[ecrea] "Small Screen Fictions" - special issue of Paradoxa

I'm delighted to announce the publication of our /Paradoxa /special 
issue, /*Small Screen Fictions*/, which features contributions from 
current and future leaders in digital narrative and e-literature 
scholarship: Stuart Moulthrop, Steve Tomasula, Dene Grigar, Mark Marino, 
James O'Sullivan, David Meurer, Sara Tanderup, Aline Frederico, Sarah 
Mygind, Ryan House, Joshua Hussey, Kristine Kelly, Meredith Dabek, and 
Caleb Milligan.

The collection is edited by Astrid Ensslin (University of Alberta, 
Canada), Lisa Swanstrom (University of Utah, U.S.A.), and Paweł Frelik 
(Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin, Poland).

The companion website <http://smallscreenfictions.net/> offers free 
access to the Introduction, supplementary online material for individual 
essays, and information about how to purchase a copy.

*Blurb:*

Today, with growing frequency, narratives are experienced on the smaller 
screens of laptops, tablets, and even mobile phones, which in turn 
become “all-purpose reading machines” (Tosca and Pedersen 358) that 
shape the ways in which our bodies and minds interact with narrative 
meanings. Narratives that we peruse via small screens typically involve 
direct reader/viewer/player interaction, enabling highly idiosyncratic, 
individualized and unique narrative experiences. Some of these fictions 
are merely digitized or wikified versions of texts previously available 
in the codex form; their digital conversion affects some of the ways in 
which readers engage with them, but the basic structures of these 
narratives remain unchanged. Some others, however, have been written and 
designed (these two concepts often blur) specifically for interactive 
small screens.

The functionalities and affordances of these digital-born fictions are 
not replicable in any other medial form; nor can they be made manifest 
in any printed form; nor do they demonstrate an allegiance to any single 
pre-existing art form. It is within the idiosyncratic nature of small 
screen fictions that they embrace the experimental affordances of the 
tools in and for which they are written, and that they give rise to ever 
new ways of gestural manipulations (Bouchardon). They allow us to 
explore new ways of using parts or functions of our bodies – be it our 
hands and fingers, voice, breath, or even brain waves and full-body 
motion – in combination with exploratory-noematic strategies of reading 
and play. By the same token, small screen fictions accentuate and 
foreground the playful nature of reading and situate it in contexts and 
settings conventionally reserved for immersive video gaming, for example.

The contributions to this special issue seek to capture and exemplify 
some of these trends. They range from in-depth analyses of individual 
texts to theoretical and philosophical discussions and empirical 
reader-response studies. They span a diversity of different platforms 
and genres, from narrative videogames and ludic, gamelike fictions using 
3D immersive environments, touchscreen technologies, or more traditional 
mouse-and-keyboard combinations; to participatory social media 
narratives; networked and locative narratives; interactive graphic 
novels; interactive hypermedia, as well as haptic and augmented reality 
fictions. Furthermore, the articles compiled in this collection show 
that small screen fictions appeal to a variety of target audiences, from 
indie gamers to bloggers, and from pre-school children with a propensity 
for canonical cartoon characters to mature adults with an interest in 
exploring the depths of human trauma through palimpsestically layered, 
symbolic landscapes.


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