In December of 1986, I was sitting at my computer typing out installments to Uncle Roger, an online "narrabase" or narrative database. Uncle Roger, a story about Silicon Valley was initially told in serial installments on Art Com Electronic Network on the WELL. Uncle Roger was written with filmic, computer screen sized units of narrative information. To tell Uncle Roger, I used The WELL's topic form as a stage - a central spot in the cyberplace. I was intrigued by the performance aspect of telling a story in the Homeric tradition in a modern electronic community of people with many and varied interests with the common denominator of online communication.

I set up a topic and posted an introduction which explained the concept at the beginning of the topic. In response no. 1 of the topic, I posted record no. 1 of the first file of Uncle Roger - the file called "A Party in Woodside". Everytime I logged on to the WELL, I uploaded one record of the story. Each record was posted with a keyfield where the keywords were listed so that readers could download the story if they choose and put it into any commercial database. Many people told me that picking up the new record had become part of their day, or, some said, their "bedtime story".