A note on Dhalgren

For several years, dhalgren.com has been the alternate name for my website. This is why.

Dhalgren is, first of all, an 879-page science fiction novel by Samuel R. Delany, originally published in 1974. It's a sprawling and enigmatic look at a decidedly non-high-tech and non-glitzy future. Weird textuality, weird sexuality, and a powerful vision of urban life make Dhalgren a key postmodern text. You can read my own essay on Dhalgren here. You can also purchase a copy of the book from amazon.com.

In the second place, Dhalgren is the name of a MOO, a kind of online, text-based virtual world, which has been my home in cyberspace since 1994. For many years, Dhalgren ran on a machine in my office. The geography of Dhalgren is mostly inspired by Delany's novel. You can read my brief introduction to MUDs and MOOs. You can get further documentation on MOOs from The Lost Library of MOO. And for a full-length account of life on a MOO, you can read My Tiny Life, the new book by Julian Dibbell.

Or you can check it out for yourself, by paying a visit to Dhalgren, or to the first and largest MOO of all, LambdaMOO. The most comprehensive list of MOOs that I have found is Rachel's Super MOO List. You can connect to a MOO via ordinary telnet, but it is better to use a dedicated MUD/MOO client program. The one I currently use is called TKMoo; it is available for Windows, MacOS, and Unix/Linux.


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