Company type | corporation |
---|---|
Industry | Macintosh software industry Windows software industry Electronic publishing |
Founded | December 1982 |
Headquarters | Watertown, Massachusetts |
Products | Mac OS, Mac OS X and Windows software |
Website | www |
Eastgate Systems is a hypertext publisher and software company headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts. [1]
Eastgate is a pioneer in hypertext publishing and electronic literature [2] [3] [4] [5] and one of the best known publishers of hypertext fiction. [6] It publishes fiction, non-fiction, and poetry hypertexts by established authors with careers in print, as well as new authors. Its software tools include Storyspace, a hypertext system created by Jay David Bolter, Michael Joyce and John B. Smith, [7] in which much early hypertext fiction was written. [8]
Eastgate's chief scientist, Mark Bernstein, is a hypertext researcher, [9] and has improved and extended Storyspace. He also developed new hypertext software, Tinderbox, [10] a tool for managing notes and information. Storyspace was used in a project in Michigan to put judicial "bench books" into electronic form. [11]
Eastgate Systems was founded by Mark Bernstein in 1982 and developed hypertext tools. [12] Joyce and Bolter launched Storyspace in 1987, at the first annual Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) conference on Hypertext. [13] Joyce presented afternoon, a story as a case-study for the tool; the work is widely considered the first work of hypertext fiction [14] and was published by Eastgate in 1990. [15] In 1995, Eastgate published Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl . [16] These legacy works can be found in academic libraries though not all institutions maintain the now obsolete hardware required to interact with these titles. [17] However, a number of specialized media labs, such as The NEXT Museum, Library, and Preservation Space, do maintain both the software and the hardware to read these works.
Eastgate has published series of works as hypertext journals, including the Eastgate Quarterly. [18]
Robert Coover highlighted Eastgate as "the primary source for serious hypertext" in The New York Times Book Review in 1993, [19] a quote which still features prominently in Eastgate's tagline. [20] Between 1993-6, Eastgate published eight issues of The Eastgate Quarterly Review of Hypertext. [21]
But how far can you push hypertext? That's the question that inspires Eastgate's chief scientist, Mark Bernstein.... During most of the '80s and '90s, Bernstein devoted his energies to pushing the boundaries of hypertext fiction.
Interestingly, Storyspace is now being used as a hypertext system for a project in the state of Michigan to put judicial 'bench books' into electronic form.
Hypertext is text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typically activated by a mouse click, keypress set, or screen touch. Apart from text, the term "hypertext" is also sometimes used to describe tables, images, and other presentational content formats with integrated hyperlinks. Hypertext is one of the key underlying concepts of the World Wide Web, where Web pages are often written in the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). As implemented on the Web, hypertext enables the easy-to-use publication of information over the Internet.
Hypertext fiction is a genre of electronic literature characterized by the use of hypertext links that provide a new context for non-linearity in literature and reader interaction. The reader typically chooses links to move from one node of text to the next, and in this fashion arranges a story from a deeper pool of potential stories. Its spirit can also be seen in interactive fiction.
Shelley Jackson is an American writer and artist known for her cross-genre experimental works. These include her hyperfiction Patchwork Girl (1995) and her first novel, Half Life (2006).
Michael Joyce is a retired professor of English at Vassar College, New York, US. He is also an important author and critic of electronic literature.
Electronic literature or digital literature is a genre of literature where digital capabilities such as interactivity, multimodality or algorithmic text generation are used aesthetically. Works of electronic literature are usually intended to be read on digital devices, such as computers, tablets, and mobile phones. They cannot be easily printed, or cannot be printed at all, because elements crucial to the work cannot be carried over onto a printed version.type something
afternoon, a story, spelled with a lowercase 'a', is a work of electronic literature written in 1987 by American author Michael Joyce. It was published by Eastgate Systems in 1990 and is known as one of the first works of hypertext fiction.
George Paul Landow was Professor of English and Art History Emeritus at Brown University. He was a leading authority on Victorian literature, art, and culture, as well as a pioneer in criticism and theory of Electronic literature, hypertext and hypermedia. He also pioneered the use of hypertext and the web in higher education.
Patchwork Girl or a Modern Monster by Mary/Shelly and Herself is a work of electronic literature by American author Shelley Jackson. It was written in Storyspace and published by Eastgate Systems in 1995. It is often discussed along with Michael Joyce's afternoon, a story as an important work of hypertext fiction.
Victory Garden is a work of electronic literature by American author Stuart Moulthrop. It was written in Storyspace and first published by Eastgate Systems in 1991. Victory Garden is one of the earliest examples of hypertext novels, and is notable for being very inventive and influential in its genre. It is often discussed along with Michael Joyce's afternoon, a story as an important work of hypertext fiction.
Jay David Bolter is the Wesley Chair of New Media and a professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His areas of study include the evolution of media, the use of technology in education, and the role of computers in the writing process. More recently, he has conducted research in the area of augmented reality and mixed media. Bolter collaborates with researchers in the Augmented Environments Lab, co-directed with Blair MacIntyre, to create apps for entertainment, cultural heritage and education for smart phones and tablets. This supports his theory regarding remediation where he discusses "all media functions as remediators and that remediation offers us a means of interpreting the work of earlier media as well".
Jane Yellowlees Douglas is a pioneer author and scholar of hypertext fiction. She began writing about hypermedia in the late 1980s, very early in the development of the medium. Her 1993 fiction I Have Said Nothing, was one of the first published works of hypertext fiction.
Stuart Moulthrop is an innovator of electronic literature and hypertext fiction, both as a theoretician and as a writer. He is author of the hypertext fiction works Victory Garden (1992), which was on the front-page of the New York Times Book Review in 1993, Reagan Library (1999), and Hegirascope (1995), amongst many others. Moulthrop is currently a Professor of Digital Humanities in the Department of English, at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He also became a founding board member of the Electronic Literature Organization in 1999.
Judy Malloy is an American poet whose works embrace the intersection of hypernarrative, magic realism, and information art. Beginning with Uncle Roger in 1986, Malloy has composed works in both new media literature and hypertext fiction. She was an early creator of online interactive and collaborative fiction on The WELL and the website ArtsWire.
Deena Larsen is an American new media and hypertext fiction author involved in the creative electronic writing community since the 1980s. Her work has been published in online journals such as the Iowa Review Web, Cauldron and Net, frAme, inFLECT, and Blue Moon Review. Since May 2007, the Deena Larsen Collection of early electronic literature has been housed at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities.
Figurski at Findhorn on Acid is a hypertext novel by Richard Holeton published on CD-ROM by Eastgate Systems in 2001 and republished on the open web by the Electronic Literature Lab, Washington State University, in 2021. Re-Imagined Radio presented a radio interpretation of this novel in 2022 in which Holeton made an appearance. It is a work of interactive fiction with various paths for readers to choose from, an early example of electronic literature, and one of 23 works included in the literary hypertext canon.
King of Space is a work of electronic literature by author Sarah Smith. This interactive narrative is set in a collapsing solar system aboard an abandoned starship, where an escaped terrorist encounters the last star-captain and his ship's Priestess. The story weaves elements of gaming into a dark science-fictional ritual of fertility and regeneration.
Its Name Was Penelope is a hypertext fictional story created by Judy Malloy and published in various versions, including 1993 by Eastgate Systems. The work makes use of digital elements such as randomized passages to tell the story of the main character's life.
Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse is an early multimedia hypermedia text written by John McDaid and released by Eastgate Systems in 1993. The main portion of Funhouse was written for Macintosh's HyperCard app, but portions of the hypermedia novel are also contained in the original box. The use of transmedia storytelling, meta-fiction, and epistolary format makes this a potential early example of an alternate reality game.
Twelve Blue is a work of electronic literature by American author Michael Joyce. He is widely known as one of the first writers of hypertext fiction. His first piece afternoon, a story was written in 1987. Joyce created Twelve Blue in 1996 using Storyspace software. This is his first piece of hypertext fiction specifically to be played on the web and published by Eastgate Systems. In 2006, Twelve Blue was selected for inclusion in the first volume of the Electronic Literature Collection, a publication of the Electronic Literature Organization.