fiction

In Pasts and Futures of Netprov, Rob Wittig articlates a theory for Networked Improv Narratives, or "Netprovs." Wittig, an innovator in this novel form, situates netprov at the interesection of literature, drama, mass media, games, and new media. Transcribed from a presentation given at the Electronic Literature Organization conference in Morgantown, WV, Wittig explores a number of antecedents to the form, documents current exemplars of this practice, and invites readers to create their own networked improvisations.

Lila Marz Harper shows the many dimensions of intertextuality between Edwin Abbott's Flatland and Steve Tomasula's VAS. From typography to narratology, Tomasula's "opera in flatland" follows Abbott, in a geometry of fiction that interrogates the biopolitics of today.

Diane Goodman on the anthology that helped put the term "postfeminism" into circulation.

Two innovative contemporary writers discuss the relationship between encyclopedic narrative and notions of gender and writing, the body as the physical embodiment of memory, and the unique syntax of Tillman's American Genius, A Comedy. The novel's prose depicts the way "thought, when you're not thinking, happens."

Salvatore Proietti straddles science and fiction to offer an interpretation of a McElroy Cyborg.

"The plot offers not so much progress as recurrence, duplication, and reiteration." Flore Chevaillier offers one way to fill in the gaps of Joseph McElroy "Canoe Repair."

Andrew Walser introduces a gathering of essays on and by the novelist Joseph McElroy.

Dave Ciccoricco returns to Stuart Moulthrop, considers Operation Enduring Freedom (2003) in light of Operation Desert Storm (1991), and consults the annals of World War II for a likely source of "Victory Garden," the title of Moulthrop's 1991 network fiction on the Gulf War.

This review of Ralph Berry's novel Frank and the subsequent exchange between the authors, appeared in the March/April 2006 and July/August 2006 issues of The American Book Review.