December 28, 2003
And Flights of Monkeys Sing Thee to Thy Rest
Adam Cadre’s new interactive fiction, Narcolepsy, (top item on the page) is just out and seems at first taste to be curiously strong, magically delicious, etc. Although also named after an affliction, this piece isn’t as intricately puzzling as Adam’s Varicella. Exploration and alternate (and ontologically inconsistent) plot progression is more the idea in Narcolepsy.
While continuing the tradition of car accidents in ergodic literature and computer games, Cadre’s latest is, among other things, a rollicking and wacky conflation of aspects of Galatea, Patchwork Girl, The Manchurian Candidate, etc. I won’t give away which aspects.
I’m one of a dozen authors who contributed short (and expendable) segments of Narcolepsy; the IF community has done well in pioneering certain sorts of large-scale collaborations and this piece may represent yet another new way in which such collaborations can happen.
Also of note: Adam’s “games” page has been renamed “interactive fiction;” he describes on there to what extent game and story play a role in each of his works of IF. He mentioned he was going to make this change in his extensive and thoughtful recent comments about Twisty Little Passages, about which I should probably say something at some point. But not right now – I feel strangely tired …