§46 A short history of interactive fiction

The history of interactive fiction in the twentieth century has yet to
be written. One outline might be as follows: an age of precursors and
university games, 1972–81; the commercial boom, 1982–6;
a period of nostalgia among Internet users for text while the industry
completed the move to graphical games, 1987–91; and the age of
the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.int-fiction and its annual
competition, of shorter stories moving away from genres and puzzles,
1992–9.

§46.1 Precursors and university games 1972–81

Perhaps the first adventurer was a mulatto slave
named Stephen Bishop, born about 1820: “slight, graceful, and
very handsome”; a “quick, daring, enthusiastic” guide
to the Mammoth Cave in the Kentucky karst. The story of the Cave is a
curious microcosm of American history. Its discovery is a matter of
legend dating back to the 1790s; itis said that a hunter, John Houchin,
pursued a wounded bear to a large pit near the Green River and stumbled
upon the entrance. The entrance was thick with bats and by the War of
1812 was intensively mined for guano, dissolved into nitrate vats to make
saltpetre for gunpowder. After the war prices fell, but the Cave became
a minor side-show when a desiccated Indian mummy was found nearby, sitting
upright in a stone coffin, surrounded by talismans. In 1815, Fawn Hoof,
as she was nicknamed after one of the charms, was taken away by a circus,
drawing crowds across America (a tour rather reminiscent of Don McLean's
song “The Legend of Andrew McCrew”). She ended up in the
Smithsonian but by the 1820s the Cave was being called one of the wonders
of the world, largely due