April 24, 2005

HyperCard Bibliography 0.1

by Nick Montfort · , 12:33 pm

After finding that no such resource seems to exist, I’ve started to assemble a bibliography of creative work in HyperCard, a very influential early system used for artistic, literary, and gaming purposes. My list is no doubt very incomplete right now – I was not an early Mac user and don’t have first-hand experience of HyperCard work from back in the day. But I do have more than 50 works listed, so this may be the beginning of a useful resource.

I plan to continue to working on the list and hope that others with more HyperCard experience and knowledge can help out. I’m now dedicating this bibliography to the public domain and inviting others to contribute to it by leaving comments here on Grand Text Auto. A wiki might be more appropriate for such a bibliographic barn-raising, but I have a blog set up and don’t have a wiki that I can use for something like this, so I’m putting the list up on the blog…

Format

Lastname, Firstname [and Firstname Lastname]. [Day Month] Year. Title. [Other relevant information.] [Place of Publication, Publisher.]

Use quotation marks for titles of works that were not published individually. * indicates that the credited author was not (or probably was not) involved in the creation of the HyperCard stack.


Public Domain Dedication
This bibliography on this page is dedicated to the Public Domain:


HyperCard Bibliography
Nick Montfort

This is version 0.1.01 edited May 2, 2005.

  1. Adams, Douglas. 11 October 1991. “Megapode Stack.”
  2. Adams, Douglas.* October 1991. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Voyager Expanded Books.
  3. Branwyn, Gareth and Peter Sugarman, eds. 1992. Beyond Cyberpunk! The Computer Lab.
  4. Burnett, Christopher. Agents of Time. 1994.
  5. Carrol, Lewis.* October 1991. Alice in Wonderland. Annotated by Martin Gardner. Voyager Expanded Books.
  6. Cayley, John. 1989-90. Wine Flying. Wellsweep.
  7. Cayley, John. 1991-93. Indra’s Net. Wellsweep.
  8. Cayley, John. 1993. Collocations. (Indra’s Net II.) Wellsweep.
  9. Cayley, John. 1993-94. Moods & Conjunctions. (Indra’s Net III.) Wellsweep.
  10. Cayley, John. November 1994. An Essay on The Golden Lion. (Indra’s Net IV.) Wellsweep.
  11. Cayley, John. February 1995. Leaving the City. (Indra’s Net V.) Wellsweep.
  12. Cayley, John. May 1995. Book Unbound. (Indra’s Net VI.) Wellsweep & Engaged.
  13. Cayley, John. 1995. The Speaking Clock. (Indra’s Net VII.) Wellsweep.
  14. Cayley, John. 1995. Pressing the Reveal Code Key. (Indra’s Net VIII.) Wellsweep.
  15. Cayley, John. 1996. Oisleánd. (Indra’s Net IX.) Wellsweep.
  16. Caylet, John. 1999. noth’rs.
  17. Cayley, John. 1999. Windsound.
  18. Cayley, John. 2000. riverIsland.
  19. Crane, Greg. 1997. Perseus Project.
  20. Crichton, Michael.* October 1991. Jurassic Park. Voyager Expanded Books.
  21. Dickey, William. Hyperpoems. (14 poems.) Unpublished collection edited by Deena Larsen for Eastgate.
  22. Dickey, William. 1988-1990. “Fours,” “Heresy,” “Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra,” and “Accomplished Night.” Edited by Deena Larsen. Included on the CD part of The New Media Reader, eds. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort, MIT Press, 2003.
  23. Goodenough, Amanda. 1987. “Inigo Gets Out.”
  24. Goodenough, Amanda. 1991. Amanda Stories. (“Inigo Gets Out,” “I Miss You, Inigo,” “Inigo Takes a Bath,” “Inigo’s Dream,” “Inigo’s Snack,” “Inigo At Home,” “Your Faithful Camel,” “Your Faithful Camel Goes to the North Pole,” “Your Faithful Camel Goes Underground,” “Your Faithful Camel Goes Home.”)
  25. Humphrey, Clark. 1990. The Perfect Couple. Later published by Eastgate.
  26. Kac, Eduardo. “Insect.Desperto.”
  27. Larsen, Deena and Kathryn Cramer. 1993. “A Story.”
  28. Larsen, Deena. 1993. Marble Springs. Watertown, Mass., Eastgate.
  29. Ludwig Van Beethoven Symphony No. 9. Voyager CD Companion, 1991.
  30. Malloy, Judy. Molasses. Berkeley, CA: Bad Information, 1988.
  31. McDaid, John. 1993. Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse. Watertown, Mass., Eastgate.
  32. Miller, Rand and Robin Miller. 1987 The Manhole.
  33. Miller, Rand and Robin Miller. 1987. The Fire Hydrant. One-floppy “teaser” for The Manhole.
  34. Miller, Rand and Robin Miller. 1990. Cosmic Osmo.
  35. Miller, Rand and Robin Miller. 1991. Spelunx.
  36. Miller, Rand and Robin Miller. 1994. Myst.
  37. Moran, Monica. 1993. Ambulance. Electric Hollywood.
  38. Mosher, Mike and Mike Larkin. 1990. Hucklefine.
  39. Moulthrop, Stuart. 1992. Dreamtime.
  40. Moulthrop, Stuart. 1989. Hyperbola. A companion to Gravity’s Rainbow.
  41. Murtaugh, Michael. “Hypercon Text.”
  42. Murtaugh, Michael. “Rose Garden.”
  43. nichol, bp.* 1993. First Screening. Later version of software written in the mid-1980s for the Apple II, created after nichol’s death by J. B. Hohm. Alberta, Canada: Red Deer College Press.
  44. Padawer, Randy. 1993. “The Insulter.”
  45. Rockeby, David. 1989. “liquid language.”
  46. Rosenberg, Jim. 1988, 1990-92. Intergrams.
  47. Schmeer, Matthew W. “R/BISS.”
  48. Schmeer, Matthew W. 1996. “MWS Selected Poems of 1996.”
  49. Schmeer, Matthew W. “ChaosPoetry Generator 1.2.”
  50. Schmeer, Matthew W. “HyperGlot Gobbledygook-HC.”
  51. Spong, Matthew. 1995. Down.
  52. Stiegler, Marc. 1989. David’s Sling.
  53. Swigart, Rob. 1988. Portal. Later version of software first published by Activision in 1984 for home computers.
  54. Tallmo, Karl-Erik. 1992. Iakttagarens förmåga att ingripa. (The Watcher’s Ability to Interfere.) In Swedish.
  55. Thomas, Brian and Philip A. Mohr, Jr. 1988. If Monks had Macs… Original black and white version.
  56. Thomas, Brian. Passing Notes.
  57. You Don’t Know Jack 1999. Prototype/Demo. Jellyvision.

Known Omissions

Names of individual poems by Dickey in Hyperpoems.
About 70 other Voyager Expanded Books.
Several Voyager CD-ROMs.

Selected Sources

“Smackerel: When Multimedia was Black and White.”
Stuart Moulthrop’s “A Subjective Chronology of Cybertext, Hypertext, and Electronic Writing”

About the Numbers and Contributing

I’ve numbered the entries so that commenters can refer to them by number as I (and whoever wants to join me) work on this bibliography. The numbering will change in the next draft, and I will replace this first draft with the next version of the bibliography, and continue updating the page in this way, so that people don’t start finding old, less correct versions of the bibliography once newer versions exist that have been corrected and augmented.

Of course, since I’ve offered this to the public domain, anyone is welcome to take this list and make use of it in any way. By posting comments here with bibliographic information, you agree to dedicate such texts to the public domain so that they can be edited and added to this public-domain HyperCard bibliography.

10 Responses to “HyperCard Bibliography 0.1”


  1. Darius Kazemi Says:
    April 24th, 2005 at 1:01 pm

    I miss Hypercard. It was part of the middle school curriculum where I grew up. While we were forced to make Hypercard stacks about how salt affects the conductivity of water, I, being a little computer whiz, would finish the assignment early and then make secret games. As I was 13 years old, these games would be gross-out vignettes. I remember one in particular where you would beat up a frog by clicking on him: I distinctly remember interpreting the “hand” mouse icon and thought it would be good for frog-poking.

  2. Jake Says:
    April 25th, 2005 at 1:09 am

    Apparently HyperCard abuse wasn’t solely confined to my Jr High :) I have many great memories tied to HyperCard, not surprisingly most of which involve hijacking existing stacks or creating games while in class. The only ones I solidly remember are my “Putt Putt goes to the chop shop” game, and, similar to your frog-poking one, a game by my friend in which you were supposed to try and unbutton a girls blouse, causing a large message to appear on the screen in hopes of getting the player in trouble.

  3. Adam Says:
    April 25th, 2005 at 4:10 pm

    I used HyperCard in middle school too! My fondest memory was creating a stack that I disguised as a folder called “Games” (by changing the icon.) When clicked, it would play a sound file of my voice (slowed down to disguise my identity) saying “Disk erased. Thank you for using Disk Bomb” and play an animation of a bomb exploding. I proceeded to put it on the desktop of a few computers in the middle school computer lab, and watched the fun from afar.

  4. ben vershbow Says:
    April 25th, 2005 at 4:44 pm

    Thanks for getting this started! FYI, the Institute for the Future of the Book currently exhibits selections from the Voyager Expanded Books and CD-ROM series. It’s a little rough right now, but we’ve made demos available for most of the featured titles.

  5. Stephen Ingram Says:
    April 26th, 2005 at 11:08 am

    This is a very good idea. Some of my first programming was done in Hypercard. I can vaguely remember typing commands like:

    go stack short name of me

    I loved it when people left their stack code exposed and you could hold down a key (option?) and click on buttons to edit/examine their work.

    If you could get access to the old AOL (it was originally just for Macs, remember?) Hypercard archive, this list would explode. I wonder if they saved all that stuff?

  6. Stephen Says:
    April 27th, 2005 at 11:46 pm

    I used hypercard to run a couple of Art Projects I did in Graduate School. My final exhibition was run on a Mac 660AV using HyperCard to randomly show a hundred images and words while a real time video image of a running clock was superimposed on top. The Stack also used a XCMD to create a multitrack audio loop that filled the exhibition hall with a collage of music and spoken words.

    I later used the same computer, this time on loan from Steve Wozniak to power 13 computer monitors that randomly showed words an phrases at a speed where things were just a blur of light. If you relaxed your eyes the words and phrases would appear.

    I really miss Hypercard. RIP Hypercard, RIP.

    Stephen

  7. diane greco Says:
    May 2nd, 2005 at 1:17 pm

    One that’s missing:

    Burnett, Christopher. _Agents of Time_. 1994.

    I don’t think it was ever published.

  8. nick Says:
    May 2nd, 2005 at 5:21 pm

    Thanks, Diane, I’ve added that one!

  9. Matthew Schmeer Says:
    May 3rd, 2005 at 2:42 pm

    Cool project! I was delighted to see my own works included, so I thought I’d give addittional infos on Nos. 47, 48, 49, & 50, which can still be downloaded here:

    http://staff.jccc.edu/schmeer/mws/

    No. 47’s date is 1998; modified and re-released in 1999. Technically, this isn’t a creative work as much as it is a bad practical joke.

    No. 48’s date should be 1997. Although authored in 1996, the stack was released the following year.

    No. 49′ s creation date is 1994; modified and re-released in 1997.

    No. 50’s creation date is 1994; modified and re-released in 1997.

    Publisher information for all four listing by Matthew Schmeer should be St. Louis, MO, Poetry Ink Productions.

    Also, you should be on the lookout for a series of stacks created by John Freemyer, who created some fantastic interactive stories and unfolding multimedia projects during the mid 1990s. I’ll search my archives and see if I can pass along the info to you.

  10. DaveH Says:
    May 19th, 2005 at 1:44 pm

    Adams, Douglas. 1991. The complete hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy. ISBN: 1559401834; Being the Voyager expanded book of the first four books of the trilogy. Santa Monica, CA : Voyager Co.

    Adams, Douglas. 1993. Mostly Harmless. ISBN: 1559403691; Being the Voyager expanded book of the fifth and last of the trilogy. Santa Monica, CA : Voyager Co.

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