ABSTRACT

From prime-time television shows and graphic novels to the development of computer game expansion packs, the recent explosion of popular serials has provoked renewed interest in the history and economics of serialization, as well as the impact of this cultural form on readers, viewers, and gamers. In this volume, contributors—literary scholars, media theorists, and specialists in comics, graphic novels, and digital culture—examine the economic, narratological, and social effects of serials from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century and offer some predictions of where the form will go from here.

chapter |7 pages

Introduction

part I|53 pages

Victorian Serials

chapter 2|14 pages

"Pause You Who Read This"

Disruption and the Victorian Serial Novel

chapter 3|15 pages

"Split [. . .] Peas"

Mrs Beeton and Domestic Time, Decomposed

part II|59 pages

Serialization on Screen

chapter 4|15 pages

The Logic of the Line Segment

Continuity and Discontinuity in the Serial-Queen Melodrama

chapter 5|11 pages

"Is It True Blondes Have More Fun?"

Mad Men and the Mechanics of Serialization

chapter 6|15 pages

The Walking Dead

Quality Television, Transmedia Serialization and Zombies

chapter 7|16 pages

Ingmar Bergman, Showrunner

part III|32 pages

Serialization in Comic Books and Graphic Novels

chapter 9|14 pages

The Issues Issue

A Series of Thoughts on Seriality in Daniel Clowes' Eightball

part IV|46 pages

Digital Serialization

chapter 10|13 pages

The Sense of an Ending

The Computer Game Fallout 3 as a Serial Fiction

chapter 11|14 pages

Circling the Infinite Loop, One Edit at a Time

Seriality in Wikipedia and the Encyclopedic Urge

chapter 12|17 pages

The Serialization Game

Computer Hardware and the Serial Production of Video Games