User:Simon/Cybertext

bootleg book: Cybertext

Printed: 17.12.19
Dimensions: 131x216mm
Cover stock: Clairefontaine Trophee (white) 210gsm
Text stock: Laser 80gsm
Binding: Perfect bound, cold glue with book tape on spine
Pages: 214pp

Espen Aarseth's Cybertext is a book that found its way towards me through a couple of other sources - first of all Tancredi recommended I read it, then I came across it when reading Writing Machines by N. Katherine Hayles. Aarseth's PhD dissertation proposes the idea of "cybertexts", which are part of the genre of what he calls "ergodic literature". In a nutshell, these are texts which require "non-trivial effort" to read. These texts are in both printed form (e.g. Danielewski's House of Leaves) and also in digital form (the book contains a section on MUDs - Multi User Domains - which are large gaming environments in which texts (both in the sense of software, and also narratives) are assembled on the fly. I printed this from the PDF, retaining all the marks that had come from its scanning, then bound it with cold glue and a strip of book binding tape on the spine for extra strength.

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  Front cover

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  Spread, with annotations from the PDF

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  Spread, with dark marks around edges from the scan

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  Back cover