Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace updated edition

"I want to say to all the hacker-bards from every field -- gamers, researchers, journalists, artists, programmers, scriptwriters, creators of authoring systems --... please know that I wrote this book for you." -- from the introduction Janet Murray's Hamlet on the Holodeck was instantly influential and controversial when it was first published in 1997. Ahead of its time, it takes for granted the convergence of media forms and computing that today is part of our everyday experience. Yet "the future of narrative" Murray envisions is framed in terms of change that might take multiple decades, even centuries: the development of artistic traditions of practice, the growth of new audiences, the realization of (then) science fiction-like technology as consumer products. This updated edition of a book the New Yorker called a "cult classic" offers a new introduction by Murray and her chapter-by-chapter commentary bringing each topic up to date. Stories define how we think, play, and understand our lives. Murray shows that computation offers a powerful new set of expressive affordances for the ancient human activity of storytelling. She discusses the unique properties and pleasures of digital environments and connects them with the traditional satisfactions of narrative. She analyzes the dramatic satisfaction of participatory stories and considers what would be necessary for interactive fiction to become a mature and compelling art form. Murray's argument met with some resistance from print loyalists, postmodern hypertext enthusiasts, and "ludologists" (who objected to Murray's emphasis on narrative in games). But since Hamlet on the Holodeck's publication, a practice that was largely speculative has been validated by academia, artistic practice, and the marketplace. Murray predicts the narrative innovation will continue.