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Command Lines:
Aesthetics and Technique in Interactive Fiction and New Media
a dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in English
by
Jeremy Douglass
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
Santa Barbara
Committee in charge:
Professor Alan Liu, Chair
Professor Rita Raley
Professor William Warner
December 2007
dedicated to my grandparents Charles and Norma Keller Enid and Malcolm Douglass your love made everything possible
ABSTRACT
Command Lines: Aesthetics and Technique in Interactive Fiction and New Media
by Jeremy Douglass
The Interactive Fiction (IF) genre describes text-based narrative experiences in which a person interacts with a computer simulation by typing text phrases (usually commands in the imperative mood) and reading software-generated text responses (usually statements in the second person present tense). Re-examining historical and contemporary IF illuminates the larger fields of electronic literature and game studies. Intertwined aesthetic and technical developments in IF from 1977 to the present are analyzed in terms of language (person, tense, and mood), narrative theory (Iser's gaps, the fabula / sjuzet distinction), game studies / ludology (player apprehension of rules, evaluation of strategic advancement), and filmic representation (subjective POV, time-loops). Two general methodological concepts for digital humanities analyses are developed in relati