The journal _Text Technology_ invites submissions for a special issue
devoted to interactive fiction -- that is, the text-based participatory
novel, or "adventure game."
By Nov 15, send a 200-word proposal to:
Dennis G. Jerz <JerzDG@uwec.edu>,
or, by Dec. 15, send a full article to:
Joanne Buckley
Humanities Communications Centre
McMaster University, TSH 308
1280 Main St. West,
Hamilton, ON
L8S 4M2 (Canada)
Articles should be sent both in electronic and hard copy form (3 copies).
Articles should be double-spaced and on 3.5 floppy. Articles may use
either WordPerfect (up to 9.0 or Microsoft Word 2000). Articles on disk
should also be accompanied by a version in ASCII.Graphics should be sent
as separate files and not embedded in wordprocessing files, and should be
compatible with Windows. Except for pagination and italics, do not format
the document with any wordprocessing style commands or codes. The maximum
word length is 8,000. The preferred style is MLA, but APA is also
acceptable. Do not use footnotes; include notes only at the end of the
paper. Include an abstract of about 100 words, and a one-paragraph
biographical note, complete with an email address where correspondence may
be sent.
ABOUT THE JOURNAL
Text Technology is an eclectic quarterly for academics and professionals
around the world, supplying articles devoted to any use of computers to
acquire, analyze, create, edit, or translate texts. Given the journal's
textual emphasis, multimedia computer narrative is not an appropriate
topic; however, discussions of the "fictive" elements of MUDs,
chatterbots, and similar textual spaces will be welcome.
ABOUT INTERACTIVE FICTION
Hypertext narrative is not the intended focus of this special issue. For
the purposes of this special issue, "interactive fiction" describes a
text-based electronic narrative that responds to input from a user (in the
form of typed commands such as "fill bottle with water" or "headmaster,
tell me about Malcolm").
While academics have paid only occasional attention to interactive
fiction, which was extremely popular in the early and mid 80s, since about
1995, amateur programmer/authors have rejuvenated the medium, supplying
new primary texts, improved computer programming tools, an expanded
critical vocabulary, and an audience that reports dissatisfaction with a
computer gaming industry that privileges mimetic simulation (that is, the
mathematical rendering of shadows, sound effects, spurting blood, etc.)
over authorial creativity (that is, the literary rendering of plot,
character, motivation, dialogue, etc.). An IF competition that has, in
past years, drawn about two dozen entries, drew 37 in 1999; over 50
entered the 2000 contest (which concludes in November, 2000).
Advances in palm-sized computers and digital communications devices mean
that a growing percentage of the population is walking around carrying
enough computer power to store dozens of text-based games -- a fact that
has not gone unnoticed by the wireless communications industry; in the
summer of 2000, Noika licensed the dozens of text-based games marketed by
Infocom in the 1980s, and Bedouin offered a royalty-sharing plan to new
interactive fiction authors who make their works available via the
wireless Internet.
As Aarseth observes, the reader's negotiation of a path through any
cybertext is not metaphorical or interpretive, but is literally necessary
for the experience to take place: "A cybertext is a machine for the
production of variety of expression" (3) -- not figuratively, but
literally, in the sense that "film is useless without a projector and a
screen." This machine is completed by the presence of a perceiving human.
Linda Hutcheon, discussing the postmodern emphasis of the receiver's role
in constructing a text, offers interactive fiction as "the most extreme
example I can think of" (77). Hutcheon cites Niesz and Holland to concur
with their claim that, in interactive fiction, "there is no fixed product
or text, just the reader's activity as producer as well as receiver."
While Aarseth disagrees on this point, the issue is worth further
investigation.
POSSIBLE ARTICLE TOPICS
(Feel free to adopt these or suggest your own.)
TEXTUAL SCULPTURES
IF and dyslexia (Marnie Parker's "Iffy Theory" and the IF Art Show)
IF and the blind (Michael Feir's Audysee - a gaming 'zine for the
visually impaired)
Linguistic or technical studies of comparative IF (letteratura interattiva;
Interaktive Belletristik)
Interactive Fiction in Esperonto (Why? Why? Why?)
IF PROGRAMMING AS COMMUNAL FOLK ART
Buckles describes "Colossal Cave Adventure" as a work of Internet folk art
- created communally, and distributed through an informal underground
social network. Nelson's IF language "Inform" provides the nuts and bolts
for hundreds of other IF projects, and has been tinkered with and expanded
by others; their silent contributions to the IF "engine" affects the
author's creation and the reader's experience of the resulting texts.
GRAHAM NELSON AS JANET MURRAY'S CYBERBARD.
Nelson -- who created the IF programming language Inform, and also some of
the best IF of the 90s, is Marlowe (of the "mighty line") and Shakespeare
rolled into one. (His online persona also shares elements of Dr. Johnson,
Lewis Carroll, and, of late, J.D. Salinger.)
GENDER, IDENTITY AND VOICE IN IF
The nullity of the typical IF protagonist - typically a genderless,
identityless and largely voiceless puppet who is animated by the commands
of the reader/player -- provides literary theory with a tabula rasa, about
which professional literary theorists have said surprisingly little.
LITERARY THEORY AS PROFESSED BY HARDCORE GAMERS or
GAMING AS CONFESSED BY HARDCORE LITERARY THEORISTS
Literary theorists typically have little motivation in playing computer
games; hard-core gamers typically have little desire to read Lacan and
Barthes. George Landow's _Hypertext_ managed to bridge the artsie-techie
divide in the study of hypertext.
* Somewhere out there, I hope, is a literary theorist who can represent
interactive fiction as a genre in and of itself, rather than what
Hutcheon (77) called an "extreme" example that illustrates a postmodern
theoretical point.
* Somewhere out there, I hope, is a computer programmer critically
equipped to discuss the rhetoric of Nelson's programming language,
Inform. For example, embedded within Inform are default commands that
encourage the programmer/author to present the player's "death" as a
"loss"; this programming detail may be shaping shape the kinds of texts
being produced on the Inform platform. (The same can certainly be said
of other popular programming platforms, such as TADS and ALAN.)
ANNOTATED INTERACTIVE FICTION CRITICAL SAMPLER
Because transcripts of interactive events rarely make interesting
reading, scholars who happen across transcripts of interactive fiction
may receive the impression that IF is necessarily an uninteresting textual
experience (as much of it, truth be told, is). To solve this problem, a
scholar/gamer could supply a bank of "saved games" that represent the most
textually or thematically interesting passages. A scholar/reader (who
does not have time to play each of the games being studied) could then
sample each of the saved games in order to experience, firsthand, the
textual interaction that would otherwise be presented only in transcript.
Works Cited
Aarseth, Espen J. _Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature_. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1997.
Buckles, Mary Ann. "Interactive Fiction: The Computer Storygame 'Adventure'". Ph.D. Thesis. U. Cal at San Diego, 1985.
Hutcheon, Linda. _A Poetics of Postmodernism_. New York and London: Routledge, 1988.
Murray, Janet Horowitz. _Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace_. New York: Free Press, 1997.
Assistant Professor Dennis G. Jerz, Dept. of English (715)836-2431
Univ. of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, 419 Hibbard, Eau Claire, WI 54702
Office Hours (Fall 2000) M, F 1-2; Tu, Th 3:20-4 (and by appt.)
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Recommended Writing Links: http://www.uwec.edu/jerzdg/
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