Hamlet on the Holodeck

June 30, 1997
Intelligent and carefully researched, this report from the more erudite side of cyberspace focuses on the impact of interactive media on the narrative (i.e., story-telling) imagination, and vice versa. Murray, a former programmer and a humanities professor at MIT since 1971, has taught electronic fiction writing since the early 1990s to the world's most hard-core hackers, finding herself "drawn to imagining a cyberdrama of the future by the same fascination that draws me to the Victorian novel." Here, she debunks the notion that nonlinear storytelling began with the point-and-click wanderings of hypertext, demonstrating the desire to tell multiple stories simultaneously in numerous writers from Homer to Tolstoy. She contends that because the "space" of the story and its outcome are dependent on the reader, however, electronic writing gives the reader the kind of "agency"--"the satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices"--previously found only in audience participation-based arts. Virtual characters like "Julia," who "lives" in chat rooms and responds to those who engage her in conversation, may just expand our definition of fiction. After musing over plot algorithms and speculating about cyberdrama, Murray ends with the heartening prediction that developments in fiction-writing software will increasingly allow those of us who are bored by war-related video games to experience the benefits of "a computer-based literature" that "might help us recognize ourselves in the machine without a sense of degradation."

Starred review from July 1, 1997
There's something a bit threatening and yet more than a little thrilling about the idea central to Murray's work: Can we already be at the cusp of a bona fide new medium of communication, one that will marry the power of the narrative with the vast capabilities of the computer? Murray, a longtime humanities computing guru at MIT, insists that we are, convincing us that the attraction of writers for cyperspace is as irresistible as it is persistent. Already, she argues, numerous novelists, playwrights and filmmakers are poised for the move toward multiform stories, digital formats, and, of course, increased interactivity. Murray's ruminations are dramatic, compelling, and almost as hypnotic as drama itself, be it real (and steeped in tradition) or virtually imagined. Heartily recommended for scholars and all fanatics of the brave new world.--Geoff Rotunno, "Tri-Mix" Magazine, Goleta, Cal.

July 1, 1997
Murray clicks on computerized fiction creation today and speculates how incipient technologies will shape storytelling tomorrow. Once a computer programmer and now an MIT literature professor, Murray adopts a positive view of "cyberliterature" that might allow a "reader" to navigate a story's landscape, alter its plot, and even interact directly with its characters. Rather than decry this as a dystopian demise of the imagination that comes from reading, Murray believes it will enhance the imaginative encounter with fiction. She details things already being created on the Web, such as customized episodes of popular movies and TV programs and CD games like "Myst," in which the player becomes integral to the action. From these she defines characteristic features of the new literature, especially the participation of the "interactor," and proceeds to wonder what aesthetic quality might emerge from an infinitely malleable storytelling environment. Murray is confident a digitally adept Tolstoy will master the media, and aspirants to the count's laurels will find in this work many conceptual ideas to play with. ((Reviewed July 1997))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1997, American Library Association.)