Moral Tales and Meditations

Technological Parables and Refractions

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by Michael Joyce,

Afterword by Helene Cixous and Helene Cixous

State University of New York Press

Due/Published September 2002, 149 pages, paper

ISBN 0791451569

New in paper (F02)

Novelist, cyber-theorist, and hypertext ficton writer Michael Joyce weaves a set of brief essays and short parable-like fictions into a collection of meditations on how technology and new media affect our culture and everyday lives. Taken together, these pieces present a writer's reflections on a life of sudden changes at the edge of an uncertain future. They continue Joyce's effort to construct what in previous collections he has called "theoretical narratives." Here, however, Joyce turns from reflections to what he terms "refractions," alluding to the turning or bending a wave undergoes when it passes from one medium into another of different density. Through these refractions, he formulates an understanding of the wave of change we face as human beings in a multimediated age.