Acknowledgments

I have the most profound gratitude for my dear friend and colleague Dene Grigar, has encouraged me and We Descend from our earliest acquaintance long ago — by involving me in the first Pathfinders Project with Stuart Moulthrop, in exhibits at the ELO, the MLA, and ACM Hypertext, and now in the NEXT Collection at Washington State University in Vancouver. Without Dene, the Complete Edition of We Descend (WDCE) simply wouldn't exist.

I am also grateful to her team in the E-Lit Lab: the virtuosic Holly Slocum, who designed this splendid re-imagining of a hyper-intricate work; the wise and ingenious Greg Philbrook, who provisioned all technical affordances with calm good humor; the formidable Richard Snyder, Associate Director of the ELL, who devised the mapping apparatus and was ever ready with the most interesting questions; and to Andrew Thompson and Ahria Nicholas, who helped Dene, Holly, Greg, and Richard in every imaginable way. I also want the lionhearted John Barber to know how much I appreciate his friendship and counsel.

Over nearly four decades of work on We Descend, many colleagues have shared their insights, their work, and their philosophy of this multifarious kind of writing — among them Michael Joyce, Stuart Moulthrop, Robert Kendall, Stephanie Strickland, Margery Luesebrink (M.D. Coverley), Gavin Inglis, Diane Greco Josefowicz, Nathan Matias, Sarah Smith, Elli Mylonas, Jules Chatelaine, Judy Malloy, Nick Montfort, and Stacy Mason.

I owe deepest thanks in this regard to Mark Bernstein, John McDaid, Mary Milton, Rob Swigart, Richard Holeton, and — in a class by herself in this as in everything else — Deena Larsen, my original hypertext buddy, a prodigious practitioner of e-lit and muse of encouragement to all. I must also thank my good friend Brian Neil Davis, whose Ph.D dissertation, Books as Archives, sparked many stimulating and superproductive discussions and debates.

Other compeers in writing have advised and inspired me: John Watkins, Kay Baumgartner, Polly Horn, Wendy Keilin, Jane Wholey, and Jed Horne.

Few authors can accomplish much without the support of family and dear ones. After my beloved wife Deborah, to whom this work is dedicated, I bless my family: Nelly Bly and Mike Arougheti, their sons Eli and Noah, my sister Lynn Bly and husband Douglas Repp, my daughter Kathryn Kane Givens and husband Scot Givens, my cousin Ann Rex Jourdan and partner Tom Zankel — and son Billy Bly IV, my spiritual advisor.

Friends and musical co-conspirators Liz Emmert, Bill Neely, and the late Thom Weaver, continue to manifest to me what it is to be an artist.

In 2016, at the invitation of my oldest friend Bill Kammann, I moved to Mexico in order to devote my attention full-time to finishing We Descend. The amistad I have found in my adoptive land has been crucial to this work: mil gracias to Lon Milam, Carolyn Erickson, Mike and Kathy Mawer, Andrew Carhartt and Ken ___, Jerry Engelbach and Ann Decker, Laura Sheppard, Ofelia García, Don Memo, Héctor Bustamante, and most especially Alejandra Hernández.

And finally, in everything, thanks to and for Jude Polsky.