Hyperfiction beginners sub-group?

[Jorn Barger]

[i'm cc-ing this to the Pynchon mailing list, from rec.arts.int-fiction,
where we're starting to explore the compatibility of literature and
hypertext, and how non-programmers can get started writing hyperfiction.]

How hard is TADS?  Not very hard if you're doing basic stuff.  Is the manual
worth the registration fee?  YES.  It's a thing of beauty...

TADS itself, though, is pretty ugly to the eye-- it *looks* like the worst
sort of C code, and if you're sensitive to this, you'll have problems.

What I propose is that we start by writing textfiles that contain the
necessary branching info, like the top-of-my-head example below.  It's
based on Thomas Pynchon's "Crying of Lot 49", a great, short, fun, modern
conspiracy-n-drugs classic:

0. [startingpoint text] 
One summer afternoon Mrs Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party
whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find
that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix,
of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul
who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had
assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all
out more than honorary.

0a LOOK KIRSCH: There's no cherry brandy here.
0b LOOK EXECUTOR: Oedipa has not yet agreed to oversee the carrying-out of
Inverarity's will.
0b LOOK: goto 1

1.
Oedipa stood in the living room, stared at by the greenish dead eye of
the TV tube, spoke the name of God, tried to feel as drunk as
possible.  But this did not work.

>Do you want to know what she was thinking? (y/n)
n: Beg pardon? (y)
y: goto 2

2.
She thought of a hotel room in Mazatlan...

[etc]
The examples here are admittedly totally lame, but the idea is that they
illustrate a format that *could* be compiled into a state-of-the-art 
hypertext.

jorn