Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace - Hardcover

Murray, Janet H.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684827239 ISBN 13: 9780684827230

Publisher: Free Press, 1997

Synopsis

Explores effects of digital environments, multimedia interactivity, and computer technology on storytelling and narrative

About this title

About the Author

Janet H. Murray is Senior Research Scientist in the Center for Educational Computing Initiatives at MIT. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Harvard and teaches interactive fiction writing in MlT's Film and Media Studies Program. A pioneering figure in humanities computing, she has won several awards including a Gold CINDY and an Educom Special Recognition Award for interactive design. She has taught humanities at MIT since 1971, and she served from 1992 to 1996 as the founding director of the Laboratory for Advanced Technology in the Humanities. She lives with her husband and two children in a suburb of Boston.

Reviews

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. Gilbert Taylor

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.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0684827239
• ISBN 13: 9780684827230
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336