The Computer-Mediated Story as
Literature

Though interactive fiction received a few critical articles as a new form of storytelling, it was not until Michael Joyce created afternoon, a story [Joy91] using Hypercard that computer mediated storytelling gained real academic interest. The story was written in 1987, however, Joyce's place as a literary figure in this medium was secured by Robert Coover (of Brown University) through Coover's series of articles on hyperfiction from 1992-1993 in the widely circulated New York Times Book Review [Coo92] [Coo93c] [Coo93a] [Coo93b]. In these articles he primarily covered the works distributed by Eastgate Press on their hypertextual software, Storyspace. Eastgate has become the centre of a closely defined, postmodern and primarily prose poetry aesthetic for digital media, and has attracted a number of print based writers to become involved with computer mediated storytelling.

Other works with a stronger sense of plot and character development have also gained critical acclaim such as Myst [MM93] by Rand and Robin Miller and The Complete Maus [Spi94] by Art Spiegelman. Many others are suggestive of a wide field of possibilities such as the Living Books series by Random House and the profusion of hyperfiction freely available on the Web.