Short story with references to Zork
Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2003 9:25 pm
In the latest issue (May) of Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine, there is a short story by Kit Reed called 'Incursions'. There story has several references to Zork throughout.
Here is an excerpt from the text:
---------------
Strangely, even though he forgets who he is, Travers will remember Zork, the text-based computer game he played obsessively the when he was twelve.
ZorkI: The Great Underground Empire
West of House
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a mailbox here.
You were standing in the field, but even there at the beginning with only three lines on the screen, you had options; you could open the mailbox and hope there was some usable scrap of information on the note inside (there wasn't) or you could go west toward the woods and mountains or you could go east and try to get into the house. Each time you made a choice you were presented with a new set of decisions, and it is this that Travers used to love - the sense of infinitely unfloding options and the knowledge that he could thwart the roving thief and bring back treasures if only he chose the right ones.
Everything rushes out at him in a sigh. He knows that so far, at least up to the moment when the train stopped, all his choices have been wrong. Why else would the details of his life slip away from him?...
---------
You Zork fans may want to check it out. Unfortunately, it is not available for free download. The F&SF website is here:
http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/current.htm
and you can download an ebook version to your PalmPilot here:
http://www.peanutpress.com/author.cgi/1368
or
http://www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/Spilo ... eBooks.htm
Sorry, it cost about 4 bucks to download the whole magazine, but there's lots of good stuff in it.
DrPaul
Here is an excerpt from the text:
---------------
Strangely, even though he forgets who he is, Travers will remember Zork, the text-based computer game he played obsessively the when he was twelve.
ZorkI: The Great Underground Empire
West of House
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a mailbox here.
You were standing in the field, but even there at the beginning with only three lines on the screen, you had options; you could open the mailbox and hope there was some usable scrap of information on the note inside (there wasn't) or you could go west toward the woods and mountains or you could go east and try to get into the house. Each time you made a choice you were presented with a new set of decisions, and it is this that Travers used to love - the sense of infinitely unfloding options and the knowledge that he could thwart the roving thief and bring back treasures if only he chose the right ones.
Everything rushes out at him in a sigh. He knows that so far, at least up to the moment when the train stopped, all his choices have been wrong. Why else would the details of his life slip away from him?...
---------
You Zork fans may want to check it out. Unfortunately, it is not available for free download. The F&SF website is here:
http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/current.htm
and you can download an ebook version to your PalmPilot here:
http://www.peanutpress.com/author.cgi/1368
or
http://www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/Spilo ... eBooks.htm
Sorry, it cost about 4 bucks to download the whole magazine, but there's lots of good stuff in it.
DrPaul