Introduction to Rebooting Electronic Literature Volume 4
Introduction to This Volume
The Rebooting Electronic Literature (REL) book series documents born digital literary works published on floppy disks, CD-ROMs, and other media formats held among the 300 in Grigar's personal collection in the Electronic Literature Lab at Washington State University Vancouver. An annual publication, the book features selected works highlighted for a Traversal during the year. These events generally focus on the most fragile and prized in the collection. Among these are the 48 titles published by Eastgate Systems, Inc. between 1988 to 2004––that is, early hypertext and interactive works created predominantly with stand-alone software, like Storyspace, Hypergate, HyperCard, Toolbook, and Macromedia Director, and published before floppy disk and CD-ROM drives disappeared from computers and the rise of mobile media and mainstreaming of cloud technology eliminated the need for physical media formats.Volume 1 of our series, published in 2018, covers seven works; all but one, Thomas M. Disch’s Amnesia, are publications from Eastgate Systems, Inc. It includes:
In 2019 we followed Volume 1 with Volume 2, which includes five titles published by Eastgate Systems, Inc.:
Thomas M. Disch’s Amnesia (1986)
Judy Malloy, its name was Penelope (1989-1992)
Sarah Smith’s King of Space (1991)
Mary-Kim Arnold, Lust (1993)
J. Yellowlees Douglas, I Have Said Nothing (1993)
David Kolb, Socrates in the Labyrinth (1994)
Robert Kendall, A Life Set For Two (1996)
In 2020, we published Volume 3 presenting five more works published by Eastgate Systems, Inc., beginning with the first to have been published on Storyspace software and ending with the most recent:
Kathryn Cramer, In Small & Large Pieces (1994)
Tim McLaughlin, Notes Toward Absolute Zero (1995)
Deena Larsen, Samplers (1997)
Stephanie Strickland, True North (1997)
Richard Holeton, Figurski at Findhorn on Acid (2001)
With the publication of Volume 4, we will have documented 24 titles from Eastgate Systems, Inc.’s catalog. If we add to that number the four Moulthrop and Grigar documented in their Pathfinders book––Judy Malloy’s Uncle Roger (1986-88); John McDaid’s Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse (1992); Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl (1995); and Bill Bly’s We Descend (1997)––then, we can say that Rebooting Electronic Literature Volume 4 takes us more than halfway to our goal of documenting all of Eastgate Systems, Inc.'s titles.
Michael Joyce’s afternoon, a story (1987-2016)
Stuart Moulthrop’s Victory Garden (1991)
M. D. Coverley’s Califia (2000)
Megan Heyward’s of day, of night (2004)
Mark Bernstein’s Those Trojan Girls (2016)
At the heart of our project is the impetus to make fragile and inaccessible works freely accessible to scholars. Because works published by Eastgate Systems, Inc. are covered by copyright, they cannot legally be made available as emulations. The Pathfinders methodology that Moulthrop and Grigar developed [1] follows Fair Use rules. It also introduces the notion of "human-centered" experiences by providing video documentation of play-throughs of the work by authors and readers on hardware and software on which the work was created or intended to be originally read––a process called a "Traversal" [2]––along with photos of the physical media, interviews with authors, author bios, and other useful information that helps scholars and readers experience the works and understand their contributions to literary and cultural history.
About the Works
The eight works included in this volume of Rebooting Electronic Literature represent a diverse sample of what Eastgate Systems Inc. published from the late 1980s through the late 1990s. The eight works also represent three different authoring softwares -- Hypercard (Marble Springs 1.0), Hypergate (The Election of 1912, A Sucker in Spades) and Eastgate's more popular Storyspace software (Fragments of the Dionysian Body, Unnatural Habitats Quibbling, Genetis: A Rhizography, and Twilight, a symphony.)Our first chapter, documenting Eric Steinhart's Fragments of the Dionysian Body (1997), discusses a non-fiction hypertext work that operates in conjunction with a non-fiction print work: Friedrich Nietzsche's The Gay Science. Fragments of the Dionysian Body offers a reader the ability to navigate through Nietzsche's philosophical system and engage with his thought through images, hypertext links, and hierarchical lists, ultimately presenting the content of The Gay Science as well as Steinhart's interpretation of it in a way that "bridges form and content" in the words of the ELL's traverser of the work, Anna Nacher. Form and content are bridged because the multiple readings and relational paths offered by hypertext reflect the relational and perspectivist philosophy of Nietzsche, and along the way Fragments of the Dionysian Body makes a strong argument for hypertext as unique pedagogical tool.
The second chapter covers Michael Joyce's Twilight, a symphony (1996), the hypertext novel which followed his field-defining hypertext work afternoon, a story (1987). Twilight, a symphony continues Joyce's exploration in hypertext and the Storyspace software, adding in more elements of image, sound, and movement. Often described as an elegy, Twilight, a symphony is a deeply lyrical and meditative work that makes significant use of Storyspace's map mode and the new affordances available in 1996 to hypertext writers. Although not as well-known as its predecessor, afternoon, a story it represents a continued elaboration on the themes and tropes that Joyce used hypertext to confront: death, love, and ambiguity.
Chapter three documents Deena Larsen's Marble Springs 1.0 (1994), a work written in Hypercard that examines the historical situation of women in a 19th-century Colorado mining town, both telling their stories and investigating the nature of historical knowledge and narratives. Using a map interface and a series of linked poems, Larsen's work brings the reader into the sprawling world of a town called Marble Springs and the inner lives of a diverse cast of characters. Leveraging the structural affordances and navigational processes of interface and software to offer readers a participatory and immersive experience, Marble Springs combines the use of hypertext for in-depth historical investigation with its capacity for lyricism and interactivity.
The fourth chapter dives into Carolyn Guyer's Quibbling (1992), a hypertext novel frequently cited as "the mother of feminist hypertext fiction" that uses the hypertext form to capture the back-and-forths, ambiguities, and complications that emerge in human relationships -- specifically those between women and men. Quibbling, which is set along the shores of the Great Lakes, is also deeply concerned with the motion of waves which functions as a multivalent metaphor in the text for human interactions, narration, and hypertext itself. Guyer masterfully deploys hypertext to investigate the stories we tell about ourselves to ourselves and those we hold nearest, attentively documenting the gaps, anxieties, and tangled relations that grow within them.
Chapter five treats The Election of 1912 (1988), the first work written with the Hypergate software. The Election of 1912 is subtitled "a hypertext study of the Progressive era" and is co-authored by Mark Bernstein, who helmed Eastgate Systems and wrote the Hypergate software, and Erin Sweeney, who conducted the research on the election. A non-fiction text, The Election of 1912 includes direct quotes from primary documents of the era, images, sound, written analysis, a simulation, and a game element that allows the user to stage alternate histories about the election. The work offers a compelling argument for the use of hypertext and other "hot media" in the teaching and investigation of history, standing as a landmark in the early development of Eastgate Systems and as a promise of what was to come.
Chapter six discusses the second work published with the Hypergate software, Robert DiChiara's A Sucker in Spades (1988). Based on a print adventure book published three years prior, A Sucker in Spades combines a hypertext "choose-your-own-adventure" structure with an asset management game. The player/reader is addressed directly by the text using the second-person pronoun "you," and plays a Sam Spade-esque private eye tracking down clues to crack a case. Participating in the rich tradition of American detective fiction and film noir, A Sucker in Spades is an adventure game that takes advantage of its place on the screen to reach a reader swiftly and directly.
In chapter seven, we turn our attention to Richard Smyth's Genetis: A Rhizography (1996), a work which weaves together five different "plateaus" of discourse ("Myth," "Parable," "Allegory," "Legend," and "Theory") to work through the experience of psychosis. At various turns a personal memoir, a postmodern theoretical text, and a fairy tale, Genetis uses the Storyspace software to link together strands of experience in various "memorypaths" shaped like the DNA helix, opening onto a textual landscape that is as emotionally raw as it is intellectually engaged. As a close-up investigation of mental illness and an inquiry into the capacity of hypertext, art, and theory to offer answers and solace, Genetis: A Rhizography pushes the form forward.
Chapter eight concludes Rebooting Electronic Literature, Volume 4 by investigating Kathy Mac's Unnatural Habitats (1993), a linked series of poems which discuss the doings of humans in a variety of "unnatural habitats" ranging from spacecrafts to submarines. Spanning across the twentieth century, from early aviation through the Apollo flights to the aftermath of the AIDS epidemic, Unnatural Habitats examines human history, hubris, and habitus through the physical spaces we place ourselves in. Throughout the work, Mac is deeply attentive to the sound of language and its spatial arrangement on the screen, evoking breath and spirals through the placement of nodes in the work's map mode and consonants in the lines of the poems. Unnatural Habitats continues the investigations of history and the spatial arrangement of text which characterize the other works included in this book, offering a compelling and open-ended examination of who we are and the strange things we do in the name of progress.