechnologies soaked in metaphor of the final chapter.