NP Help with missing article?

[Paul Mackin]

I don't know any recent article Kathleen might have in mind but the title
of the computer-generated story "A Tale of Betrayal" reminds me of an
early example of this sort of thing--a program called TALE-SPIN which a
gentleman by the name of James Meehan introduced in 1976 and which 
was expanded upon in Charniak, Riesbeck, and McDermott in _Artificial
Intelligence Programming_ (1980) a copy of which just happened to be
sitting not five feet away from my computer. The book contains the
rudiments of a LISP implimentation of the program. Not to put too fine 
a point on it the trick in AI reaseach in general and story
generation in particular is always to limit the "domain" as much as
possible so that the intra- and interpersonal behavior of the
characters won't be too complex to handle. The domain of TALE-SPINE
was "Bear World," an Aesop-fable-like world in which the animals have
simple needs that can be met by requesting aid from other animal 
characters in the story. Who is to say "Thesis-Defense World" might
not have worked quite nicely.

			P.