I’ve just begun reading Nick Montfort’s “Twisty Little Passages – An Approach to Interactive Fiction“. It’s too early to present a critique or present any cogent overview of what’s contained but I can say that I have been impressed so far.
The publication of such a precedent-setting and potentially seminal work comes at an opportune time (I do not personally believe in coincidence – but that’s another topic). I’ve been working towards completion of a proposal for a new interdisciplinary course in IF (with Steve’s able assistance) that will, hopefully, be offered spring semester 2005 (seems so far away, doesn’t it?). The initial audience for such a course is the programming student and the writing/literature student who are respectively interested in new and different challenges. The course itself will easily fall into the larger New Media program as it brings together traditionally disparate groups: the concrete, linear language of programming with the abstract, creative language of writing.
Steve has recently begun integrating “non-traditional” forms as literature into his classes. This is to be commended for several reasons beyond just a “mind-expanding” objective. The question that is inevitably asked is “how can I try to create such a thing?” In any tradtional creative medium such as writing, one can just pick up a pen or pencil and begin writing onto sheets of paper (or type on a word-processor). In a “new media world”, this is not so simple.
Discussions that I’ve personally had with students, as well as the feedback I’ve received, only tells me that there is plenty of interest in exploring new venues. Over the next year (based on personal observations) this audience and interested can only grow. So, knowing this, Steve and I have been entering into a dialogue on how this can be successfully accomplished. These approaches make strange bedfellows: the linear personality with the non-linear one or, as one of my colleagues once remarked, “a combination of people who sit at the desk and those who sit on the desk.”
Perhaps the scariest piece of this is for the more free-form creative person: the fear of the unknown world of computer programming. This concern has been a key component in what language we will use in the class. I won’t go into detail here but I will say that it is friendly and easy enough to learn that anyone should be able to create some simple IF with guidance. But isn’t that the reason someone takes any class: to learn? If everyone knew how to do this, there would be no need.
Anyway, we’re very excited about this and look forward to being able to bring students into a growing worldwide community of IF authors and readers.
Stay tuned….