Eastgate Systems is a publisher and software company headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts, which publishes hypertext.[1]
Eastgate is a pioneer in hypertext publishing and electronic literature[2][3][4][5] and one of the best known publishers of hypertext fiction.[6] 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[7] in which much early hypertext fiction was written,[8] Eastgate's chief scientist, Mark Bernstein, is a well-known figure in hypertext research,[9] and has improved and extended Storyspace as well as developing new hypertext software. Tinderbox,[10] a tool for managing notes and information. Storyspace was used in a project in Michigan to put judicial "bench books" into electronic form.[11]
Eastgate Systems was founded by Mark Bernstein in 1982 and developed hypertext tools.[12] Joyce and Bolter launched Storyspace in 1987, at the first annual Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) conference on Hypertext.[13] Joyce presented afternoon, a story as a case-study for the tool; the work is widely considered the first work of hypertext fiction[14] and was published by Eastgate in 1990.[15] In 1995, Eastgate published Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl.[16]
Robert Coover highlighted Eastgate as "the primary source for serious hypertext" in The New York Times Book Review in 1993,[17] a quote which still features prominently in Eastgate's tagline.[18] Between 1993-6, Eastgate published eight issues of The Eastgate Quarterly Review of Hypertext.[19]