SEMIO-SURF

Leni Zumas

Adapted by George P. Landow
from the original Storyspace version


As Shelley Jackson, the author of Patchwork Girl, explains: "Semio-Surf quotes Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveller in form and content, but recasts Calvino's meditation on the play of branching texts into the sphere of video and television. The TV Guide functions as a table of contents: each option (Jeopardy, MTV, Murder, She Filmed, and so on) tells a part of the story of the same two male and female characters and movie-lovers, via the particular format and style of the show. Links propel the reader through linear stories or between channels; they can be disorienting, though seeing the same characters turn up provides a sense of order, and after channel-surfing long enough, a narrative begins to cohere out of the fragments."



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