Auto manufacturer Land Rover and novelist William Boyd have teamed up to create a multi media experience that brings the novel off the page and out onto the open road. The Vanishing Game is an interactive version of Boyd's story of the same name. The novella was commissioned by Land Rover who offered Boyd complete creative control providing he featured one of their vehicles in the story, and so protagonist Alec Dunbar's mysterious adventure from London to Scotland is taken in a Land Rover Defender.

Boyd's text is enhanced by additional content available on the project's accompanying Tumblr page, which includes interactive features that broaden the scope of the novel in ways that would be impossible in the traditional print format. As you follow the story on the site, key words are embedded with Land Rover related content such as videos and user generated content submitted via the #wellstoried hashtag. There's an argument to be made that the collaboration is a cynical case of product placement but with the growing rise in the idea that storytelling should be a multi-sensory experience, perhaps this is the way the industry's going. We recently featured the The Bermuda Tapes app which tells a detailed story of a period in John Lennon's life using similar techniques and incorporating the music he recorded at the time. With the ability to bring the reader closer to the action it would seem the melding of reality and fiction could be the future of storytelling.