Product Description

Stories define how we think, the way we play, and the way we understand our lives. And just as Gutenberg made possible the stories that ushered in the Modem Era, so is the computer having a profound effect on the stories of the late 20th century. Today we are confronting the limits of books themselves -- anticipating the end of storytelling as we know it -- even as we witness the advent of a brave new world of cyberdramas. Computer technology of the late twentieth century is astonishing, thrilling, and strange, and no one is better qualified than Janet Murray to offer a breathtaking tour of how it is reshaping the stories we live by.

Can we imagine a world in which Homer's Iyre 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.

She discusses the unique properties and pleasures of digital environments and connects them with the traditional satisfactions of narrative. She analyzes the state of "immersion," of participating in a text to such an extent that you literally get lost in a story and obliterate the outside world from your awareness. She dissects the titillating effect of cyber-narratives in which stories never climax and never end, because everything is morphable, and there are always infinite possibilities for the next scene. And she introduces us to enchanted landscapes populated by witty automated characters and inventive role-playing interactors, who together make up a new kind of commedia dell'arte. Equal parts daydream and how-to, Hamlet on the Holodeck is a brilliant blend of imagination and techno-wizardry that will provoke readers and guide writers for years to come.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #909652 in Books
• Published on: 1997-07-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

Amazon.com Review
Technology changes storytelling--movies don't tell stories in the same manner as wandering bards. Janet H. Murray, director of the Laboratory for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is fascinated with the changes emerging technologies may bring. Interactive tales, more versatile structures, stories as games, and games as stories are among the topics she explores in her very personable and entertaining style. And what about fears that interactive escapism could be the coming addiction? She makes an unblinking examination of this question with insight into both the technological possibilities and the strengths of the human psyche. Strongly recommended for anyone who loves the art of storytelling in any medium.

From Library Journal
There's something a bit threatening and yet more than a little thrilling about the idea central to Murray's work: Can we already be at the cusp of a bona fide new medium of communication, one that will marry the power of the narrative with the vast capabilities of the computer? Murray, a longtime humanities computing guru at MIT, insists that we are, convincing us that the attraction of writers for cyperspace is as irresistible as it is persistent. Already, she argues, numerous novelists, playwrights and filmmakers are poised for the move toward multiform stories, digital formats, and, of course, increased interactivity. Murray's ruminations are dramatic, compelling, and almost as hypnotic as drama itself, be it real (and steeped in tradition) or virtually imagined. Heartily recommended for scholars and all fanatics of the brave new world.?Geoff Rotunno, "Tri-Mix" Magazine, Goleta, Cal.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Murray clicks on computerized fiction creation today and speculates how incipient technologies will shape storytelling tomorrow. Once a computer programmer and now an MIT literature professor, Murray adopts a positive view of "cyberliterature" that might allow a "reader" to navigate a story's landscape, alter its plot, and even interact directly with its characters. Rather than decry this as a dystopian demise of the imagination that comes from reading, Murray believes it will enhance the imaginative encounter with fiction. She details things already being created on the Web, such as customized episodes of popular movies and TV programs and CD games like Myst, in which the player becomes integral to the action. From these she defines characteristic features of the new literature, especially the participation of the "interactor," and proceeds to wonder what aesthetic quality might emerge from an infinitely malleable storytelling environment. Murray is confident a digitally adept Tolstoy will master the media, and aspirants to the count's laurels will find in this work many conceptual ideas to play with. Gilbert Taylor

Customer Reviews

Superb look at the structures of digital storytelling
Great book that gives an thorough account of the structures that are given by the format of the digital media. You not only learn to analyse how digital storytelling works but also how it could and should migrate from the status quo to elevate itself onto the next literary level. To anybody who is interested in digital storytelling I recommend this book with all my heart.

The history of the video game meets narratology
I'm writing a dissertation on postmodern literature and thus had the pleasure of considering this book as research. The truth of the matter is, that in the dull, dry world of books on narrative theory, this one was FUN! This is exactly the point- video games and Star Trek have EVERYTHING to do with the way narrative works today, (which Murray compares with the way it worked in Shakespeare's time,) and will work once the average American can no longer remember a time when video games had no graphics.

It's fun AND it shows how things are changing and how quickly.

Take a spin into the midst of the future
Some may find this terse, warmly witty, and tidy treatise about "whither literature in the world of CyberSpace" as just too esoteric to read. Stop. This is not a book grieving over the lost art of words and writing that nurtures the lives of all readers. This wise book is a guide to the possibilites that elude pessimists wary of the ultimate effects of the computer on this century. Relax, discover the possibilites about which you've never dreamed, and let Murray tell you some stories in the mode of the future. For writers, for teachers....but also for the committed readers. Enjoy!