On Mailboxes and White Houses

Recently, I finished reading Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction by Nick Montfort. If you are into Interactive Fiction (IF) or have been in the past, this book is an excellent title on the subject. It's not that long of a read, but it provides a wonderful insight into the evolution and history of IF, especially Infocom products (arguably the best commercial IF). There are a few issues that I had while reading, but overall an outstanding work.

I want to break this review down by saying a little something about each chapter of the book. To me, the books preliminary chapters were sort of a slow read. The first chapter defined the "text adventure" and IF as to what it is, and what it is not. Likened to more of an electronic novel experience, the author makes a clear distinction as to what he will be discussing, as well as some of the history of interactive text and hypertext or electronic text. I found this chapter interesting, but I would imagine readers that were not familiar with IF will probably want to spend a little more time understanding the subject matter. Those who are quite familiar with the form may want to peruse this chapter quickly.

The second chapter discusses the riddle throughout history, literature and games. While riddles tend to fascinate me, this chapter had more of a "college research paper" feel to it. In fact, the first two chapters seemed to drag a little, and there were more than a few spots where the author's prose becomes a little "wordy", even catching a run-on sentence here and there . I can see, however, that these chapters are necessary, especially for readers less familiar with the form and computer gaming in general. There are a few choice riddles that I was not familiar with, but for the most part I had been exposed to many of the riddles and the history of them already.

The third chapter, in my opinion, is where the author truly begins to shine. I found myself fascinated by the evolution of Adventure, arguably the first well-known computer IF. He examines some of the university and research works in computer language interpretation, and the rise of some rather intelligent interpreters that came before Adventure, in addition to a detailed look at the first programming and limited academic distribution of
the work on some of the very first electronic networks. Perhaps even more fascinating, the author notes the various versions that were produced. One of the more interesting facets here is a look at how the source code was passed to subsequent authors, and how the versions of Adventure that people are familiar with today are the result of several authors, making it one of the first electronically collaborated work of its kind.

The fourth chapter pertains largely to Zork and works that were developed using large mainframes. For those who don't know IF at all (and its pretty hard for any geeks never to have heard of Zork), Zork is a fantasy IF work that became the public face of IF and Infocom. It is by far my favorite of the Infocom published titles. The version that is discussed in this chapter, though, is not the commercial version, but the sprawling, cavernous version developed at MIT by the original implementors (authors). It looks at some other works that were developed and distributed using the mainframe method as well. In addition to looking at the works, a view of the environment is discussed at length, looking at the PDP mainframe usage and MIT's influence of IF as well.

Chapter five was the best chapter in the book, Taking a look at commercial Zork, as well as some of the other works published by the great Infocom corporation. Montfort takes an extensive look at Deadline and A Mind Forever Voyaging, and documents many of Infocom's successes throughout the 1980's. If reading this chapter does not compel the reader to try and play some of these digital classics, nothing will. The last few parts of this chapter examine the decline and eventual fall of Infocom and IF's mass popularity with the rise of graphical works.

Chapter six was filled with much information that I was not aware of. Montfort looks at some of the more notable international IF works, like English titles in the UK and non-English titles in Europe and around the world. This chapter was a great read. I read the entire chapter in a few hours in fact, while sitting in the White Plains airport. A great and interesting read, the pages fly by and many less notable works are examined. The thing that struck me is the amount of nuance in the descriptions of some of the foreign works. This chapter makes clear that Montfort has done his research, and his clear documentations can be found through the entire book.

The final two chapters examine the rise of the phenomenon of independent IF, and the many works that came from Independent authors like Graham Nelson and Adam Cadre. There is information about the IF competition which exists even to this day, and a look on how IF affected culture and created its own culture. Some discussion is also contained about the earlier newsgroups like rec.arts.interactive-fiction and rec.games.interactive-fiction. These chapters clearly mark IF as a very important part of computer history and culture and lends further credence to the statement that IF works are serious works of computing and art.

I highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in PC gaming and IF. It is a great book and deserves a place on any geek shelf. I don't know much about Nick Montfort, but I would like to think he is a kindred geek. I hope to read more works by this author, especially if he is as passionate about other subjects as he was about IF. So hit the link to the right or up top and go to Amazon.com and buy it. It is well worth the money.