A Work of Interactive Fiction (IF) Translated from the Digital into a Handmade Book with the use of Paper Mechanics. Written by Liza Daly.
Based on the biography and writings of fin-de-siècle Spiritualist Sara Weiss (1834-1904), this limited edition, fine press book is a fictional reconstruction of the story behind Journeys to the Planet Mars (1903), a supposedly-truthful account of Weiss’s out-of-body visits to the third planet.
The real Sara Weiss overcame rural poverty and a coercive marriage to forge a second chance at love and a quiet middle-class home—until late in life, when she achieved an unexpected and quirky fame. Did Weiss, like many women of her generation, truly believe in spirits, mediumship, and life on Mars, or was her book an elaborate hoax?
In Daly’s re-imagining, the reader follows Sara Weiss—from the parlor seances of St. Louis, to the depths of a Nevada silver mine, to the clouds above the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition—in search of the author’s vision behind her strange and singular work.
Daly has written the manuscript for this limited-edition book as a work of Interactive Fiction (IF), a digital story with affordances to reveal the secrets beneath the text—secrets hidden even from Weiss herself. First Bite Press has collaborated with Daly to translate her work of IF into a hand-printed and bound book that uses paper engineering to evoke the mutability of digital text. The illustrations in the book are reproductions of Weiss’ own drawings of Martian plant life.
About the Author
Liza Daly is a creative coder and web-based storyteller. She founded the first real-time community for IF authors, served as vice-president of the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation, and has won numerous awards for hypertext fiction which she wrote or produced. Her major works include Harmonia (2017), Stone Harbor (2016), and a co-production of First Draft of the Revolution (2012) with story by Emily Short. Daly’s generative asemic writing piece Seraphs (2014) is featured in Output: An Anthology of Computer-Generated Text, 1953–2023, published by MIT Press.
This limited edition book will be printed on Somerset paper and include a variety of fine art papers in the construction of its paper mechanics. Edition of 25 deluxe and 75 limited.
A Work of Interactive Fiction (IF) Translated from the Digital into a Handmade Book with the use of Paper Mechanics. Written by Liza Daly.
Based on the biography and writings of fin-de-siècle Spiritualist Sara Weiss (1834-1904), this limited edition, fine press book is a fictional reconstruction of the story behind Journeys to the Planet Mars (1903), a supposedly-truthful account of Weiss’s out-of-body visits to the third planet.
The real Sara Weiss overcame rural poverty and a coercive marriage to forge a second chance at love and a quiet middle-class home—until late in life, when she achieved an unexpected and quirky fame. Did Weiss, like many women of her generation, truly believe in spirits, mediumship, and life on Mars, or was her book an elaborate hoax?
In Daly’s re-imagining, the reader follows Sara Weiss—from the parlor seances of St. Louis, to the depths of a Nevada silver mine, to the clouds above the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition—in search of the author’s vision behind her strange and singular work.
Daly has written the manuscript for this limited-edition book as a work of Interactive Fiction (IF), a digital story with affordances to reveal the secrets beneath the text—secrets hidden even from Weiss herself. First Bite Press has collaborated with Daly to translate her work of IF into a hand-printed and bound book that uses paper engineering to evoke the mutability of digital text. The illustrations in the book are reproductions of Weiss’ own drawings of Martian plant life.
About the Author
Liza Daly is a creative coder and web-based storyteller. She founded the first real-time community for IF authors, served as vice-president of the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation, and has won numerous awards for hypertext fiction which she wrote or produced. Her major works include Harmonia (2017), Stone Harbor (2016), and a co-production of First Draft of the Revolution (2012) with story by Emily Short. Daly’s generative asemic writing piece Seraphs (2014) is featured in Output: An Anthology of Computer-Generated Text, 1953–2023, published by MIT Press.
This limited edition book will be printed on Somerset paper and include a variety of fine art papers in the construction of its paper mechanics. Edition of 25 deluxe and 75 limited.
