Edward Flathers

Project Prospectus

English 490

Gary Williams

Advisor: Rick Fehrenbacher

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PROSPECTUS: WORK TO ACCOMPLISH FALL 2004

Edward Flathers

BACKGROUND

Since the 1960s, theorists in the fields of both media and computers have been interested in the concept of hypertext, a form of media that allows simple interactions between the reader and the text.  When Ted Nelson first coined the term in 1965, he envisioned a media environment that would allow links between standard text-based articles, images, video, audio—essentially, any form of information that we can manipulate.

In the 1970s, the concept of interaction between reader and text expanded to include the world of fiction.  1975 saw the first computer game with a simple natural language parser and the rise of “Choose Your Own Adventure” style proto-hypertext novels for young people.  In 1985, Michael Joyce published his first hypertext novel, Afternoon, a story, which has since earned the title of “granddaddy of hypertext fiction.”

The development of the World Wide Web in the 1990s finally produced a technology that made hypertext documents viable both for authors to produce and for readers to consume.  The authoring of a hypertext, previously a process involving special tools and software, could be accomplished now with no special software and little knowledge of programming.  To read a hypertext required only a piece of software that has since become ubiquitous on computers across the world, the web browser.

The sudden possibilities for hypertext sparked an academic interest in the concept, resulting in a series of papers and articles from institutions around the world.  The New York Times Book Review proclaimed “The End of Books” in the summer of 1992.  Despite this interest in hypertext media, however, hypertext literature has stagnated, other forms of interactive fiction have withered, and academic interest in the field has waned.

CURRENT PROJECT

I am interested in the past and current states of hypertext and other forms of interactive fiction.  The computer technology available to us today is almost inconceivably greater than it was in the 1960s, which has given us newer software engines for running the sort of simulations that are required to express interactive stories.  Literary development has remained every bit as simple as it was thirty years ago.  The stories that we see in computer games today are essentially the same as the very first work in the field.

PLAN FOR THE NEXT TWO MONTHS

I intend to assemble a bibliography of articles covering aspects of the development and criticism of interactive fiction.  I will use these documents to compile a timeline of landmark events in the evolution of interactive fiction and to establish major trends over time.  Finally, I will address questions for the future of interactive fiction.  Is hypertext a viable form of fiction?  What about other interactive systems?  Is the current dearth of high-quality interactive fiction a problem of technology, or of literature?

IDEAS ABOUT HOW TO PRESENT THIS WORK

I intend to present the work as a hypertext, including samples and figures of interactive fiction as it has been.

TENTATIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aarseth, Espen. "Hypertext Aesthetics" in Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature.

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Coover, Robert. "The End of Books." New York Times Book Review (1992): 1.

Joyce, Michael. Afternoon: A Story. Watertown: Eastgate Systems, 1987.

Klastrup, Lisbeth. Hyperizons. Canterbury: University of Kent, 1997.