in images on a web page, it was startling as a work of
conceptual art, and challenged the unconscious assumption that an
interactive fiction need be intrinsically unlike a material book.
Chris Klimas's affecting short story ‘Mercy’, and Andrew
Plotkin's shifting vignette ‘The Space Under The Window’,
were influential in the late 1990s style for non-game games. Marnie
Parker organises art shows which challenge traditional aspirations
for IF by encouraging artistic expression. Making an exception to
this chapter's general rule of stopping history at the close of 1999,
it seems appropriate to finish with two fine debut pieces which took
awards in the 2000 Art Show: ‘Galatea’ (Emily Short, 2000),
a conversation with an animated sculpture which breaks new ground in
interactive dialogue; and ‘The Cove’ (Kathleen Fischer, 2000),
an evocative seascape which is also a gathering of memories. Interactive
fiction willalways appreciate what in theatre used to be called “the
well-made play”, the polished entertainment on traditional lines,
but without its radicals it will die. Though the grail of puzzle-free
yet interactive literature seems as elusive as ever, it is too soon
to stop looking.

▲
And what of the history of the theory of interactive fiction?
For most of the last twenty years, the best published sources are chapters
which, like this one, hide at the back of books on game programming:
thus, Chapter 8 of Peter Killworth's How to Write Adventure Games
for the BBC Microcomputer Model B and Acorn Electron (1984), Chapter
7 of the Alan manual, Appendix B to the TADS manual. (Even people who
don't intend ever to use TADS should read the delightfully written TADS
manual.) Most are couched in the form of avuncular advice