Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace

Front Cover
Simon and Schuster, 1997 - Computers - 324 pages
Can we imagine a world in which Homer's lyre and Gutenberg's press have given way to virtual reality environments like the Star Trek holodeck? Murray sees the harbingers of such a world in the fiction of Borges and Calvino, movies like Groundhog Day, and the videogames and Web sites of the 1990s. Where is our map for this new frontier, and what can we hope to find in it? What will it be like to step into our own stories for the first time, to change our vantage point at will, to construct our own worlds or change the outcome of a compelling adventure, be it a murder mystery or a torrid romance? Taking up where Marshall McLuhan left off, Murray offers profound and provocative answers to these and other questions.
 

Contents

A NEW MEDIUM FOR STORYTELLING
11
Harbingers of the Holodeck
27
From Additive to Expressive Form
65
THE AESTHETICS OF THE MEDIUM
95
Agency
126
Transformation
154
PROCEDURAL AUTHORSHIP
183
Elizas Daughters
214
Digital TV and the Emerging Formats of Cyberdrama
251
Hamlet on the Holodeck?
273
Copyright

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