Novel SMS

MILLIONS of mobile phone users all over the world know what an SMS is. The Short Messaging Service, originally introduced as an alternative to telegraphic service at your fingertips, has found many uses in the hands of people with chips in their brains and Pentium speed creativity.

Published: Sat 13 Aug 2005, 10:24 AM

Last updated: Thu 2 Apr 2015, 6:33 PM

Short messages have become long texts for teens, whose hearts beat in symphony in a multitude of ring tones and go out electronically for their beloved ones. For some others, SMSes are SOSes. Everyday, the three-letter word is finding new adherents and uses, diminishing the use of telephone and consigning the colonial era message-transmitting contraptions to museums.

One more value has been added to this ever-expanding ubiquitous service. It has literary value. If poems and advertisements can pop out of cell phones, why not prose? So, now, we have novels in SMS lingo and format. The credit for innovating the first novel in the cell language goes to China where a mobile phone is an indispensable tool for over 270 million people and on an average a million are added every month.

The first chapter of Chinese author Qian Fuchang’s novel, ‘Out of The Fortress’ that appeared in SMS form a few months ago has become an instant hit with thousands of youngsters as the story revolves around love. Not to be left behind, a Taiwanese writer, Xuan Huang, is reported to have produced an SMS novel, Distance.

If the trend catches on and captures the imagination of English-speaking world, soon we can have short stories, novelettes and full-length novels ‘essemmessed’ to our mobile phones. But the only problem is, one should know how to read them. For chaste English speakers, SMS novels will be Greek and Latin. Their children have to transliterate them into the simple Queen’s English! If anybody doesn’t know how to use it, the sooner the person learns it the better for him or her.