PAX East

March 22, 2010
Stacey Mason

Boston will be hosting Pax East , a three-day convention for gaming of all types, this weekend from Friday March 26 to Sunday March 28. In addition to most of the typical nerd-con activities —foam weapons and all—Pax will be hosting panels of interest to the hypertext and IF community h , including

Storytelling in the World of Interactive Fiction: J. Robinson Wheeler [JRW Digital Media], Robb Sherwin, Aaron Reed, Emily Short, Andrew Plotkin
The Death of Print: Russ Pitts [Editor-in-Chief, The Escapist], Julian Murdoch [journalist, freelance], Jeff Green [EA], Chris Dahlen [Managing Editor , Kill Screen], John Davison [Editor-in-Chief, Gamepro]
But Thou Must: Choice In Games: Joseph Bulock [Cinematics Designer, Obsidian Entertainment], Shon Stewart [Lead Cinematics Animator, Obsidian Entertainment], Matt MacLean [Lead Systems Designer, Obsidian Entertainment], Chris Avellone [Lead Designer, Obsidian Entertainment]
Action Castle!: a group IF session with a human parser: Panelists Include: Jared Sorensen [Game Designer, Memento Mori]

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Terrific new media, new and old, that we’re particularly enjoying.

Black Box

Spectacular Twitter fiction from Jennifer Egan, impinging on the world of her novel,A Visit From The Goon Squad.
Patanoir

Simon Christiansen’s brilliantly clever interactive fiction.
Out Of Touch

Christine Wilks’s Out of Touch is an exploration into loneliness and the fetish (and artifice) of human connectedness inherent in social media, a theme to which many of us can relate.
Meanwhile

Andrew Plotkin’s iOS implementation of Jason Smiga’s interactive comic.
Machine #69

by Mark Wernham. Machine #69 recalls Ryman’s 253, and especially Bob Arellano’s Sunshine ’69 both in its embrace of arbitrary connection and its fond nostalgia for the era when cheap booze, good drugs, fast cars and hot guns seemed to offer everything worth wanting and when nothing was worth wanting very much.
afternoon, a story

by Michael Joyce. The first great hypertext fiction, a landmark that repays close study.
Luminous Airplanes

A new hyperromance for the Web. Sparsely linked, La Farge’s new hypertext nods at Stephanie Strickland’s design and to Michael Joyce’s direct address to the reader. but brings a new voice and sensibility to Web fiction.
Changed

Multimedia notes from underground, where a traumatized girl furnishes a cozy space in an underground tunnel. Script by Lynda Williams, music and code by Andy Campbell and Matthew Wright. A web work that’s especially nice on the iPad. (The floor lamp is a nice allusion. Get it?)

Key readings about Reading Hypertext, edited by Mark Bernstein and Diane Greco. Just published by Eastgate; $39.95.

Some of the people we’re following lately. (This list changes arbitrarily from time to time; don’t read the tea leaves.)

Please follow htlit on Twitter.
Mark Bernstein (chief scientist at hypertext publisher Eastgate Systems)
Stacey Mason (editori at hypertext publisher Eastgate Systems)
Steve Ersinghaus (100 stories project)
Susan Gibb (100 stories project)
Gene Golovchinsky (hypertext and tablet computing pioneer)
Diane Greco (hypertext author and editor)
David Kolb (author of Socrates in the Labyrinth)
Cathy Marshall (inventor of spatial hypertext, co-author of Forward Anywhere, Microsoft researcher)
Jill Walker (University of Bergen)