Eastgate Systems is a hypertext publisher and software company headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts.[ FAQ. Eastgate.com. Retrieved on 2013-07-28.]
Eastgate is a pioneer in hypertext publishing and electronic literature[ Hypertext connects disparate data: extract a world of data, layer by layer by Henry Fersko-Weiss, March 1st, 1989, Lotus Publishing Corp. Quotes Mark Bernstein: "In the next five to ten years," says Eastgate Systems' Bernstein, "hypertext will determine the way programs interact with people."][Gutermann, Jimmy, 'Hypertext Before the Web,' Chicago Tribune, April 8, 1999 ("Thanks to some successful early attempts at hypertext fiction that Eastgate published (most notably by Michael Joyce and Stuart Moulthrop) and a front-page Robert Coover essay in the "New York Times Book Review," Eastgate and Storyspace were closely associated with the emerging field of literary hypertext.")][Robert Coover, 'And Hypertext Is Only the Beginning. Watch Out!' New York Times Book Review, August 29, 1993 ("...the primary source for serious hypertext fictions today is Eastgate Systems, the New Directions of electronic publishing and the supplier of the popular Storyspace software in which most of the hypertext authors I know about have written.")][Murphy, Kim, 'Electronic Literature: Thinking Outside the Box,' Los Angeles Times, July 24, 2000; Zack, Ian, 'A Novel Approach to Literature,' The Roanoke Times, July 16, 1999.] 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,[Landow, George P. (1992). Hypertext: the convergence of contemporary critical theory and technology. The Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 40] in which much early hypertext fiction was written.[ Strange fiction by Jimmy Guterman, 05.23.97, Forbes.]
Eastgate's chief scientist, Mark Bernstein, is a hypertext researcher,[ Tinderbox 1.2: multipurpose app sparks, stores, and shares ideas., MacWorld, September 1, 2003.] a tool for managing notes and information. Storyspace was used in a project in Michigan to put judicial "bench books" into electronic form.
History
Eastgate Systems was founded by Mark Bernstein in 1982 and developed hypertext tools.
Joyce and Bolter launched
Storyspace in 1987, at the first annual Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) conference on Hypertext.
Joyce presented
afternoon, a story as a case-study for the tool; the work is widely considered the first work of hypertext fiction
and was published by Eastgate in 1990.
In 1995, Eastgate published
Shelley Jackson's
Patchwork Girl.
These legacy works can be found in academic libraries though not all institutions maintain the now obsolete hardware required to interact with these titles.
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.
Robert Coover highlighted Eastgate as "the primary source for serious hypertext" in The New York Times Book Review in 1993,
Products
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Tinderbox, a content assistant for managing, analyzing and mapping notes in a hypertextual environment.
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Storyspace, a hypertext writing environment. Storyspace writing environment consists of boxes (nodes) and arrows (named links) that show connections between nodes.
Fiction
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Michael Joyce: afternoon, a story (1987, 1990), Twilight, a Symphony (1996)
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Sarah Smith: The King of Space (1991)
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Judy Malloy and Cathy Marshall; Forward Anywhere
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Judy Malloy: its name was Penelope (1993)
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Carolyn Guyer: Quibbling (1992)
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Stuart Moulthrop: Victory Garden (1992)
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Deena Larsen Marble Springs (1993), Century Cross (1994), Samplers—Nine vicious little hypertexts (1997)
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John McDaid: Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse (HyperCard)
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Kathryn Cramer: In Small & Large Pieces (1994)
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Shelley Jackson: Patchwork Girl (1995) (Storyspace)
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Bill Bly: We Descend, Volume One (1997) (Storyspace, Tinderbox)
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Richard Holeton: Figurski at Findhorn on Acid (2001) (Storyspace)
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J. Yellowlees Douglas: I have said nothing
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Kathleen McConnell under Kathy Mac: Unnatural Habitats
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Kathryn Cramer: In Small & Large Pieces
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Mary Kim Arnold: Lust
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Mark Bernstein: Those Trojan Girls (2016)
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Megan Heyward: Of day, of night (2004)
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Wes Chapman: Turning In
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Edward Falco: A Dream with Demons
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Rob Swigart: Down Time
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Tim McLaughlin: Notes Toward Absolute Zero
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Judith Kerman: Mothering (StorySpace)
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Richard Smyth: Genetis
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Clark Humphrey The Perfect Couple
Poetry
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Robert Kendall and Richard Smyth: A Life Set for Two (Visual Basic)
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Stephanie Strickland, True North (StorySpace)
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Jim Rosenberg, Integrams (Hypercard)
Non-fiction
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Roderick Coover: Cultures in Webs
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David Kolb: Socrates in the Labyrinth
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Diane Greco: Cyborg, engineering the body electric
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Eric Steinhart: Fragments of the Dionysian Body
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George Landow: Writing at the Edge; The Dickens Web;
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George Landow and Jon Lanestedt: The In Memoriam Web
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Guiliano Franco: Quam Artem Exerceas
See also
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Electronic literature
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Hypertext fiction
Notes
External links
