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1. Ex-foliations: Reading Machines and the Upgrade Path

   In Ex-foliations, Terry Harpold investigates paradoxes of reading’s backward glances in the theory and literature of the digital field. In original analyses of Vannevar Bush’s Memex and Ted Nelson’s Xanadu, and in innovative readings of early hypertext fictions by Michael Joyce and Shelley Jackson, Harpold asserts that we should return to these landmarks of new media scholarship with newly focused attention on questions of media obsolescence, changing user interface designs, and the mutability of reading. In these reading machines, Harpold proposes, we may detect traits of an unreadable surface—the real limit of the machines’ operations and of the reader’s memories—on which text and image are projected in the late age of print. (Source: Publisher's website.)

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 24.02.2011 - 09:48

2. Electronic Literature Seen from a Distance: The Beginnings of a Field

   This paper outlines the development of the hypertext fiction community that developed in the United States of America from the late eighties and onwards. This community was separate from the interactive fiction community (and largely thought of its works as different from “games”) and largely revolved around the use of Storyspace, a software tool for creating electronic literature, and later, around Eastgate, a publisher of hypertext fiction and the company that developed Storyspace. While some work was written and published in Hypercard and other systems, the technology of a dominant software authoring tool and of the mechanics of distribution (diskettes sold by mail order) formed the hub of the electronic literature community during this period. There was little or no communication with other communities, such as the IF community or digital art communities. With the advent of the web, new authoring and distribution channels opened up, and this hub gradually lost its dominance. The transition from this relatively centralised and explicit community to the networked communities and scattered individuals of the Web is an interesting one to explore.

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 23.03.2012 - 07:32

3. Ontological Boundaries and Methodological Leaps: The Importance of Possible Worlds Theory for Hypertext Fiction (and Beyond)

   This essay sets out an ontologically centered approach to Storyspace hypertext fiction by applying Ryan’s (1991) model of Possible Worlds Theory to two canonical texts [...] Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl (1995) and Stuart Moulthrop’s Victory Garden (1991). The analyses show how the Possible Worlds Theory method allows the study of hypertext fiction to move away from the chronological focus of traditional narrative theory to address the ontological mechanics of hypertext narratives. The chapter closes by suggesting ways in which Possible Worlds Theory might also be used as an analytical tool for other forms of digital literature.

   (Source: author's abstract.)

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 08.04.2012 - 09:17