That Mysterious J.J. Abrams Trailer? It Was for a New Book

The novel—conceived by Abrams—includes a code wheel and a collection of postcards and letters

  • Share
  • Read Later

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuZfpt8nxtk]

The spooky stranger with his mouth sewn shut in the summer trailer from J.J. Abrams has started to at last spill some secrets.

As we surmised in August, the out-of-the-blue trailer with an apparently sinister storyline indeed signifies a tease to Abrams’ new novel, S, which slashed through the secrecy upon its Tuesday send-off.

Written by Doug Dorst and conceived by Abrams—the geek-hero Hollywood director who delights in shrouding his projects with a cloak of mystery—the novel tells a mysterious tale of two college students in their own quest for answers in an unconventional way—by corresponding with each other during their hunt in the margins of a famed tome found in a library. Also included with S is a map, a code wheel and a collection of postcards and letters.

Unconventional ways have led Abrams’ conspiracy-driven projects, from Alias and Lost to the casting of Star Trek Into Darkness. The storyline in S proves no different, as students Eric and Jen must solve a mystery using a previously written book, Ship of Theseus, to do so.

JJ Abrams - 'S' book cover 2

The novel unfolding in the margins of another novel forced Dorst to basically write two separate books to allow the two young snoops to search for clues, share them with each other in the margins of the first book and posit solutions to the mystery of the man who boarded the Ship of Theseus.

The direction of S certainly provides a new angle for novels, mysterious as it is.