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."
