Online Press Kit

Dans le domaine strictement numérique, l'un des exemples les plus aboutis est Millenium or the unknown. La page d'accueil de ce site anglophone, fascinante, propose un dialogue dans lequel les personnages commentent leur projet d'écriture hypertextuelle par un procédé de mise en abyme et notent qu'il ne devrait pas y avoir, en théorie, de début, puisque tous les éléments sont reliés. C'est la fin de l'incipit traditionnel: l'enjeu n'est plus de susciter la poursuite linéaire de la lecture, mais d'aiguiser le désir d'une exploration dont l'inconnue est bien sûr le comportement de l'internaute.

--Hugues Marchal, Magazine Littéraire

For reasons of historical reference, URLs where articles were located are listed. Many of the source files have disappeared from the ephemeral Web, but the Unknown are keeping tabs on their own media history.

Unknown Declared CoWinner:
1st Trace/Alt-X International Hypertext Novel Contest
http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk/hypertext/

The London Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/net/990405ne/web.html
April 5, 1999

The Brown Daily Herald
http://www.theherald.org/herald/issues/040999/tech.f.html
April 4, 1999

New York Times article on TP21CL Conference
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/04/circuits/articles/15writ.html
April 15, 1999

Michael Miller's PC Magazine Review of TP21CL
http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/stories/opinions/0,7802,406498,00.html

WriteSites: Starlets and hypertext dropouts: Real Time Australia
http://www.rtimearts.com/~opencity/rt31/writesit.html

"It was a dark and stormy night/day:"
Boulder Weekly's report on the 1999 CyberMountain conference
http://www.boulderweekly.com/article.cfm?aid=1358

Citizen Online/University of Cincinnati Currents Article
http://www.citizenonline.com/papers/1999/june2/u-genre.html
June 2, 1999

"Has The Internet Killed the Novel ?" At Random
http://www.randomhouse.com/atrandom/sitepage/forums.cgi?page=1&messages_per_page=20

"Hypertext: Reading Between The Links"
By Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune
Sunday, August 15, 1999
(See the inventive print layout)

Coe College: Bad Journalism of the Unknown
And again at 300 DPI
17 September 1999

"Hypertext Novel Offers Easily Accessible Exits"
By Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune
October 4, 1999

Unknown on Unknown
http://www.altx.com/hyperx/unknown/altxinterview.html
October 1999 self-interview conducted on WEFT 90.1 FM, transcribed, and published on the Alt-X publishing network.

"On the Golden and Silver Ages of Hypertext"
http://www.pifmagazine.com/vol32/c_ley.shtml
By Jennifer Ley, Pif Magazine, January 1999

"That's Entertainment: A Trio of Authors' Adventures in Hypertext"
http://www.citybeat.com/archives/2000/issue614/literaryarticle1.html
By Brad Quinn, Cincinnati Citybeat, February 2000

25 University of Cincinnati E-briefing
http://www.uc.edu/info-services/ebriefs/click.htm
February 2000

"Link to Nowhere"
Encylopedia Brittanica PANS the Unknown
By Neal Pollack, April 2000

The Unknown Respond
to Pollack in the Electronic Book Review
http://www.electronicbookreview.com/riposte/rip2/rip2ret.htm

Technology Review: the Unknown
By Nick Montfort, May/June 2000

University High School Alumni Magazine
http://www.uni.uiuc.edu/Alumni/html/1980/1987/1987_william_gillespie.htm

University of Cincinnati News and Events
http://ucaswww.mcm.uc.edu/news-info/univ_currents/hyprfict.html
By Marianne Kunnen-Jones

"Thinking Outside the Book"
http://articles.latimes.com/2000/jul/24/news/cl-58001
Kim Murphy, L.A. Times
July 24, 2000

William and Dirk, along with other noted hypertext luminaries, get interviewed, translated into Italian, and published by Kung, an Italian E-Zine
http://westwood.fortunecity.com/susileib/148/kung/07int.htm
October 2000

"Le texte au risque du virtuel: e-littˇrature et ˇcrits dÕˇcran"
Magazine Littéraire, November 2000, by Hugues Marchal
http://www.magazine-litteraire.com/liens/dossier-e-litterature.htm
We think this article in French mentions the Unknown

Mark Amerika mentioned us in American Book Review
http://www.litline.org/abr/abrND00.html
November-December 2000

We got included in Jumpin' at the Diner at Riding the Meridian, a sort of second-class canon for men. Jay Bolter, as usual, studiously ignores us.
http://califia.hispeed.com/Jumpin/jukeframe2.htm
December 2000

E-Literature
http://www.wbez.org/audio_library/od_radec00.asp
December 14, 2000
Scott, Rob Wittig and John Unsworth discuss electronic literature with Gretchen Helfrich on WBEZ Chicago's Odyssey (RealAudio)

Unknown representative indicates intention to tour Australia: Adrian Miles interviews Scott Rettberg for RealTime, Australia's leading arts periodical.
http://www.rtimearts.com/~opencity/rt40/miles.html
December 2000/January 2001

I doubt we'll ever get mentioned in Poets and Writers.
http://www.pw.org/bn/wittig.htm
January 2001

"E-voking Muses" by Julia Keller in the Chicago Tribune
May 18, 2001

"Whither E-Literature? Automatic Writing" by Keith Gessen in the New Republic
http://www.tnr.com/cyberspace/gessen052201.html
May 22, 2001

"Go!Wednesday" by Christopher Muther in the Boston Globe
April 25, 2001

"Whatever Happened to the Editors Anyhow?" by Michael Shumate in Hyperizons
http://www.duke.edu/~mshumate/hyperizons/original/winners2.html
Summer 2001

"E-Publishing Topics Run the Gamut"
The Dallas Morning News
Book Review by Joseph Milazzo
http://www.dallasnews.com/lifestyles/books/435980_bkcol_ebooks_0.html
August 5, 2001

"Text Wars"
by Dan Kelly
New City Chicago
http://www.newcitychicago.com/chicago/words-2001-08-30-1370.html
August 30, 2001

"Amazing Stories: Authors explore the labyrinthine options of the Internet"
"Plugged In" column by Rob Brickman by Rob Brookman
http://www.bookmagazine.com/issue19/pluggedin.shtml
November, 2001
Book Magazine links to the Unknown, and John Barth says hypertext is a jim-dandy metaphor.

Unknown Scholarship

M.A. in English, Monmouth University, 2009. MA Thesis: “A Threat To The Known: The Unknown Descendants Of The Bounded Text.” (Advisor: Dr. David Tietge).

Reading Network Fiction by David Ciccoricco. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 2007. Chapter 5—“Fluid or Overflowing: The Unknown and *water always writes in *plural,” 124-159.

Hayles, N. Katherine. 2007. Electronic Literature: What is it? The Electronic Literature Organization.

Gillespie, William. “Drugs, Machines, and Friendships: Hypertext, Collaboration, and the Beatles.” Cybertext Yearbook (2002-2003): 186-200.

Destination Unknown: Experiments in the Network Novel
Ph.D. Dissertation by Scott Rettberg
http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/view.cgi?ucin1044275671
The dissertation contains two components: a critical component that examines recent experiments in writing literature specifically for the electronic media, and a creative component that includes selections from The Unknown, the hypertext novel I coauthored with William Gillespie and Dirk Stratton.

"Een zwervende draad"
M.A. Thesis by Carolien van den Bos
Perhaps the most rigorous Unknown Scholarship produced thus far, working from a massively rich knowledge base, van den Bos deconstructs some of the techniques and structural principles of the Unknown, delivers her arguments within a hypertextual structure and places the Unknown in the context of literary postmodernism. (in Dutch)

(hyper)Textuality.org
"The entire work swirls around so well that eventually it doesn't matter that the supposed subject never appeared; the real subject is the journey, the self-examination or lack thereof, and the ... aw-hell fun of it. Along the way they discuss hypertext, writing, spoof the publishing industry, parody themselves and what they're doing. It's House of Leaves, but funny instead of frightening."

"Connotative: An Anatomy of Anchors" by Deena Larsen

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (61:2) Spring 2003
The Unknown is mentioned in "Toying with the Parser: Aeshetic Materiality in Electronic Writing" by Daniel Punday.

"Reading,Writing, and Teaching Creative Hypertext: A Genre-based Pedagogy."
84K .pdf download
Kevin Brooks
North Dakota State University (Fargo), Dept. of English
He had his students write a take-off on our parody, but he doesn't think that their mimicry of our satire is, in the end, great literature.

Unspun: Key Concepts for Understanding the World Wide Web
NYU Press, 2001. Thomas Swiss, ed.
Joe Tabbi throws us a mention in Chapter 11, "Narrative."

"False Pretenses, Parasites, and Monsters: Some Recent American Fictions", a paper presented by novelist Tom LeClair at Illinois State University, May 2000.

Read essays about The Unknown by three students at the National University of Singapore: Kevin Oh, Mike, Li-Lin, and Mei.

Audrey really likes bunnies, but she tried to read the Unknown.

The Proceedings of the Cybermountain Colloquium