=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1914/TUTORIAL1
|storemode=property
|title=A Festival of Narrative Automata
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1914/TUTORIAL1.pdf
|volume=Vol-1914
|authors=Mark Bernstein
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ht/Bernstein17
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==A Festival of Narrative Automata==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1914/TUTORIAL1.pdf
A Festival of Narrative Automata
Mark Bernstein
Eastgate Systems, Inc.
134 Main Street
Watertown MA 02472
+1.617.924.9044
Bernstein@eastgate.com
ABSTRACT anywhere, but most of the time they carry us to the home page or
to clickbait listicles.
Hypertext research has been deeply interested a narrative, and
Even in our unfrequented academic backwaters, we
literary hypertext fiction has enjoyed a long and happy
have few guides to light the linked path or to explain what writers
relationship to this conference. The literature of Critical Theory,
have attempted and to demonstrate how they have succeeded or
on the other hand, is famously opaque, and our Balkanized
failed. Hypertext’s friends and critics alike assume, for example,
technical literature on new media storytelling has grown
that hypertext is incapable of narrative coherence[3], though this
provincial.
is demonstrably untrue[4].
Daring yet accessible experiments in non-sequential interactive
narrative have appeared in unexpected places – in theaters, in
2. CRITICAL THEORY FOR FUN
experimental novels, and especially in narrativist role-playing A widespread assumption among software engineers holds that
games. Narrative automata exhibit considerable sophistication in writing is a sort of information transfer protocol. Suppose I have
the frame of simple models of computation. Much of this work is an idea in mind; perhaps I have discovered a new algorithm, and I
a lot of fun while demonstrating remarkable theoretical depth. In want you to know about it. You are not here, so I write it down on
contrast to the cheery hero journeys through depopulated the page, encoding it, and I mail you the text. You read the text,
landscapes that long dominated computer games, this work is decode it, and that reading recreates a mental state or
notably dark, emotionally complex, and introspective. representation that corresponds to what I wanted to explain.
Every year, I read student papers motivated by this
model. It underpins much of our rhetoric and almost all of our
evaluations. It is fundamentally wrong.[5]
CCS Concepts
• CCS Concepts Many rewarding and fruitful ideas developed by Critical
and Literary Theory in the late 20th century [20] have found their
• Software and its engineering➝Software creation and
way into an odd literary backwater situated on the fringes of
management➝Designing Software • Applied Computing➝
literary publishing, commercial publishing, and the game industry.
Computers in other domains.
These works have received almost no attention beyond their
Keywords immediate community, and indeed have seldom sought a wider
audience. Most are published by very small presses, and their
Narrative automata, hypertext, hypermedia, literature, concerns often appear esoteric or even childish. Yet, in these
fiction, education, design, implementation, support, works we find embodied the key results of Critical Theory of
history of computing, maps, links, games. greatest interest to hypertext writers and to designers of hypertext
systems and tools. These works are themselves hypertext
narratives or, rather, hypertextual engines for generating
narratives. Some of these are frivolous, some somber. Many are
1. INTRODUCTION. capable of surprising range and subtlety.
Starting in the early 20th century, a number of people have become
interested in exploring how machinery can tell stories, either alone
3. THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR
or in conjunction with one or many people. Some of these As late as the early 20th century, people who thought about
machines are computer programs, others are rules and procedures literature were confident that stories and plays meant something,
that people are to follow, more or less mechanically. I call all of and that meaning could be found in the text. History had meaning,
these “narrative automata.” too, and again close study of the evidence by a reasonable
observer would reveal the right interpretation.
The great surprise of the first thirty years of hypertext research The Second World War shattered this belief in the
has been that writing hypertext is hard. The challenge of building inviolate text and the master narrative, and by 1968 it had become
hypertext reading environments was not difficult to overcome, evident that master narratives chiefly served the master. Post-
and the resistance we expected to face from readers accustomed to structuralism rejected the textual horizons of new criticism;
the world of print failed to materialize (though see [1][2]). The meaning isn’t found in the text alone, but equally in the way we
economics of building a world-wide web, something that only interpret the text. To accept the author’s intention would be
recently seemed fantastic, turned out to be trivial. invidious, in exactly the same way that to accept every
Yet writing well with links has proven surprisingly interpretation of the village priest (or the local political
hard. The link is the most important new textual element since the commissar) would be antithetical to freedom. Even beloved
medieval invention of the comma, yet few Web writers use links writers, after all, were deeply complicit in the mythologies and
in any but the most mundane and conventional way. Links can go economies of their time; Jane Austen’s heroines live off revenues
Tutorial at Hypertext'17, Prague, Czech Republic, July 2017
Copyright held by the author(s).
extracted by black slaves held in captivity on distant islands, and 7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
their mothers take care to lock both their family silver and their Numerous experts gave generous advice during the preparation of
family secrets away from their Irish maids. Jane Austen didn’t these notes. I especially want to thank: Mark W. R. Anderson,
intend for us to read her text refracted through Marx and DuBois, Paul Czege, Charlie Hargood, E. P. James, Diane Greco
but we cannot (and would not wish to) do otherwise. This is the Josefowicz, George P. Landow, Stacey Mason, David Millard,
“death of the author.” Hypertext makes the reader’s active role Jason Morningstar, Stuart Moulthrop, Souvik Mukherjee, Em
manifest: the reader chooses which links to follow and which to Short, and Rosemary M. Simpson.
ignore [6][7].
Morgan Macri helped review and prepare the manuscript.
Early automata often allowed for a supervisory “game
master” who might be viewed as (at least) a partial author, but Copies of selected games for the personal and instructional use of
great attention has been paid to situations where the story can attendees at the 2017 ACM Conference on Hypertext and the Web
unfold without any designated authority[8]. For some stories, were supplied by arrangement with Bully Pulpit Games
indeed, constructing such an authority would be obscene [9]. (http://bullypulpitgames.com) and Half-Meme Press
(http://www.halfmeme.com).
4. ARE YOU MY MOTHER? THE SOCIAL
CONSTRUCTION OF CHARACTER 8. REFERENCES
In the postmodern perspective, texts are everywhere. People are [1] Birkerts, Sven. The Gutenberg Elegies. Boston: Faber and
Faber, 1994
texts, too, and (like War and Peace and that long, lonesome
highway) texts act on and change them. Identity is (in part) [2] Carr, Nicholas G. The Shallows : What the Internet is Doing to
socially constituted. Conspicuously, the Other is a social Our Brains. New York: W. W. Norton, 2010.
construction; an outcast, a madwoman, a witch, a fugitive Negro [3] Ryan, M.-L. Avatars of story. University of Minnesota Press.
slave: none of these identities are a free, personal choice, and 2006.
none are imposed by nature or by God, but all are imprinted on
the individual by the society that surrounds them. We write [4] Bernstein, Mark. Getting Started With Hypertext Narrative.
ourselves, but we also are written upon. Watertown, MA: Eastgate Systems, Inc, 2016.
Narrative automata enact this social constitution of [5] Eagleton, Terry. After Theory. New York: Basic Books, 2003
subject; “your” character’s appearance, abilities, and actions are [6] Landow, George P. Hypertext : The Convergence of
partly determined by you, and partly determined by the Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. Baltimore:
automaton. You roll 3d6 and learn you are strong. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
5. SERIOUS HYPEREXT [7] Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Richard Miller, trans., New York: Hill
For this session, I have examined more than forty automata with and Wang, 1974.
care, and examined aspects of many others [10]. These range from [8] Ben Lehman, The Drifter’s Escape, These Are Our Games,
manuals intended to help commercial writers improve their plots 2009
[11] to an “unsettling erotic [card] game for one” [12], represent
[9] Jason Morningstar, The grey ranks (Bully Pulpit Press, 2007)
countries across the world, and address topics that range from
promoting cozy feelings in the family circle[13] to exploring a [10] Mark Bernstein, A Festival of Narrative Automata,
world where socialism actually is inevitable [14]. In contrast to Watertown: Eastgate Systems, Inc. in press.
the depopulated landscapes of so many computer games, automata [11]William Wallace Cook, Plotto, Battle Creek, Michigan: Ellis
interrogate characters that range from the minions of a nefarious Publishing Company, 1928
and evil Master [15] to lesbian Soviet bomber pilots [16]. The
stories these automata generate are varied, interesting, and [12] Aleksandra Sontowska and Kamil Węgrzynowicz, The Beast,
frequently surprising. They cast interesting light on such long- Naked Female Giant, n.d. (2016)
standing questions as the moral standing of hypertext fiction, the [13] Atsuhiro Okada, Ryuutama, Andy Kitkowski and Matt
place of pleasure in literary hypertext, and Sanchez, trans., Kotodama Heavy Industries, 2016
6. THE PATH AHEAD [14] Steve Wallace, No Country For Old Kobolds, Steve Wallace,
The lessons we have learned in the first generation of narratology nd (2015)
[17] and literary hypertext [18] can usefully inform future [15] Paul Czege, My Life With Master, Half-Meme Press, 2003.
automata, and can already be seen in recently-published
[16] Jason Morningstar, Night Witches, Bully Pulpit Games, 2014.
commercial hypertexts [19], social media stories [20], and current
theatrical productions. Among the topics that narrative automata [17] Genette, Gerard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method.
suggest for our own research are: Trans. Jane E. Lewis. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1983.
• Exposition and Intertextuality
• Stories of Long Duration [18] Bernstein, Mark. “Criticism.” Proceedings of the 21st ACM
• Social Locative Hypertexts conference on Hypertext and hypermedia. Toronto, Ontario,
• Intensity vs. Irony Canada New York, NY, USA: ACM, 2010. 235-44.
• Seriousness vs. Solemnity [19] Pears, Iain. Arcadia. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016.
• Visualization and Debugging [20] Egan, Jennifer. “Black Box.” The New Yorker (2012)
• Making systems less fun for crazy people
• Nonfiction and Structure [21] Culler, Jonathan D. Literary Theory : A Very Short
Introduction. 2nd ed.; New York: Oxford University Press,
• Polyvocal hyperdrama
2011.
• Writing an exciting hypertext