In 1962, MIT scientist Steve Russell presented one of the first videogames in history: Spacewar! in which two starships maneuvered around a star and tried to destroy each other. A year earlier, Raymond Queneau had published Cent mille milliards de poèmes, a potential literature book consisting of ten sonnets printed onto cards, with each line written on a separate strip, offering readers 100 trillions of possible combinations.
At first glance, the connection between these two milestones from worlds as different as literature and computer science would seem to be remote, but they are actually the start of a convergence of experiences and interests that have radically changed the way we read and write stories.
The sixties marked the start of a series of experiments in both literature and computing that mutally influenced each other and challenged the narrative, physical and conceptual boundaries of literature. This text looks at some of these connections.
(Source: Author's Introduction)