<!--
	Title: Call Yourself Ishmael
	Subtitle: Micros Get The Literary Itch
	Author: Fred Saberhagen, Robert Lafore, Scott Prussing, Redmond Simonsen, Marc Blank and Mike Berlyn
	Source: Softline, v2(7)
	Date: Sep-Oct 1983
	Transcription by Steve Derby
-->

<img style="max-width: 100%" src="/public/img/articles/softline-call-yourself-ishmael/geniuses.jpg" alt="Literary geniuses">

<img class="float-left" src="/public/img/articles/softline-call-yourself-ishmael/cover-softline-1983-sep.jpg" alt="Cover of Softline September/October issue, with the start of a quote from Planetfall">

<blockquote class="smaller" style="font-family: var(--article-sidebar), Arial, sans-serif;">

"I don't think you should go inside," Floyd says. "We'll need card there to
fix computer. Hmmm...I know! Floyd will get card. Robots are tough! Nothing
can hurt robots. You open the door, then Floyd will rush in. Then you close door.
When Floyd knocks, open door again. Okay? Go!"

&gt; Open the door

Floyd plunges into the bio lab. Immediately, he is set upon by hideous, mutated
monsters! More are heading straight toward the open door! Floyd shrieks and yells to you
to close the door.

&gt; Close the door.

From within the lab you hear ferocious growlings, the dounds of a skirmish, and then
a high-pitched metallic scream.

&gt; Wait.

Time passes. ... You hear three fast knocks, followed
by the distinctive sound of tearing metal.

&gt; Open the door.

Floyd stumbles out of the bio lab, clutching the minibooth
card. The mutations rush toward the open doorway!

&gt; Close the door.

Not a moment too soon! You hear a pounding from the
door as the monsters within vent their frustration at losing
their prey.

Floyd is badly torn apart, with loose wires and broken
circuits everywhere. Oil flows from his lubrication system.

You drop to your knees and cradle Floyd's head in your
lap. Floyd looks up at you with half-open eyes.

"Floyd did it ... got card. Floyd a good friend, huh?"

Floyd smiles with contentment, and then his eyes close.
You sit in silence for a moment over the brave friend who
gave his life that you might live.

</blockquote>

Floyd was a good robot. He was helpful. He was courageous. He
was fun-loving. Your friend is gone and you're alone. How do you feel?

You don't feel like that very often. Maybe after you read *Charlotte's
Web*. Maybe when they shot Bambi's mother. Maybe when Raskolnikov
got religion in the Siberian slave labor camp. But this scene is from a
computer game. A game!

The rising level of sophistication in the adventure game — that most
sophisticated of entertainments ever to pass through a central processing
unit — has fain threatened to take it out of the computer junkies' realm of
private delight and toss it into the center ring of popular culture, along
with hooks, plays, and movies. Can it absorb the culture shock and continue
to develop and transcend standards that are already high, or will it
be homogenized, simplified, and forced to satisfy the lowest common
social denominator? What's on teevee tonight?

The following is a discourse on the true meaning of interactive fiction
... participatory computer prose ... ultra adventure ... whatever
... by people who ought to know. They discuss what has been, what
may be, and what am. On some points, there is no argument. On others,
they all agree to disagree. We've invited them all to a party at midnight
next Friday, to be held in an old mansion on a remote island in the
Pacific. A sheer cliff surrounds it on three sides. The southern half is a
wild game preserve....

## Okay, Cue the Genius<br><span class="smaller" style="font-weight: normal;">By Fred Saberhagen

*Fred Saberhagen is the author of more than twenty science-fiction novels. With his wife, Joan,
he has cofounded Berserker Works Limited, a company engaged in converting the works of
science-fiction and fantasy authors into computer games. Here, he helps give us a little...
perspective.*

Suppose that in some alternate universe you are William
Shakespeare. Strolling about London one day in the late sixteenth century,
mulling over plans for your next novel, you come upon some
workmen erecting a large wooden structure of peculiar shape. The
design of the building strikes you as inappropriate for either a dwelling
or a place of business.

A few questions gain you some information about a recent invention
(this is an alternate universe, remember) called the "play." Live people,
sometimes costumed and in makeup, are getting up on a flat surface
called a "stage" and *acting out stories*!

The clever people who have designed and built the first stages, as
well as the inventors of acting, are right in there writing and directing
the best plays they can come up with. (At least the best they can come
up with in their spare time — each of these people necessarily has one or
two active careers already going.)

In one of the earliest successful plays, dummies representing invading
aliens (Frenchmen, perhaps, or Spaniards, from across the channel) were
lowered on ropes from concealed positions above the stage, while the
actor (this play needed only one) ran back and forth, following shouted
directions from the audience, trying to shoot all the dummies before they
touched the floor. The audience liked this play a lot and cheered it
enthusiastically.

In a somewhat more recent show, also very popular, the lead actor
climbs about on a crazy scaffolding of planks and ladders, trying to accomplish
some rather simple-minded tasks, while others costumed as fantastic
creatures try to knock him off by throwing barrels. It's good
slapstick fun, and the audiences love it.

"Wait a minute," you say to these eager people who have been
proudly explaining how plays work. "Wait a minute. That all sounds
amusing, yes. But l really think you're on to something bigger. Let me go
home and think about this for a while.... How many people can you
get onstage at once? How many lines can an actor memorize? Can you
have it dark on one half of the stage and light on the other half?"

They look at each other. "We're not really sure," one replies at last.
"Our stages are still pretty primitive. Our actors are all new at the job.
Everybody is. Next year we'll be able to do more. But what should we
try to do?"

You don't have any instant answers for them. A lot of vague ideas
suddenly churning. Possibilities....

"I hope you will go home and think about it, Will," says one of the
stage managers. "You're good with words. Maybe we could have the
man on the ladder say something more than 'Ouch!' and 'Wow!'"

"Yes, something more," you agree thoughtfully, turning away. The
other stage people call good wishes after you. But you scarcely hear
them. Your mind is involved with new ideas.

To work with — depend on — carpenters, actors, experts in stage
machinery and lighting? Whatever story emerged would no longer be
purely your own. But already you can see that the stage those others
have created can capture the imagination and enthrall an audience, even
with no more than a few clowns and ladders.

You head for home, for a place where you can sit down and think,
and write. Your thoughts are on a story that you had planned to make
into a book. The one to be called *Hamlet*....

## Roots<br><span class="smaller" style="font-weight: normal;">By Robert Lafore

*Robert Lafore is the founder of the company that bears the name Interactive Fiction and one of
the early explorers of the murky lands between micro technology and the literary muse. His
pioneering forays into interactive computer prose have been on the market since 1980 — almost
forever, in the microcomputer biz.*

What is interactive fiction? When capitalized, it's a microcomputer
software development firm in Inverness, California. More to the point,
interactive fiction is fiction that's interactive. Roughly, a story unfolds
on a computer screen, the scene is set, and you suddenly realize that
you're one of the characters in the story. You have to answer when the
other characters talk to you, and what you say determines the outcome
of the story.

As an idea of something to do with a computer, it just seemed pretty
obvious at the time. "The time" was the time the first microcomputers
arrived on the scene — the TRS-80 Model I and the Apple II. If you'd
been writing novels for years, it was natural to look at the micros and
say, "There must be some way to put these things together with writing
fiction." Credit for the inspiration as to how it could be done should go
to Joseph Weizenbaum's *Eliza* program, which created the impression of
talking with a psychologist.

That was the clue that you could use keywords to figure out what
someone was saying; you didn't have to do a complicated syntactical
analysis. That made it possible to write an interactive story that would
fit on a disk — otherwise, the routine to analyze the input would have
taken too much memory. It might have been a smarter program, but it
would have been too big.

Interactive fiction has been based on "genre literature"; that is, readily
identifiable styles, like detective stories, spy novels, sea stories, and
so forth. Because the form itself is so new — most people who first sat
down at the keyboard to write the stuff hadn't even the remotest idea
what to expect — we're all stuck with themes that are readily
recognizable (including science fiction — although it would seem that
talking to other characters in a story that's in your computer already is
science fiction).

In one of Interactive Fiction's first programs, *Six Micro-Stories*, a lady
slips and falls and drops her books while she's roller-skating in the park.
She's an absolutely gorgeous woman, your ideal. You help her pick up
her books, she says, "Thanks," and then it's up to you to think of the
right opening line. What happens depends on what you say to her.

The best outcome, the payoff, is that she finds you absolutely fascinating
and you go off with her to Bali, where you enjoy a life of ecstasy.
But it's hard to have it turn out that way. She's a very fussy lady; usually
she makes some snide comment and skates away. It pays to be interested
in the books she's reading. But, also, you have to be honest; she
hates pretension.

A lot of people think of the programs by Interactive Fiction as being
a different genre of the adventure game, partly because they're published
by Adventure International, Scott Adams's company. But to I.E.
the approach is completely different. We started off with the idea that
first it should be well written; fun to read — something you wouldn't be
embarrassed to pick up in a bookstore — and second, it should make use
of the technology of the microcomputer: You talk to the characters and
they talk back to you, and you can say — type — anything you want. In
adventure games (at least the traditional ones) you're restricted to two-word
sentences: "Go north," and so on. In interactive fiction you can
say whatever you like.

The I.F. programs use keyword searching to figure out what the
reader is talking about. Often just one keyword is enough for the program
to understand (or think it understands) what the reader is saying.
Sometimes it has to check two or three words. It depends on the structure
of a particular story. Of course, the story can take different turns,
depending on what you say — or, sometimes, what you do. It's a tree
structure. (The further along in the story you go, the further out on some
limb of the tree you find yourself.) In Six Micro-Stories there aren't that
many branches — three or four, maybe. But those are just the major
branches. When you're talking to other characters, there are often
dozens of responses they can make to what you say.

Most of the programs are "full-length" stories. They originally took
up an entire TRS-80 disk; the equivalent of a fairly long short story.
Now, with double-density and so forth, you can squeeze a couple of
these onto a disk. These longer stories are far more complex, of course,
with many more branches to the tree. In fact, the structure is really more
complicated than a tree, since something you do or say at the beginning
of the story can come back to haunt you toward the end, without seeming
to have any effect in the middle — bad karma.

In *His Majesty's Ship Impetuous*, which is a Hornblower-like sea story,
you're the captain of a British man-of-war. One of your seamen makes
a disparaging comment about the king, which of course was a hanging
offense in those times. You have to decide whether to hang him or not.
If you do, the crew thinks you're being too harsh. If you don't, they think
you're soft. Either way, in the big sea battle at the end of the story, they
abandon their posts. It requires a little imagination to figure out the right
thing to do. It's a third choice in a situation that seems to have only two
choices. Most people figure it out eventually. That's one of the tricky
parts of writing interactive fiction: The decisions the reader — the
hero — is called upon to make have to be hard enough to be challenging
but not so hard that the story becomes frustrating. The idea is that the
third or fourth time the reader faces the situation he suddenly sees the
solution, smites himself on the forehead, and cries. "Why didn't I think
of that before!"

What sort of people like interactive fiction? Hard to say. Perhaps
people who are technofreaks but who are also interested in traditional
literary forms. Some people think it's sacrilege, using computers for
literature. Of course, they're the same people who think it's sacrilege to
use computers for anything.

Strangely enough, schools seem to be the most interested in our interactive
fiction games. Both universities and high schools are using interactive
fiction in creative writing courses — they find it can help a
beginning writer start putting lines on paper — or on the computer. Once
the student has talked back to a bunch of fictional computer characters
for a while, he's ready to start writing his own stories.

As to the future, it'll be nice when voice recognition and speech synthesis
become common enough to be applied to interactive fiction. And
now that the interactive laser disk is with us, I don't think it'll be too
long before we have interactive movies. Imagine: Pretty soon you'll be
able to play Bogart's role in *Casablanca* — or just inject yourself into the
story and slip off with Ingrid Bergman ... make Shane come back ...
convince Dorothy to stay in Oz. I don't think anyone can imagine where
it will all lead.

## Manuscript and Machine<br><span class="smaller" style="font-weight: normal;">By Scott Prussing

*Scott Prussing's computer adaptation of his novel,* The Devouring Darkness, *will debut
later this fall as a "participant novel" for the IBM pc. Before embarking on the project, he
decided to lay out for himself a manifesto for adapting a novel to a computer.*

Transforming a novel into a work of interactive fiction is not easy,
for the writer relinquishes much of his control over the linchpin of his
story, the main character. No longer can he make the character do exactly
as he wishes (although, come to that, it's not unusual for a
character in a book to go in directions other than those the writer
originally intended). The author must now view his situations from a
dozen viewpoints, trying to anticipate how readers (players) he has
never met will react to given events. No longer can the road not taken
be conveniently ignored, for some player is certain to travel it. Each
possibility must be accounted for in some manner. The better this is
done, the more successful will be the final product.

One of the main differences between an adventure game and a "participant
novel" lies in the complexity of the plot. Adventure games have
only the barest of plots, if any. They are built around a series of situations,
loosely linked together, that confront the player. Interactive fiction
should have a complex plot, complete with a definite objective, subobjectives,
and some sense of urgency regarding the success or failure to
achieve the final goal.

The logical place to start, then, is with the plot. If you're transforming
a novel, the plot should be clearly outlined. If you're beginning from
scratch, a story line similar to that of a novel should be developed. Once
the basic story is complete, decision points must be identified — places in
the story where the player's decision determines in which direction the
story will proceed. In a novel, only the decisions made by the author
need be accounted for in a work of interactive fiction the writer must
allow for myriad responses.

The challenge to the programmer/author is to enhance the player's
visceral involvement — to get his pulse racing the way a good novel can.
If this is done well enough, perhaps fatigue will be something the player
actually feels, something that slows his reactions, rather than a number
on a corner of the screen that can be replenished by taking smaller steps
or dropping some weight.

In what areas of the adventure game can the novelist best bring his
expertise to bear?

First, improve the quality of the text. Most programmers write like,
well, programmers. The text is very clear, but very bland. Let's leave
the writing to the writers, who know the value of varying sentence
length and structure and what a well-placed adverb or adjective can do.
Player involvement can be enhanced by immersing the player in the atmosphere
of the setting. Enlisting writers will not he difficult. There are
countless authors (and hopeful authors) out there who are looking for
new, interesting places to ply their craft.

Second, adventure games must make more and better use of plot,
one of the most basic aspects of writing. The writer must develop a
suit}, line that will grab the player and give him a feeling of urgency
regarding his success or failure. All good adventure stories have this
sense of time; the pace builds as the climax nears.

The manipulation of time is perhaps the most important element in
the suspension of disbelief, always the most potent ingredient in novels
and films, and never attempted to any great degree with a computer.
Program routines can make the player's response critical through the use
of time limits. A signal would inform the player that he has entered such
a sequence; if he waits too long to go through a door, a cave-in may
block one of the exits or even bury him under several tons of rock. Moving
swiftly through a chamber may awaken a slumbering monster or it
may gain the player an advantage, perhaps allowing him entrance to a
passage that is closed to a player who moves cautiously. But moving
cautiously may allow him to avoid a hidden trap that would be triggered
by moving swiftly. It's up to the player to use the clues in the descriptions
(plus his adventurer's intuition) to decide the speed of his
movements.

Battle experience would improve the player's skills by improving his
reactions, rather than by simply adding to some artificial experience
score.

The creation of story branches from decision points in the plot can be
as simple or complex as the writer wishes. (This is one of the parts that
are the most fun about this type of writing.) Keeping in mind how quickly
the number of branches can grow, the writer should funnel some of
them together and eventually bring them back to some point on the main
story line. The route chosen by the player may bring him to later points
in the game without certain equipment or knowledge he might have
gained had he traveled a different path. This is an excellent technique
for adding variety to a game so that it can be replayed many times
without monotony.

Another major difference to remember when writing a game rather
than a novel is that a character in a book cannot go backward —
correcting mistakes and doing things previously undone. Unlike in life
and literature, this is a distinct possibility in a game. A clever program
will allow for it but should also include now-or-never opportunities that
are only available the first time a player reaches a certain point.

Making a novel into a game involves a great deal of work, but the
rewards are worth it. The writer can let his creativity roam unfettered
in any direction he wishes instead of having to follow one story line. The
what-if game can be played out as fully as the writer wishes (what if
Lincoln had not gone to Ford's Theater?). How many authors have written
more than one ending to a story, then agonized over which to use? In
this setting, all can be included. The finished product is fluid rather than
static. For the player, the game is different each time it's played.

And for the author, there is the excitement of being in the forefront
of a new genre, in which reader and writer work together to achieve a
final product with variations as limitless as their combined imaginations.

## The New Storytelling<br><span class="smaller" style="font-weight: normal;">By Redmond Simonsen

*Thirteen years of designing and authoring simulation games and editing* Strategy and Tactics,
Ares, *and* Moves *magazines has given Redmond Simonsen a particularly critical eye
when it comes to the simulation of the real world in a game. He has lately shifted his gaze to
the microcomputer, and he sees some room for improvement.*

The hit of the Czech Pavilion at the 1967 World's Fair was an interactive
movie. At some crucial point in the course of the story, a
romantic comedy, the action froze and the audience was asked to vote
upon which of two courses of action the main character should take.
The participatory nature of the experimental film enthralled and
delighted the fairgoers. Most people were completely taken in by the illusion
of interaction.

And illusion it was. The film was rigged to return to the main story
line regardless of what choices the audience made. There were two different
endings, but the sentimentality of the watchers almost always
delivered the happier denouement. Of course, the physical and informational
limitations of film being what they were (and are), it was inevitable
that the decision tree be small and guided back to the canned
main line of the narrative. Today, if we were to implement the same
story as a microcomputer story/adventure, the choices would be much
wider, the variability of the narrative much richer, and the actual
creative input of the participants much, much greater.

Well ... maybe not.

Consider: Good, involving, entertaining writing is a difficult and
time-consuming task. The development of interesting characters, situations,
and conflicts is not a trivial task. Unless we assume that programs
can be developed that will produce intelligent, engaging prose,
automatically written in response to easy-to-make user input, the
putative authors of such software are limited to the Czech-film syndrome:
essentially displaying canned paragraphs in answer to a rather
limited set of choices. Admittedly, the computer will allow more
variability but not as much more as you might suppose in your first gush
of enthusiasm for the idea of interactive fiction.

If, however, we can let go of the idea of literally displaying written
narrative (or worse, the less-than-wonderful pictures microscreens can
deliver), then there is some hope. The interactive author cannot be
bound by the old forms of communication and storytelling. These forms
are chained to their static media and directive creative approach (the
author is in charge and you keep your mouth shut). The challenge of interactivity
is such that a new narrative language must be synthesized.
For this language, let's put forth the working title of "Interlogue."

Interlogue will use only traditional text or pictures to present broad,
scene-setting Contexts. For the sake of directness and speed, no Context
is permitted to be longer than one screen of thirty-two characters by sixteen
lines. By imposing such a Spartan limit on "old-style" text, the
crutch of the previous form is removed.

Interlogue and the user weave the web of the story by displaying and
manipulating Actors and Icons. As these names suggest, the principal
characters are Actors and the nonvolitional elements (tangible and intangible)
are Icons. The Actor and Icon symbology (all done as character
graphics) are displayed on an Event Grid. The Event Grid is a modifiable
diagram that expresses changing relationships between and among
Actors and Icons. The basic unit of time in Interlogue is an Event. Events
can be thought of as brief moments or millenia—the only requirement
being their scale-appropriateness to the specific link in the story
being told.

The story expresses itself graphically and positionally. In a literal
way, the Actor can be placed closer to a Romance Icon (should one happen
to exist in the Event Grid) and have his options and possibilities influenced
in myriad ways. If you contemplate the display of several Actors
along with dozens of different Icons, all in the same Event Grid, you
can imagine how a very complex character/situation relationship can be
expressed and manipulated very economically. Think of it as a combination
of chess, Tarot, and the I Ching dedicated to storytelling rather
than game-playing and fortunetelling.

A form such as Interlogue makes much better use of the strengths of
the microcomputer than does the manipulation and crude parsing of
traditional text that we now see presented as interactive fiction. Of
course, the user must pay an intellectual entry fee to interact successfully
in what amounts to a new language. Such a consideration has not
deterred computerists in the past. Given a high degree of transparency
vis-a-vis structure and symbology, the front-loading on the Interlogue environment
should not be an obstacle to enjoying truly interactive fiction.

Whether or not you agree with the specifics of the Interlogue approach,
you should discard any preconceptions that may bind you to
unrealistic expectations for true interactive fiction so long as it is dependent
upon traditional text and/or picture presentation. Print has its
own strengths, as does film. These forms should not be arbitrarily imposed
upon software. The computer as storyteller is more closely related to
the oral tradition wherein the speaker is prompted and cajoled by his audience;
where gesture and eye contact are all-important; and, in fact,
where the very language and syntax are bent to accommodate the form.
We now have, as never before, an opportunity to directly engage the
mind of the audience. We should not squander that opportunity on imitations
of other media.

## The Interactive Experience<br><span class="smaller" style="font-weight: normal;">By Marc Blank and Mike Berlyn

*Marc Blank* (Zork, Deadline, Enchanter) *and Mike Berlyn* (Cyborg, Suspended) *are
among the leading practitioners of the computer adventure in the world today. Their company,
Infocom, developed a machine-independent programming language and full-sentence parser,
allowing the player to use a six-hundred-word vocabulary. Time magazine lately commented
that one of their programs was "more like a genre of fiction than a game." Blank and Berlyn
are of the opinion that true interactive fiction is already here.*

The experience of interactive fiction is similar to reading a novel in
only two ways: They both communicate through prose, and they're both
fiction. That's where the similarity ends. The experiences of reading a
book or of watching a movie, a television program, or a play are
passive. Interactive fiction is never passive.

The concept of story or plot means something different than it does in
novels or screenplays. In interactive fiction, you don't watch or read
about someone doing something; you do it yourself. You tell the computer
what you want to do by typing in an English language sentence.
The computer then tells you what happens as a result and waits for you
to decide what you would like to do next. The story in interactive fiction
grows out of what you do as the character. The story is not waiting for
you to walk through it — it grows dynamically with each decision you
make.

Interactive fiction could only be written on and experienced through
a computer. Extremely primitive distant relations exist in book form —
decision novels — but their relationship to true interactive fiction is that
of a pocket calculator to a computer.

Reading a decision novel is much like walking along a path: When
you come to a fork in the path, you must decide on the left or the right
path. You cannot leave the path. Decision books actually look a lot more
like fiction than interactive fiction. They are cleverly woven stories that
overlap at certain points; and they're a far cry from being interactive.
They do allow you choices, each in the form of a "decision," but what
happens if you want to do something that isn't one of the choices?

Should you pick the left fork or the right fork? Or maybe you should
go back the way you came? Maybe it would be better if you left the
path entirely and wandered through woods off to your left, or followed
the meandering stream paralleling the path to your right? Perhaps you
should wait here for someone to pass by. And if someone does pass by,
maybe you should ask which path is the safer of the two. Is it time to
eat? Is your stomach growling? Is it growing dark? Only a computer can
create a world where, at each turn, you can make hundreds or
thousands of decisions. Decision books pale in comparison.

The computer makes interactions between yourself (as the main
character in the story), other characters, objects, and changing situations.
Your current location — whether it's a small shack, a tent in the
desert, or a magical castle — is a small part of your environment. You
can move around this world, go from location to location, and explore.
Each new place offers new things to be done.

Characters other than yourself can also walk around through this
environment. They may have their own goals and can follow their own
machinations. They can walk around independently — if you are not in a
location when a character walks through it, you might not even know of
his existence. If a character is walking through a room in which you are
standing, you can choose to ignore him or interact with him.

Objects sitting on tables — even the very tables themselves — can be
manipulated by your character if you so direct. Want your character to
look under the table, or take something off the table, or put something
he is carrying on the table? Simple. Just type, "Look under the table,"
or, "Take the red book off the table," or, "Put the red book on the
table."

Writers of interactive fiction create a small universe in which there
is a consistency, even to the smallest details. A simple example would be
a container. Let's say you're in the wilderness and you're thirsty.
There's a stream nearby, so you go over to the stream and take a drink.
Your thirst is quenched — for now. But what happens in a few hours,
when you've wandered away from the stream and get thirsty again?
You can't carry water around in your hands. If you try to pick up some
water, the computer might tell you. "You try to pick up the water, but
it leaks through your fingers." So you need something in which to keep
the water. That way you can tell the computer to fill up whatever container
you find.

You might run across an old tin can sitting by the side of the road.
You might also find a canteen. Which one should you use? Does it really
make a difference? Well, the canteen seems like the most likely choice,
so you might fill it. But should you be prevented from filling the tin can?
No. If the can can hold water, then you should be able to fill it. For that
matter, you should he able to fill both of them.

Some early interactive fiction, written without thought toward internal
consistency, fails here. In the more primitive games, when you direct
the computer to fill the tin can with water, the computer might say
anything from "I can't do that," to "That makes no sense to me." In a
way, these examples of interactive fiction are more frustrating and
limiting than the decision novels.

All interactive fiction can trace its roots to a game called *Adventure*.
It was written as an experiment and later became a popular game.
*Adventure* allowed players to type in two words at a time. The words
almost always had to be a verb and a noun. This sentence structure
severely limited interaction. The part of the computer program that was
trying to understand what was being typed in, the parser, was a very
primitive beast; it was looking for a verb-noun pair — "Fill canteen" —
and that was the only thing it accepted. The limit of talking to a complex
world with simple commands became a problem.

For that matter, how could you tell the computer you wanted to
"put the manx cat in the top hat" with two words? How could you tell
the computer to "press the red button on the panel" as opposed to
"press the blue button on the panel"? With programs unable to understand
full sentences, the interaction was crippled.

Many people attempted to imitate the original *Adventure*. In fact, so
many programmers were fascinated by this type of interaction that the
type of game became known as an adventure game. An adventure game
is one in which the player communicates with the computer by typing in
commands. The computer then responds with whatever results seem appropriate.
This covers a lot of territory — interactive fiction can be
considered a kind of adventure game, but it doesn't act like the original
*Adventure* did.

Writing sophisticated interactive fiction is an act of creation. To be
successful, the author must not only create things but must also create
the rules that act upon them — the laws of nature for the world he has
created. These laws need not be the laws of our world — the story may
take place in another galaxy or alternate reality. What is important is
the sense of completeness and consistency found in this world. Without
this, the story is hollow and unconvincing.

Writers of interactive fiction tend to talk a lot about their parsers.
Many writers claim that their parsers understand full sentences, but
most parsers understand little more than verb-noun pairing. They look
for a few keywords and ignore everything else in the sentence. But talking
about one's parser is actually beside the point. Real intelligence on
the computer's part — understanding what you *mean* — requires
knowledge of how the created world works. This can be more easily accomplished
with an intelligent parser, but the parser is not the be all and
end all of interactive fiction.

Understanding — the computer being able to "get what you
mean" — is the quality, the only real quality, that distinguishes a work of
interactive fiction from an adventure game.

In text length a piece of interactive fiction is about the size of a short
novel. But the amount of time you spend with the piece of fiction cannot
be compared to anything else. Some people are satisfied to wander
about the world that is depicted in each piece of work, while others
want to explore every opportunity in depth as they come upon it.

Whichever way you approach it, some things are certain: It is fiction,
it interacts with you, and it can be experienced only on a computer.
Television didn't replace radio; nor will interactive fiction replace books.
The creators of this kind of fiction don't expect it to replace novels,
plays, movies, or television. What they expect to see in the future is
another form of entertainment, another way to read, another way to experience
art. And the future is now.