We Descend: Archives Pertaining to Egderus Scriptor, Volume Three
Work on We Descend began in 1984, when five words came unbidden into my mind: “If this document is authentic…” I had no idea what the phrase signified: Who’s saying this? What document? Why wouldn’t it be authentic? How would it be authenticated? By what authority? How would that authority be established? Where did the document come from in the first place? As I pondered these questions, a clutch of fragmentary writings began to appear under my hands — via the standard tech at the time: fountain pen, notebook paper, clipboard.
(Source: http://thenewriver.us/we-descend/)
The fragments generated by that original five-word phrase were eventually transferred from paper to a desktop Macintosh using Storyspace, an early hypertext authoring environment. Eventually, Volume One of We Descend reached publication in 1997 as a standalone computer application, distributed on floppy disk by Eastgate Systems. Twenty years later (in the wake of at least three revolutions in digital tech), Volume Two appeared here in The New River, built in HTML & CSS for reading on any internet device.
Critical writing that references this work:
