The narrabase form, which uses a computer database to build up levels of
meaning, evolved from the conjunction of my artists books and information
art. The development of Uncle Roger culminated in what is now called
hyperfiction but was arrived at by a process independent of the work of
Ted Nelson.(work which I was not familiar with at the time)
Basically, the keyworded database structure was similar to hypertextual linking,
although at that time, I did not think of it in that way.
Subsequent to my creation of Uncle Roger, the arrival of the
hyperfiction school of work (Michael Joyce, Martha Petry, Stuart
Moulthrop, Carolyn Guyer, published by Mark Bernstein at Eastgate, who
became my publisher beginning with the publication of the Eastgate
version of its name was Penelope) changed the terminology that I
used to describe my work. In the early 1990's, the arrival of the World Wide Web,
shaped by Tim Berners-Lee's hypertextual thinking, provided a platform into which I
began to build more recent works.

In the first two files, "A Party in Woodside" and "The Blue Notebook",
the reader chooses a path to follow through the story by selecting a
keyword or combination of keywords to search the story. The third file,
"Terminals", simulates the narrator's memory patterns. It is read by
asking the computer to display narrative information at random. In Uncle
Roger, not only the author but also the reader and the computer system
participate in the organization of the "vast masses of realistic detail
...peculiar to the novel." [1]

Uncle Roger was first told online in sequential, serial form on the Art
Com Electronic Network (ACEN) BBS. [2] It was published on the Datanet
section of ACEN [3] and as computer software for both Apple II and IBM-
compatible computers. [4,5]

Online Systems facilitate immediate publication, are compatible with any
computer with a modem, and integrate the artist with the audience. The
structure of Uncle Roger was partially shaped by the online topic
form as it exists on the WELL. The story content of Uncle Roger
was partially shaped by the diverse telecommunications community that
was the initial audience for this work.

Uncle Roger, my short narrabase Molasses [6] and my
narrabase Its name was Penelope [7] are examples of how the
computer (with its ability to store and retrieve information in ways that
mimic the human mind more closely than sequential book-based narratives)
can invigorate, expand, and enrich traditional narrative forms.

The narrabase form, which I developed and used for the first time in
Uncle Roger, synthesizes ideas, structures, and styles that
I had been working with in artists books for 15 years. These works
simulate our fragmented, random, repetitious non-sequential human memory
patterns. They include card catalogs, electro-mechanical books,
illuminated manuscripts, and descriptive databases.

My card catalogs (1976-1981) are collections of text and images on 3x5
cards. The cards are filed in metal trays -- each catalog a tray of
cards containing 50-200 cards structured in the tray by dividers
that key the cards using small pictures or word phrases. Although they
can be read sequentially, they were meant to be non-sequential works
that combine words and pictures so that neither are the words
descriptions of the pictures nor are the pictures illustrations of the
words. For example, the Woodpile [8] consists of 165 (3" x 5") units
of photos drawings or text, keyed by small photos and drawings and filed
in a metal tray. Each card stands by itself but also functions as a
molecular unit that, when combined with other cards, builds up
a story. As opposed to a linear book where the reader focuses on
the front cover and normally proceeds linearly from there, the reader
approaching a card catalog like The Woodpile sees the top of
the entire work and is encouraged to plunge in at any place.

The electromechanical books (begun in 1982) house narrative information
in battery-operated "address books." They are read by pushing buttons on
the front which causes a series of images and text mounted inside to
revolve and to be displayed on a small screen. The buttons can be pushed
either sequentially or at random.

The illuminated manuscripts use white lettering on dark backgrounds to
tell stories. They emphasize the visual quality of words in the same way
that the framed and glowing computer monitor does. For example. the
illuminated manuscript Wine [10] is a 4-6 ft canvas with a white
border and white text on a dark blue-green background. The text tells a
story about a woman in her sixties meeting a man over a glass of red wine
in an outdoor cafe on the Oakland waterfront. Wine was designed to
be shown outdoors in the dark, laid on the ground like a rug and lit by
small flashlights in cups placed at intervals on the white margins.

In 1985, I began using a personal computer to organize information
I was collecting about the computer industry. I used a keyed database
structure to make a series of computer databases called Bad
Information Bases In these works, (which continued an ongoing series
of information art that I was working on concurrently
with the artists books) organized information -- both fictional and
nonfictional -- was used as iconography.

As I worked on the Bad Information Bases, I realized that computer
databases could extend and fully realize the non-sequential narrative
forms I had begun in the card catalogs and electromechanical books.
In August 1986, I started writing the text and designing the structure
of "A Party in Woodside", File 1 of Uncle Roger. Carl Loeffler,
the director of Art Com, had involved me in the ACEN network, and the
secure publication opportunity offered by the visionary online artists
space helped make it possible for me to conceive and execute Uncle
Roger.

Uncle Roger is a full-text database. Each file of Uncle
Roger consists of 75 to 100 computer-screen sized units of narrative
information that at the time I called "records", using database
terminology. (The word now used in hyperfiction circles for
such screen sized units of text that are the building blocks of
hyperfiction is "lexia". In Forward Anywhere, Cathy Marshall and
I called the lexias screens".)

Unlike the paragraph in most novels, the record in Uncle Roger
is designed so that it can either stand by itself or be combined in
various ways with other records to build up levels of meaning. Within
each record of Uncle Roger, each record conforms to screen size
(1-18 lines in the systems I was using) and each line is no more than 50
characters long -- a requirement that was dictated by the line length
used at that time in the Datanet section of ACEN. Developed in an
environment of such requirements, my style gradually evolved into a form
in which poetic fragments, each redolent of a structure-informed sonnet,
were combined in multiple ways.

Uncle Roger is not a stream-of-consciousness work "concerned with
those levels that are more inchoate than rational verbalization" [11]
rather it is a filmic novel written by a visual artist, a collection of
memories that exist between the speech and the pre-speech level. In
Uncle Roger each record represents a complete, fully expressed and
often visual memory-picture, analogous to the individual cards in my
card catalogs or to scenes in a movie.

Since the records in Uncle Roger are meant to both stand by themselves
and be combined in different ways (depending on the choices of the
searcher) I found it necessary when writing the individual records to
keep in mind the many ways in which they might be combined. This was
somewhat like the process a composer goes through in composing four
different streams of music that will eventually be heard together by the
listener, but in each case each reader would combine them differently and
all possible combinations had to be anticipated. Because this would
have been extraordinarily difficult with a large, wandering scenario or a
series of settings, I narrowed my focus in the first file. With the
exception of the room in which the narrator is spending a restless night,
most of "A Party in Woodside" takes place at a party where, like a guest
at a real party, each individual reader experiences snatches of
conversation, guests, and incidents, and these unique impressions form a
coherent picture.