Older Writing (up until 2004)

Nick Montfort

My interactive fiction and other digital media work, and writing about digital media, is listed under digital media, and my poems, digital and otherwise, are in the poems section. For a more complete list of my publications, see my c.v. This page is only an index to those writings of mine, up through 2004, that are available on this site or elsewhere on the Web. (This note updated in 2014.)

Prose of All Sorts:
Academic Writing, Reviews, Essays, Journalism, Fiction, & More

Academic Writing

• Acid-Free Bits: Recommendations for Long-Lasting Electronic Literature. By Nick Montfort and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. Pamphlet. Version 1.0, Jun 14, 2004, Electronic Literature Organization.
• Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction. (MIT Press, Nov 2003.) The first book-length history of interactive fiction of the text adventure sort, with literary and ludic criticism of important works. (My page for the book contains excerpts and more information.)
• The New Media Reader. (MIT Press, Jan 2003.) Edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort. A book and CD anthologizing essays and other writing of historical importance to new media, with important programs and electronic documents included. (The Web site contains excerpts and more information.)
• "Face It, Tiger, You Just Hit the Jackpot: Reading and Playing Cadre's Varicella." By Nick Montfort and Stuart Moulthrop. MelbourneDAC 2003 — Digital Arts and Culture, Melbourne, Australia, 19-23 May 2003.
• "ifMap: A Mapping System for Cooperatively Playing Interactive Fiction Online." By Jessica Rubart and Nick Montfort. In Proceedings of the Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment (TIDSE) Conference, Darmstadt, Germany, March 24-26, pp. 364-369, Fraunhofer IRB Verlag, 2003, ISBN 3-8167-6276-X.
• "Toward a Theory of Interactive Fiction." Final article, version 3.5, posted 19 Dec 2003. Forthcoming in print in IF Theory.
• "The Line / The Line: Interactive Fiction and Symmetry in Human-Computer Text Exchange." Presentation at the ACM SIGGRAPH Art Gallery, Los Angeles, 14 Aug 2001. The text of my presentation and my HTML slides from it are both online.
• " Cybertext Killed the Hypertext Star." Review of Espen Aarseth's Cybertext. ebr (Electronic Book Review), Winter 2000/2001. Includes working interactive fiction and responses from N. Katherine Hayles, Marjorie Luesesbrink, and Jim Rosenberg.
• "DAC 2000: A Choose-Your-Own-Trip-Report!" Some comments on Digital Arts and Culture 2000, from both interactive fiction and hypertext fiction perspectives.
• "Computer Co-Authors for Fiction." Presentation at Computers and Writing 2000, Fort Worth, Texas, 27 May 2000. The abstract and my full presentation are both online.
• "A Conversational Computer Character to Help Children Write Stories." Thesis for S.M. in media arts and sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Jun 1998.
• "Interfacing with Computer Narratives: Literary Possibilities for Interactive Fiction." Thesis for B.A. in liberal arts, Plan II Honors Program, University of Texas at Austin, May 1995.

Reviews

• "A Bad Machine Made of Words." Review of Dan Shiovitz's Bad Machine on the trAce site. 17 Aug 2004. Review award winner, New Media Article Writing Competition, trAce/Writers for the Future.
• "Memorious Marker." Review of Chris Marker's Immemory in Grand Text Auto. 16 Aug 2003.
• "Blue My Mind." Review of Scott Rettberg's Kind of Blue in Grand Text Auto. 13 Aug 2003.
• "The Rupture of the Author Assumed into Cyberspace." Review of Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis. 7 April 2003.
• "Roboprotest: Artists and engineers make subversive allies." Art review, Technology Review, Sep-Oct 2000.
• "The Tome of the Unknown Authors." Hypertext fiction review, Technology Review, May-Jun 2000.
• "Digital Decay." Interactive art review, Technology Review, Jan-Feb 2000.
• Review of William Gillespie's and my The Ed Report in Academic Writing. 17 Oct 2000.
• Review of Greg Troutman's Dark Mage. (Interactive fiction.) SPAG #22, Sep 15, 2000.
• Review of Gareth Rees's Christminster. (Interactive fiction.) SPAG #20, Mar 15, 2000.
• "Ballard's Bazaar." Review of J.G. Ballard's A User's Guide to the Millennium. Hotwired.com, Pop channel, 8 Aug 1996.

Essays

• "Continuous Paper: The early materiality and workings of electronic literature." Text of talk, MLA 2004, Philadelphia; 28 Dec 2004.
• "Continuous Paper: Print interfaces and early computer writing" Text of talk, ISEA 2004, Helsinki; 20 Aug 2004.
• "The Coding and Execution of the Author." Essay published in print in The Cybertext Yearbook 2002-2003; Posted 11 Mar 2004.
• "Combat in Context." Abstract of a talk at Form, Content, and Video Game Culture, Princeton University; Posted 6 Mar 2004.
• "Continuous Paper." Text of talk, History of Material Texts Seminar, University of Pennsylvania; Posted 23 Feb 2004.
• "Stop Handcuffing My Mind." Written after Copyright and the Network Computer: A Stakeholder's Congress; Posted 15 Nov 2003.
• "Condemned to Reload It: Forgetting New Media." Essay adapted from the text of my presentation at Copyright and the Network Computer: A Stakeholder's Congress, Washington D.C., 8 Nov 2003.
• "Literary Games." Introduction to Poems that Go, Fall 2003.
• "In Search of Webs Past." Technology Review, Jul-Aug 2000.
• "The Cyborg Campus." Texas Alcalde, Sep-Oct 1999.

Journalism

• "The Sweet Pong of Success." Technology history, Technology Review, Mar-Apr 2000.
• "Breaking Protocol: Forget Y2K. IPv6 is Here — The Net's First Major Upgrade Ever." Feature article, Wired Magazine, Dec 1999.
• "Free Speech Movement of the 90s - Cyberprotestors Fight Their Own Culture War." With Sandy Close for Pacific News Service, 20 Feb 1996.

Fiction

• 2002: A Palindrome Story. By Nick Montfort and William Gillespie. A 2002-word story that is spelled the same forwards and backwards. Published as a book, designed by Ingrid Ankerson, with illustrations by Shelley Jackson, in 2002; Urbana, Illinois: Spineless Books. The full text is also available online. (Spineless Books site for the book.)
• "If John Woo Directed Home Alone." A short-short story from September 1993, back by popular demand.
• "Kung Fu Christ." Another cult classic short-short story from the mid-1990s.

Humor

• "All A Board." Media-critical humor column, Suck.com, 2 Jun 2000.
• "Big Hand on One." Media-critical humor column, Suck.com, 14 Jun 1999.
• "Nothing But Bombs." Media-critical humor column, Suck.com, 6 Apr 1999.
• "Interactor's Nightmare." Media-critical humor column, Suck.com, 27 Jan 1997.
• "Royale with Cheese." Media-critical humor column, Suck.com, 25 Nov 1996.
• "Wordprocessor.com." Business idea parody, Suck.com, 15 Oct 1996.
• "Spanishfirefly.com" Business idea parody, Suck.com, 27 Aug 1996.
• "Nothing for Nothing." Media-critical humor column, Suck.com, 30 Jul 1996.
• "Mad About Cow." Zero Baud column on old media, Suck.com, 18 Jul 1996.
• "Final Cut." Zero Baud column on old media, Suck.com, 27 Jun 1996.
• "Legal Unease." Media-critical humor column, Suck.com, 27 May 1996.
• My NewsPoetry. With Joe Futrelle, NewsPoetry.com, 8 Sep 2000.
• "Gorilla Bloat." News parody, NewsPoetry.com, 22 Mar 2000.
• "Odd Joysticking Causes Ken to Throw Fireball." News parody, NewsPoetry.com, 9 Nov 1999.
• "Amazon.com Acquires Mahogany Credenza." News parody, GettingIt.com, 27 Aug 1999.