INTERACTIVE FICTION: As Literature

Okay, so you probably don’t care, but I did find my way out of the crystal labyrinth with some assistance and now I’m facing a wolf.

I will likely spend a good few hours of this weekend exploring PHOTOPIA among other interactive fiction. Starting out with a writer’s attitude and a reader’s impatience, I quickly fell into the journey of this game, and I hesitate to call it a game. But it was exciting, frustrating, euphoric, funny; all the things that one hopes to achieve in writing a story in text. Engaging the reader to a point of real emotions, where he is immersed in the narrative to the point where preparing supper is out of the question and customers could bloody well beat down the door before he can tear himself away from the computer screen. (Okay again, change gender references and yes, it’s true.)

Barriers are being destoyed at the same time as bridges are being built within the literary community just as in almost every other field affected by the almighty computer. Arguments fly on all sides especially as to what constitutes art. Progress constantly changes the determination–even when it may be that it is a subjective view, after all. Time and experimentation move things beyond the established (to date) criteria and may improve, but certainly expand the categories. Homo’s red handprint on the cave wall can not remain the standard forever.

I’ll do more on this subject, but in the meantime, if you are curious, please check out John Timmons’ link to Interactive Fiction on this page. Play a bit. See what you discover.