Interactive Fiction — New York City
Reading and Discussion Group
IFNYC was an in-person reading and discussion group, organized by Bill Bly and Nick Montfort, that meet monthly to discuss specific works of interactive fiction, broadly defined to include many types of text-centered electronic (and some non-electronic) fictions. An interactive fiction in this sense is a work of fiction in which the reader determines actual order in which the text appears for reading.
Selections for IFNYC included books not intended to be read front-to-back, hypertext fiction and poetry in Eastgate's Storyspace format and on the Web, text adventures with literary elements, conversational characters with dramatic or literary elements, and other fiction cybertexts.
The group discussed the selections for each month after those who were able to read the works have looked at them. Besides offering time for discussion, meetings had an additional purpose: they provided wider access to difficult-to-run and difficult-to-find works.
Thanks to all who came to IFNYC meetings from November 1999 - June 2000! My thinking about interactive fiction has been greatly stimulated by learning from all of you. -NM
Works Previously Discussed by IFNYC
| May 2000 | |
| The Electronic Chronicles of the Casaba Melon Institute. An HTML work (on the Web) by Adrianne Wortzell. 1994. | |
| Apr 2000 | |
| Christminster. "An Interactive Conspiracy." An Inform text-adventure work (free to download) by Gareth Rees. 1995. | |
| Varicella. An Inform text-adventure work (free to download) by Adam Cadre. 1999. | |
| Little Blue Men. "An Object Lesson." An Inform text-adventure work (free to download) by Michael Gentry. 1998. | |
| Racter. A conversational character (shareware clone to download) by William Chamberlain and Thomas Etter. INRAC, 1984. | |
| Mar 2000 | |
| Victory Garden. A Storyspace hypertext work (sampler on Web) by Stuart Moulthrop. Eastgate, 1991. | |
| Feb 2000 | |
| Portal. "A Computer Novel." A hypertext work (not available) by Rob Swigart. Activision, 1986. | |
| Mindwheel. "An Electronic Novel." A BTZ text-adventure work (not available) by Robert Pinsky with Steve Hales and William Mataga. Broderbund/Synapse, 1984. | |
| Amnesia. A text-adventure work (not available) by Thomas Disch. Electronic Arts, 1988. | |
| Trinity. A ZIL text-adventure work by Brian Moriarty. Infocom, 1986. | |
| Nort and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It. A ZIL text-adventure work by Jeff O'Neill. Infocom, 1987. | |
| Dec 1999 | |
| Patchwork Girl. A Storyspace hypertext work by Shelly Jackson. Eastgate, 1995. | |
| Nov 1999 | |
| Dictionary of the Khazars. "A Lexicon Novel in 100,000 words." Book by Milorad Pavic. Translated by Christina Pribicevic-Zoric. Vintage, 1988. |
Running Text Adventures: A FAQ about the Interactive Fiction Archive can help you run some of the above works. Practically all of Infocom's text adventures are now available in a single software package, Masterpieces of Infocom.