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which visual seemingly three-dimensional surround scenarios have replaced the limited
text world and navigation commands ofearly text-based games.
A second interesting point is the move away from an emphasis on conversation, as the
personalised exchange between reader and computer, towards a metaphor of
exploration, of a space or narrative created by the computer partly in reaction to the
reader's input. Wooley explores this point further and argues that interactivity should be
defined
"not as a conversation between a natural and an artificial intelligence, but as an
exploration of some form of cyberspace. "I believe that conversation is the wrong
model for dealingwith a computer" wroteJohn Walker, the enigmatic founder of the
software company Autodesk. "Since inception we've seen computers as possessing
attributes ofhuman intelligence ("electronic brains", and this has led us to impute to
them characteristics they don't have, then expend large amounts of effort trying to
program them to behave as we imagine they should. When you're interacting with a
computer, you are not conversing with another person. You are exploring another
world.">
The aim of Interactive Fiction is therefore not so much to develop narrative strands in
collaboration with its readers, but to create a textual space, mapped outby an author and
navigated by readers. This, in consequence, has an effect on the position of the author
which shifts in relation to the reader and to the text. While authors never have total
control over their work, they usually playa major part in the execution of the physical
creation process, even in the random cut-up collage or the OuLiPo automated writing
formulae. The author of interactive fiction must step back and write programs that the
users execute. The author is writing the rules, creating scenarios and the underlying
program structure while the execution of the resulting program is the task of the
reader/player and the computer.
3,2,3; The History ofInteractive Fiction
The term "Interactive Fiction" is usually applied only to electronic texts and often even
more limited to a specific type ofadventure story/game similar to the "Choose Your Own
Adventure" children's books discussed in previous chapters.In the "Interactive Fiction"
newsgroup, one of the discussion groups on the internet, Interactive Fiction is defined
36Wooley, Virtual Worlds:, p.l54.
Chapter 3 -page 103