From the (e)Bookshelf: 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10

Although it may be a poor substitute for actually playing text adventure games, I do keep up with the "Planet IF" aggregator for weblogs about interactive fiction. A little while ago, I began noticing posts there about an upcoming book on a somewhat related theme, promising to begin with a "one-line program" for the Commodore 64 as given in the title and build from it to deeper meditations on a series of related subjects. While I did buy a somewhat similar sort of "platform studies" book prompted by other aggregated posts not that long ago, I suppose I was still mulling over whether to indulge myself again when I noticed a post that, in keeping with the book (collaboratively written by a full ten authors using a private "wiki") being published under a Creative Commons license, there was a free-to-download PDF file available. Whether this will make more people buy the book now than not may remain to be seen, but I accepted the offer.
( GOTO reactions and reflections )