Interactive Fiction is a term which means different things to different people. To little kids, it may mean those Choose Your Own Adventure books. Some people consider Milorad Pavic's books (such as Dictionary of the Khazars) to be "interactive fiction". Some computer gamers call all plot-driven games "interactive fiction". However, most people who regularly use the term use it to refer to computer games that are primarily or entirely text-based. And they abbreviate "interactive fiction" as simply IF.

I've been doing IF stuff since late 1998. I played a few games, heard about The Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (IFComp), made some halfhearted attempts at writing stuff, etc. Then in September 1999 I actually finished a game (called Lomalow) and entered it in the 1999 IFComp. I kept writing and entered two games each in the 2000 and 2001 competitions.

I haven't written any IF since then, although I'm sporadically working on some stuff. I've been learning to use TADS 3, a remarkably powerful new system that's currently in development. I'm also co-editing the IF theory book, an upcoming collection of articles about the history, craft, and theory of interactive fiction.

The IF Archive is pretty much the central repository of the IF world. From there you can download games, source code, programming languages you can use to write your own games, etc. (All of my games, for instance, are available from the archive.) It's mainly just a storage area, though. If you want to browse through games by category, find games by a specific author, or something like that, your best bet is Baf's Guide. If you want some more information about interactive fiction in general, check out the IFaq.

If any of what you read at any of these places intrigues you, you may also want to check out the newsgroups rec.arts.int-fiction and rec.games.int-fiction (often called raif and rgif respectively) , which are the main forums for the discussion of IF. (raif is for talking about writing IF, and rgif is for talking about playing IF.)