In Invasion of the Space Invaders, Martin Amis's 1982 treatise on the emergent video game medium, the British author wrote: "The video game tells a story. The better you get, the longer the story lasts. And we all know how children feel about stories." In the early 1980s, video-game stories were laughably straightforward: the aliens die in Space Invaders, the dots are eaten in Pac-Man, the ball is batted in Pong.
George Lucas
We now face a lack of constraints in publishing. Once upon a time, printing provided a natural constraint, as editors met to see what merited the space they had available. Now, with no obvious boundaries, we have new possibilities emerging in response — mega-journals, cascading titles, data supplements, and more papers in existing journals, many of these published online-only.
The right typeface makes elegant prose more pleasing, and striking cover art can stop consumers in their tracks. Nothing new there. Indeed, such traits have always seduced book lovers. But now, thanks to breakthroughs in foil and hologram production, some book covers reflect an ongoing technical revolution. In particular, hologram pioneers are adding a new dimension to the science of making a striking book. But there are pitfalls, as well as thrilling changes, facing those publishers who hope to make use of these technologies. A New Age for Covers Joseph Funicelli, president of Unifoil Corp., Passaic Park, NJ, says that since its introduction to the book market