Abstract: 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. Uncle Roger, a "narrabase" or narrative database, was first told, beginning in 1986, as an online serial on Art Com Electronic Network (ACEN) and then was published as an interactive online database on ACEN. It was also available as computer software for both Apple II and IBM compatible computers.

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.

To read Uncle Roger, a narrabase or narrative database about the microelectronics industry in Silicon Valley, the reader searches for narrative information in three separate files which disclose the story. Each file is a pool of information into which the reader plunges repeatedly, emerging with a cumulative and individualized picture. Thus the narrabase form uses a computer database as a way to build up levels of meaning and to show many aspects of the story and characters, rather than as a means of providing alternative plot turns and endings.

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 about a woodpile, a man who slept on a mattress on a vacant lot behind my apartment, and a series of small fires. 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. For example Saturday [9] alternates photographs of my cat killing and eating a bird and of my son and his friend making and eating a cake from a cake mix. 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 black 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.

In 1969, Jo Sanford and I set up a computer database of engineering literature for Ball Brothers Research Corporation in Boulder, CO. This database (and many other scientific databases) was a citation databases composed of citations of relevant works. Databases that include the entire text of newspapers, encyclopedias, etc. are "full-text" databases.

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.

"Surely what fiction, at its best, can do is to arrange data, truths in their real relationship by a process of selection" [12] Dorothy Richardson wrote about Pilgrimage. Uncle Roger was a first plunge into an effective narrative use of the computer's remarkable ability to organize and retrieve information in ways more natural to human minds than the traditional book format.

1. Archibald C. Coolidge, Charles Dickens, A Serial Novelist (Ames, IA, Iowa State University Press, 1967) p. 23

2. Carl Loeffler, "The Art Com Electronic Network," Leonardo 21,No 3 320-321, 1998

3. Judy Malloy, Uncle Roger (Art Com Electronic Network on the WELL, 1986-1988) Partially funded by the California Arts Council and Art Matters. Datanet also included work by John Cage, Stephen Moore, Jim Rosenberg, and Anna Couey, among others.

4. Judy Malloy, Uncle Roger (Berkeley, CA: Bad Information, 1988) (Software, 3 disks, documentation: for Apple II computers with at least 64K of memory and upper and lower case display)

5. Judy Malloy, Uncle Roger (Berkeley, CA: Narrabase Pres, 1990) (Software for IBM compatible computers)

6. Judy Malloy, Molasses(Berkeley, CA: Bad Information, 1988) (for Macintosh Computers with at least 1 Megabyte of RAM and HyperCard)

7. Judy Malloy, its name was Penelope (Berkeley, CA: Narrabase Press, 1990) (Software for IBM compatible Computers)

8. Judy Malloy, The Woodpile, 1979.

9. Judy Malloy, Saturday, 1982

10. Judy Malloy, Wine, 1986.

11. Robert Humphrey, Stream of Consciouness in the Modern Novel (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1954) pp. 2-3

12. John Rosen, Dorothy Richardson (New York, Knopf, 1973) pp. 155-156.