# Eastgate Systems

Eastgate Systems is a hypertext publisher and software company headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts.
Eastgate is a pioneer in hypertext publishing and electronic literature and one of the best known publishers of hypertext fiction. It publishes fiction, non-fiction, and poetry hypertexts by established authors with careers in print, as well as new authors. Its software tools include Storyspace, a hypertext system created by Jay David Bolter, Michael Joyce and John B. Smith, in which much early hypertext fiction was written.
Eastgate's chief scientist, Mark Bernstein, is a hypertext researcher, and has improved and extended Storyspace. He also developed new hypertext software, Tinderbox, a tool for managing notes and information. Storyspace was used in a project in Michigan to put judicial "bench books" into electronic form.

## History

Eastgate Systems was founded by Mark Bernstein in 1982 and developed hypertext tools. Joyce and Bolter launched Storyspace in 1987, at the first annual Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) conference on Hypertext. Joyce presented afternoon, a story as a case-study for the tool; the work is widely considered the first work of hypertext fiction and was published by Eastgate in 1990. In 1995, Eastgate published Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl. These legacy works can be found in academic libraries though not all institutions maintain the now obsolete hardware required to interact with these titles. However, a number of specialized media labs, such as The NEXT Museum, Library, and Preservation Space, do maintain both the software and the hardware to read these works.
Eastgate has published series of works as hypertext journals, including the Eastgate Quarterly.
Robert Coover highlighted Eastgate as "the primary source for serious hypertext" in The New York Times Book Review in 1993, a quote which still features prominently in Eastgate's tagline. Between 1993-6, Eastgate published eight issues of The Eastgate Quarterly Review of Hypertext.

## Products

* Tinderbox, a content assistant for managing, analyzing and mapping notes in a hypertextual environment.
* Storyspace, a hypertext writing environment. Storyspace writing environment consists of boxes (nodes) and arrows (named links) that show connections between nodes.

### Fiction

* Michael Joyce: afternoon, a story (1987, 1990), Twilight, a Symphony (1996) (StorySpace)
* Sarah Smith: The King of Space (1991) (Hypergate)
* Judy Malloy and Cathy Marshall; Forward Anywhere
* Judy Malloy: its name was Penelope (1993) (Eastgate published the StorySpace version)
* Carolyn Guyer: Quibbling (1992)
* Stuart Moulthrop: Victory Garden (1992) (StorySpace, redone in The NEXT Museum, Library, and Preservation Space)
* Deena Larsen Marble Springs (1993), Century Cross (1994), Samplers—Nine vicious little hypertexts (1997)
* John McDaid: Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse (HyperCard)
* Kathryn Cramer: In Small & Large Pieces (1994) (StorySpace)
* Shelley Jackson: Patchwork Girl (1995) (StorySpace)
* Bill Bly: We Descend, Volume One (1997) (StorySpace, Tinderbox)
* Richard Holeton: Figurski at Findhorn on Acid (2001)
* J. Yellowlees Douglas: I have said nothing
* Kathleen McConnell under Kathy Mac: Unnatural Habitats
* Kathryn Cramer: In Small & Large Pieces
* Mary Kim Arnold: Lust
* Mark Bernstein: Those Trojan Girls (2016)
* Megan Heyward: Of Day, Of Night (2004)
* Wes Chapman: Turning In
* Edward Falco: A Dream with Demons
* Rob Swigart: Down Time
* Tim McLaughlin: Notes Toward Absolute Zero
* Judith Kerman: Mothering (StorySpace)
* Richard Smyth:Genetis
* Clark Humphrey The Perfect Couple

### Poetry

* Robert Kendall and Richard Smyth: A Life Set for Two (Visual Basic)
* Stephanie Strickland, True North (StorySpace)
* Jim Rosenberg, Integrams (Hypercard)

### Non-fiction

* Roderick Coover:Cultures in Webs
* David Kolb: Socrates in the Labyrinth
* Diane Greco: Cyborg, engineering the body electric
* Eric Steinhart: Fragments of the Dionysian Body
* George Landow: Writing at the Edge; The Dickens Web;
* George Landow and Jon Lanestedt:The In Memoriam Web
* Guiliano Franco: Quam Artem Exerceas