What's New in the Zone

Here to keep you up-to-date with what's going on inside the zone.

Enterzone Searchable

Now you can search the entirety of Enterzone for whatever you're looking for! Please try out our new Search Engine and let us know what you think.

New Yorker Espied

We are pleased that traditional magazines like the New Yorker, which previously had ignored (at best) or denigrated (at worst) writing on the internet, are now taking a more serious look. A review of Enterzone appeared in New Yorker's June 24/July 1 issue; we believe this is only the second Web site the New Yorker has ever reviewed, though we hope the column, Only Connect, will continue.

Enterzone was compared to 1930s pirate broadcasts (we like that), and the multimedia piece Chicken Wire Mother (Enterzone episode 5) by Levi Asher and Mark Napier was singled out as harrowing, moving, and evocative. Even the review's criticisms (naturally minor) didn't bother us too much -- if we sometimes have a college feel, we like to think it is because we are seeking the new, the young, the can't-quite-place-it-in-a-genre type of work. We're looking forward to when Enterzone "discoveries" such as David Alexander or hargitai grace New Yorker pages -- we'll happily share our wealth of good writing.

Enterzone was also favorably mentioned in the Wall Street Journal on March 28th in an article about hyperfiction. The author described Martha Conway's piece Girl Birth Water Death (Enterzone episode 2) as "Web-based fiction at just about its best" and quoted extensively from Enterzone's mission statement for reasons to publish on the internet.

Bucket of Rain

Enterzone Publisher Christian Crumlish and Contributing Writer Levi Asher have collected and edited examples of the best writing published on the internet; the result is the book Bucket of Rain, to be published by Prentice-Hall (Spring, 1997). Many of the pieces were first published in Enterzone, and include such stalwart authors as Freeman Ng, Briggs Nisbet, Tabitha Rasa, and Richard Frankel. Bucket of Rain includes poetry, fiction, journalism, and humor, and is arguably the first collection of writing on the internet -- or at least the best -- by dyed-in-the-wool netheads.

eScene

eScene's annual "Best of the Net" awards are out and author Frederick Barthelme snagged one for his story Spots, published in Enterzone episode 4. Although we suspected that name recognition played a part (though of course the story is wonderful), eScene editor Jeff Carlson reports that all submissions are read blind. This year's eScene is a slick cafe grande affair, with graphics to die for (or die waiting for), which is why the publication date, first slated for March, was postponed until May, then June, then July. It finally did come out, just about the time

John Henry Conway Frankel

was born to Enterzoners Martha Conway and Richard Frankel (August 4, 1996). John Henry has quickly made a place for himself in the lap of whoever gets on the computer first, and though his hand is only the size of a RETURN key, we know he will quickly get down to doing all of Enterzone's HTML work (couldn't happen too soon).

Still at AALN

We are still being hosted on the mammoth server of the American Arts and Letters Network, which means you won't be seeing any ads on these pages. Ever.

Because we ported Enterzone from a Macintosh at Berkeley to a Unix box at Vassar (where AALN's network physically exists), we've been experiencing all kinds of technical difficulties lately, for which we apologize. Many of the problems are no more profound that differences in case-sensitivity between the two platforms. In plain English, this means that a link to "very.jpg" when the file is named very.JPG will no longer work for us, and we've fixed many such inconsistencies over the last few months.

And Remember our New Address: ezone.org/ez

Administrivia: Deadline Changes

For people considering submitting to Enterzone, we would like to warn you of upcoming changed in our deadline schedule.

Episode 9 will be released on December 1, 1996. The deadline for that episode will be October 1, 1996 (not November 1, per our earlier schedule).

Episode 10 will be released on March 1, 1997. The deadline for that episode will be December 1, 1996.

What Was New in episode 7

Path of Least Resistance
Enterzone