Chapter 1: Lord Burleigh's Kiss
Murray's subtitle is "The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace." The term "narrative" is generally used as a synonym for "story." For example, novels and epic poetry tell stories and are therefore narrative literature. These forms are distinct from other forms of literature (e.g. lyric poetry and essays) that do not include characters or plots, and that therefore do not tell stories.
On the bottom of page 17, Murray lists several important question raised by the development of realistic fantasy worlds. What's your opinion on each question? (How would you feel, for example, if you found out your partner was engaging in cybersex?)
Murray discusses the "widely read and influential dystopian tradition" at length in this chapter (18). What are the examples she gives of this tradition? Can you think of others? Is Star Trek dystopian?
Murray argues that the holodeck "provides a safe space in which to confront disturbing feelings we would otherwise suppress; it allows us to recognize our most threatening fantasies without becoming paralyzed by them" (25). Are there other "spaces" or things in our culture that allow people to do this? What does she mean by "threatening fantasies"?
A key idea, which explains why she felt the need to write a book on this subject: "[W]e rely of works of fiction, in any medium, to help us understand the world and what it means to be human" (26).
What does she mean by "transparent" (26)?
Star Trek Voyager: "Persistence of Vision"
Synopsis: "Upon entering Bothan space, the crew begins to see hallucinations. Janeway first believes that her holonovel has gone berserk, then encounters her lover Mark; Tuvok sees his wife, Harry his girlfriend, Paris his father; Torres thinks she's making love with Chakotay. Kes proves resistant to the alien and saves the ship."
Key Characters
 Capt. Janeway |
 Chakotay |
 Torres |
 Kes |
 Tuvok |
 Paris |
 The Doctor |
 Neelix |
What role do each of these characters play in the story? What specific longing or fear does the villian use against Janeway, Chakotay, Torres, Kes, Tuvok, and Paris?
The episode's conclusion, Murray argues, suggests an optimistic answer to the question of human control over powerfully seductive technologies like the holodeck. Do you agree?
Chapter 2: Harbingers of the Holodeck
What is a "harbinger"? What are "incunabula" (28)? What is Cervantes's Don Quixote, and how did Malory's Morte d'Arthur lead its development (28-29)?
Multiform story: "a written or dramatic narrative that presents a single situation or plotline in multiple variations, versions that would be mutually exclusive in our ordinary experience" (30). This is one of the book's central concepts.
Murray argues that multiform stories are represent more than just technical innovations: "[P]rint and motion picture stories are pushing past linear formats not out of mere playfulness but in an effort to give expression to the characteristically twentieth-century perception of life as composed of parallel possibilities" (37). In other words, we now need multiform stories to help us understand the rapid change and complexity that mark our real lives.
Note the subheads used to organize the rest of this chapter. (The first is on page 38, "The Active Audience.") You should be able to summarize the point of each subsection. You also should be able to recognize the major examples (the ones she spends half a page or more on) that she uses to illustrate each subsection.
For example, what is "fan culture" (40-41)? How is this an example of the "active audience"? [Take a look at Yahoo for more examples of fan fiction.]
Although Murray does not stress the point, "active audiences" also pose interesting legal problems. Fan fiction published through the Internet is technically copyright infringement, since the fans' stories using television characters trademarked by Fox, Warner Brothers, et. al. These corporate owners are caught in a dilemma, since allowing fan authors to take liberties with copyrighted characters erodes their rights, while cracking down risks alienating your most passionate audiences. George Lucas faced a similar problem when one fan re-edited Episode One: The Phantom Menace and began distributing his own version, called The Phantom Edit.
Another of the chapter's key "harbingers" is Floyd the robot, a character in an early computer game. Why does Murray think that Floyd the robot is so important (52-53)? Murray argues that Planetfall is more "dramatic" and "expressive" than later, more technically sophisticated games. What does the character of Floyd add to the game? In framing your answer, it is important to compare Floyd to the characters in other popular narrative media.
Characters in a novel, for example, are simply "word masses," and the characters in motion pictures are merely compilations of two-dimensional photographs taken of an actor pretending to be someone else. Yet these collections of words and pictures can seem incredibly lifelike when we are in the middle of a good story. It's quite common for readers and movie audiences to connect emotionally with these representations of real human beings--by despising, admiring, and even emulating them. To date, though, the "code masses" offered by digital storytelling are not as successful. Audiences care when Old Yeller, or Obi-wan Kenobi, or the Tom Hanks character in Saving Private Ryan dies; why don't we care as much when Super Mario dies? What does "transparency" as discussed by Murray (cf. 26) have to do with these kinds of emotional connections?
In the years since Murray published her book, computer gaming has developed into a major entertainment industry, and games themselves have made quantum leaps in their complexity and sophistication. But the example of Floyd the Robot already suggests that even the earliest and most primitive digital characters can connect with interactors in ways similar to the characters of more mature narrative genres.
Later in the book Murray argues that the key to realism is believable surprise: "The unexpected behavior of a fictional character must be surprising in the way that human beings are surprising; it must tell us something we recognize as being true to life" (243).
Murray spends little time in this chapter on fighting games, probably the single largest genre of current games. Some of these games, like America's Army, Special Force and Under Siege, are explicitly designed to affect their players' real-world attitudes and behaviors.