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2017 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

Grimes’ Fairy Tales: A 1960s Story Generator

verfasst von : James Ryan

Erschienen in: Interactive Storytelling

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

We provide the first extensive account of an unknown story generator that was developed by linguist Joseph E. Grimes in the early 1960s. A pioneering system, it was the first to take a grammar-based approach and the first to operationalize Propp’s famous model. This is the opening paper in a series that will aim to reformulate the prevailing history of story generation in light of new findings we have made pertaining to several forgotten early projects. Our study here has been made possible by personal communication with the system’s creator, Grimes, and excavation of three obscure contemporaneous sources. While the accepted knowledge in our field is that the earliest story generator was Sheldon Klein’s automatic novel writer, first reported in 1971, we show that Grimes’s system and two others preceded it. In doing this, we reveal a new earliest known system. With this paper, and follow-ups to it that are in progress, we aim to provide a new account of the area of story generation that lends our community insight as to where it came from and where it should go next. We hope others will join us in this mission.

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Vorheriges Kapitel Level of Detail Event Generation

Nächstes Kapitel The Narrative Logic of Rube Goldberg Machines

This larger project is being conducted in collaboration with Michael Mateas and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, so I use plural pronouns in this paper.

Unless otherwise noted, information and quotes provided in this section originate from personal communications with Joe Grimes (email correspondences dated June 1, 2017; June 19, 2017; June 27, 2017; and August 19, 2017).

For almost thirty years, she was editor of Ethnologue, the preeminent catalogue of human languages.

Father Busa’s exhaustive indexing of all the words in the works of Thomas Aquinas [9], begun in 1949, is considered the birth of the digital humanities [25].

And George Lakoff’s influential 1964 reformulation using recent developments from Chomskyan linguistics [31].

A notable exception here is saga ii, a 1960 system that we discuss in Sect. 3.

There are also interesting connections to one of the all-time major story generators, mexica [39]: both were developed in Mexico City, and while Grimes’s system aided his field study of the Huichol people, mexica’s generated stories are about the Mexica people, who are also indigenous to modern-day Mexico.

Quotes here have been translated into English by Rogelio E. Cardona-Rivera.

And ordering constraints would further reduce the size of this space.

Unless otherwise noted, information and quotes about this project originate from personal communications with Bob Binnick (email correspondences dated June 23, 2017, and August 9, 2017).

Grimes’s own brief accounts in English and Spanish have never been cited.

Email correspondence dated July 13, 2017.

In our field, Lee’s 1994 master’s thesis is the earliest such work [33].

And indeed Binnick’s 1969 system does too.

The episode is available online at http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/10268-the-thinking-machine-1961---mit-centennial-film; the segment of interest begins around the 32-min mark.

Another consideration is how ‘story generation’ is defined, but we will leave that discussion for a different paper.

Story grammars did not go down without a fight [35], and their appeal in contemporary contexts is evidenced by Kate Compton’s Tracery [11].

To be clear, we are not calling for the abandonment of Proppian story generation. Rather, we mean to shed light on the origins of this approach, and in this light we find that the earliest attempts were curiously aborted. In any event, even successful entrants in this tradition should acknowledge their forebears: Grimes and Binnick.

Again, we note that Mark Sample rediscovered this system in 2013 [44].

Exploring the fascinating world of language. Bus. Mach. XLVI(3), 10–11 (1963). Courtesy IBM Corporate Archives

Language to be discussed. Kansas State Collegian 72(60), 6, 14 December 1965

Linguist demonstrates shortcut to translating. Kansas State Collegian 72(60), 1, 14 December 1965

Linguist to explain methods. Kansas State Collegian 72(53), 4, 7 December 1965

Linguistics expert to give demonstration of methods. Kansas State Collegian 72(59), 1, 13 December 1965

Linguists demonstration Monday at Kansas State. The Manhattan (Kansas) Mercury, 1, 7 December 1965

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Titel: Grimes’ Fairy Tales: A 1960s Story Generator
verfasst von: James Ryan
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Buch: Interactive Storytelling
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-71026-6

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-71027-3

Copyright-Jahr: 2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71027-3_8

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