Is Sensory Fiction Cheating?

After reading the article about Sensory Fiction - like every other article we've read so far - I began thinking about how we define a narrative in the modern age and more importantly, what is the role of an author today? We've looked at everything from simple interactive enhanced e-books, to apps that turn conventions on its head, to video games that blur the line between game and story. In each of those examples, designers were utilizing new tools to effect the reader in some way. The used visuals and written word to illicit an emotional response from the reader in a new and (hopefully) more profound way.

And I like it.

Sensory Fiction on the other hand might be the first time I have to sit back and question how gun-ho I am about technology influencing how we experience a story. With the other examples we've seen, there is still a heavy burden placed on the story-teller to utilize tools to provide their reader with an experience. Sensory Fiction on the other hand, straps the reader into a machine that physically influences their emotions. From vibrations to simulate heartbeats, temperature controls to simulate settings and air compression to simulate constriction; sensory fiction manually manipulates the human body to create an emotional response.

I don't like it.

Forever, storytellers have been excellent communicators, using what tools they have to take an idea and turn it into something that can be played out in the reader's mind. It is a real talent to use nothing but words and pictures to create a legitimate emotional change in a reader. Sensory fiction removes that skill, manually forcing and molding the reader's responses by utilizing physical stimuli. If I am forced to feel hot, I'm going to have a response. But it is more impressive and beautiful for an author to describe what heat is like in such a way I can have that same response. By manually affecting a reader, I feel you have taken away the burden of talent for a story teller, and frankly, it feels like cheating.

Maybe Sensory Fiction is a new genre of art. Some new way to have an experience. I don't know. But my gut reaction is to deem it something less than story-telling.

Thoughts?