|| -------- -- -----  A E R I E   O B L I V I A N A . singular book of text wandertainment by Frank Edward Nora ------------------- ----------- ARTICLE 1--INTRODUCTION TO AERIE OBLIVIANA VERSION ONE (4/27/99) --------  ||  Aerie Obliviana Guide  ||  Articles  ||  -------> (Cup AGar001, Created v1 (4/27/99), Copyright 1999) = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Hey there, I'm Frank Edward Nora, Lord of Obliviana. Welcome to my book! It's called Aerie Obliviana, and it's kind of a new sort of thing. First off, Aerie Obliviana is published on the Internet in HTML, readable by any web browser. It is not available in print, and because of its size and hypertext nature, a print version of it would be very difficult to produce. Because it's digital, size is not an issue in Aerie Obliviana. This, along with the hypertext nature of HTML, is the main reason that I'm making Aerie Obliviana my sole book--it can be huge without being cumbersome. You can read the parts you want to read without having to deal with the rest of the stuff. And the computers of today can handle enormous amounts of text very easily. So, what is this book about? Well... let me tell ya... I've been working on this thing called Obliviana for about thirteen years now, and in that time, I have produced a wonderful, strange, confusing, brilliant, and somewhat amazing body of work which is difficult to summarize or categorize in a neat way. So let me give you a little history of Obliviana... Obliviana has its roots in my childhood, but it really got started in early September 1985, when I was 19 years old, and a freshman at Drew University, in Madison, New Jersey. It was the first day of school, and I met a fellow student, Bryan, who lived in the dorm next to mine, and by coincidence, we both had the same dorm number--209. This number has incredibly major significance in Obliviana, and I'll come back to it a little later. Let's skip ahead to February of 1986, when I did two things that were immensely important building blocks in the establishment of Obliviana--I created a comic strip character named "Zope", and I started a college radio show called "Anything But Monday" along with my friend Mike. In the months that followed before the Summer, a whole lot of wild stuff happened. The radio show, which featured crazy humor and skits, was thrown off the air. In response to this, Mike and I produced Anything But Monday as a very crude magazine, so as not to let ourselves be silenced by authority. Separate from the whole Anything But Monday thing, I got involved in a supernatural battle of some sort along with my friend Andrew. It was an intense and extremely confusing experience, and of course everyone thought it was just in my head. I still don't know exactly what the hell happened. Anyway, that Summer, inspired by Anything But Monday Magazine, I decided to start my own small press comics publishing "company", which I called "Halfevil Graphics", and I started publishing a comic a week on June 7, 1986. I did numerous Zope comics along with a bunch of other stuff. In the Fall of 1986, Mike and I got our radio show back, and we continued to publish our magazine. Issue 3 was had some racial humor in it that I innocently thought was no big deal, but we became the victims of political correctness before that term even existed. We were brought up on charges of "human rights violations"--a story that was covered in local newspapers, TV, and radio. After a tedious and crazy process ending with a college hearing, we got a written reprimand, which was essentially a slap on the wrist, and we continued with both the magazine and the radio show. Also in this time, we branched out into video, producing several epsiodes of a humorous work called "Weird University". It was during editing sessions of this video that I had my first kiss and first girlfriend. Right around the time of that kiss, my friend Bryan and I went on a shockingly weird journey, where we wound up. among other things, going to a haunted music store and then going to a graveyard with that store's emplyees. This was after a year of focusing on and playing around with the number 209. And, during all of this, I continued with my own Halfevil Graphics comics. In December, I published "Bible II: The Stuff I Forgot", a work of prose science fiction involving interdimensional travel that was the first step toward what would eventually become "Severe Repair", which I'll talk about a little later. In January of 1987, I recorded some interesting music as "Little Frankie Nora". Also in this month, I created a video with a bunch of local juvenile delinquents called "The Evil Farm". In the Winter semester at Drew, things slowed down a little. I temporarily stopped produced my comics, though I did continue with the radio show and magazine. Mike and I ran for President and Vice President of the school, and we came in second. My parents, who were paying my tuition in full, were not very pleased with stories of supernatural battles, magical numbers, magazine publishing controversies, and other bizarre activites, so they decided I should transfer to another school. I applied to NYU film school, got accepted, and started attending in the Fall of 1987. In October, I published the first issue of "NomadiNews". Nomadi was the name I had at that time for my "core endeavor" (as I would come to call it). I established seven separate "divisions" in Nomadi, with the acronym NACHUZM. "Nomadi Central" was at the center of things. "Anything But Monday Productions" dealt with the video aspect. "Cut'N'Shoot Records" was for audio. "Halfevil Graphics" remained the print division. "Unreal Systems" was for games. "Zone Supernature" was the division that dealt with 209 and Zoning (the system of using 209 to alter reality and go on stange journeys, which I had been developing all year). "Mysery Etcetera" was concerned with producing odd little products called "Super Objects". Later, I was to add another division, "Interweb",making the acronym NIACHUZM. Interweb was a creative network where people sent in single-page works which were then photocopied and mailed off to other people in the network. I named the endeavor "Interweb" before I ever heard of the Internet, and well before there was anything called the World Wide Web. Weird, huh? Now, during the Fall of 1987, I was living in Greenwich Village in New York City and going to NYU--but I went back to Drew via bus quite frequently to continue with Anything But Monday, the radio show and magazine. In 1988, Anything But Monday Magazine continued to get better and better. After Mike graduated, we decided to try and publish Anything But Monday for real. That Summer, we rented out an office and began work on the first issue of Anything But Monday Vol. 2, which would be distributed to comic book stores. In 1988 I also started an internship at MTV News which was a great experience, even though I almost got fired for lateness and perhaps a little flippancy. It was the best part of NYU film school, which was generally not a great experience. In the Fall of 1988, the magazine project was really getting off the ground. We managed to enlist the aid of over a dozen young artists, and we produced our first issue in December. We sold under 2000 copies--well below the number needed to break even. But we continued on, publishing two more issues in early 1989. I even finagled the folks at MTV News to do a story on the magazine. Strangely, the only response we got from the story was a bunch of prisoners! After the third issue, Anything But Monday was having serious problems. The second and third issues sold under 1500 copies each, which was not good. Mike worked several jobs to help finance everything, but we were just barely getting by. So, Mike and I hooked up with a photographer, Jim, whom we met when he took pictures of us for a story that ran in a local paper. He provided us photographic services, as well as his studio and a bunch of contacts, in exchange for becoming a partner. Tensions between Mike and myself increased during the summer. I was working on the magazine exclusively, while he was working at a real job. Jim and I conspired to take the magazine in a new direction--a "Laugh Magazine", which would cover humor in all aspects, including stand up comedy, comedy clubs, etc. In the end, it was a bad idea for a magazine that was already having major problems. By the Fall, I had a falling-out with Jim and Mike, and I borrowed money from my parents to get the final issue out, which sold a little over 1000 copies. Around October of 1989, Anything But Monday was finished. I owed a printer in North Dakota something like $800 (which I eventually paid off), the office was closed, I was unemployed, and everything was shot to hell. There were a couple of other interesting things in 1989. For one thing, I continued experimenting with the 209-based system of Zoning, and I had many awesomely weird journeys in New York City, further convincing me of the power of 209. Also in 1989, Mike and I did freelance writing for "MTV to Go", a short-lived record club catalog/magazine. MTV hated our work, even though the editors were behind us (for a little time, at least), and they changed our names for a few issues before dropping us. Another project we sort of got involved with was a cable TV show comedy show called "Total Chaos". After a while, Mike dropped out of the project, and after a little while longer, I dropped out as well. I don't think the show ever got off the ground. Okay. So at the dawn of 1990, I was pretty much devastated by the collapse of all the promising creative endeavors I had been involved in. I got a real job in the Winter of 1990, in digital prepress, and I set forth on a new mission--to make my "core endeavor" a reality. From 1990 to 1993, I produced a number of experimental publications, until finally in 1994 I started the weekly ezine OsoaWeek. In 1992, I came up with Obliviana as the new name for my endeavor, and after a few different variation over a few years, came up with the name "Obliviana Super Occult Amusement" as the name of my "company". OSOA, Obliviana Super Occult Amusement--OsoaWeek. The cornerstones of Obliviana were 209, Severe Repair, Zope, and Superior. Severe Repair is a sprawling work of science fiction that has its roots in the little "Bible II" story I published in 1987. Superior is a kind of poetry, but I'd rather not call it poetry. With the first issue of OsoaWeek on July 28, 1994, I added another major element to Obliviana--the idea of an online game, where people registered their online identity called a "Fonosta", and played games and did 209-type stuff in an imaginary world. Or something like that. The problem with this has always been that it's been maddeningly vague and bewildering--and even though I got a handful people into it, it hasn't really ever taken off. In July of 1995, I started the Obliviana website, and betwwe then and now, I have tried many different approaches trying to bring all my ideas together and manifest this idea of an overarching online game. About a month ago, I decided to shift gears and create a single, digital book that contains all of my works and ideas. Now, for the first time ever, I feel that I can somewhat grasp what I am doing. The focus of my work has shifted, so that instead of trying to create an incredibly complex unified game system, I am instead producing a book that has such a system as one of its subjects. As a book, I see Aerie Obliviana as being an entertaining work first, and all the other stuff second. So, what is Aerie Obliviana about? Now, with that long-winded history, I think I can convey this to you. In this first version of Aerie Obliviana, I have collected every single issue of OsoaWeek. All tolled, there are several thousand pages worth of material in OsoaWeek--and OsoaWeek is continuing as well. Also in this first version, I have a full archive of Superiors, as well as the start of the sequel to Superior, Parking. In addition, I have included "Abaxial Usufruct", my first attempt to create a work of poetry and other sorts of literature. One thing which may be a little confusing is that a lot of my written content first appeared in OsoaWeek, and then I went on to further develop it. So, all the Superiors appear in OsoaWeek throughout hundreds of issues, but are collected in the Superior section of Aerie Obliviana. The continuation of Superior, Parking, never appeared in OsoaWeek, and is being presented here, in Aerie Obliviana, for the first time. Severe Repair, my science-fiction work, was a major feature in OsoaWeek, but I have since developed it much further. So, while a lot or Severe Repair content was presented in OsoaWeek, it is now much refined and will be presented in version two of Aerie Obliviana, coming in June. It will be continued in an ongoing basis in further versions of Aerie Obliviana. And Zope, which started off as a comic strip, is now pretty much text-based, and the adventures of this cool and smashingly pugnacious character will also be presented in version two of Aerie Obliviana and continued in further versions. Wow. If you've read this far, I think you can see how tough it is for me to describe Obliviana. I know that in this day and age people expect works of entertainment to be able to be summed-up in a sentence or two, but hey man, Obliviana is something different, something that is very new, wild, and now! Yup. Well, I hope I've given you an impression of what you can find in Aerie Obliviana. And beyond everyhing I've described, there's a ton of other stuff, both in OsoaWeek and in what I'm planning for the future. Get into Obliviana, my friend! You'll be glad you did! It's one big, wonderful mess! Get movin'... GET ALL OBLIVIANA! -------> ------------------- ----------- -------- -- -----